An eBay Christmas -- Day 847

So instead of getting Anna some Christmas presents from Target or any other department store, Kerry and I decided to each buy her some vintage Fisher Price stuff that we had as kids using the eBay auctioning service. Anna loves these toys and she has already had endless hours of fun with them in both Texas and North Dakota.

Unfortunately -- at least on the North Dakota side -- most of these vintage toys were liquidated after my brother and I left for college. We still call this episode (with not just a little bit of regret) the 'Great Rummage Sale'. You see, this event put on the auctioning block dozens of years of childhood gifts and memories and disposed of them in one 'bargain-filled' day. Fisher Price toys, BB guns (ok, maybe it is better those are gone), fossils, Star Wars toys, and so on and so on. Oh yeah, my hockey skates too.

Anyhow, the miracle of eBay now allows us to rebuild these childhood playgrounds -- at least with some patience and for a price. I searched the auction site and found the perfect toy for Anna. It was the early 1970s Fisher Price village. You know...the one with the mail system and fire trucks. It had all those store fronts and the working traffic light. Here's a picture if you don't remember.

Anyhow, collectors also want these toys, so I started bidding and potentially paying much more than the the Target toys were ever going to cost. You see these bidding games (they are games), are completely nerve racking because you are competing against professional collectors and it is anonymous. You can't see a face or read a person's mood; you are left only refreshing the computer screen every five seconds during the last 20 minutes to see if you are still the highest bidder and have 'won'.

So there it was, 50 seconds (I really need that fire truck)...40 seconds (I think I am going to get it)...30 seconds (yep, I have it) and then it happens...a big red 'X' appears telling me that I am no longer the highest bidder. I scramble to out bid the person, but I don't have time. In the end, that person won and I lost. If it hadn't been so private (on my couch), it would have been somewhat humiliating. I felt like I had lost my child's toy, but in reality I had just lost -- well -- my old toy once again. Great.

I was actually quite put off after this. In the real shopping world you don't compete with others (unless it is the day after Thanksgiving). Christmas shopping is bad enough that allowing competition to complicate it is just insane. And whereas in normal shopping you settle on something and buy it, here I had to start all over again after losing. Losing meant 're-shopping' for the same thing all over again. It is sort of like looking for bargains in one city and then when the sale goes away, moving to another city to look for the same bargains there. It seemed like a monumental waste of time.

Anyhow, before I lost that auction, I had also entertained sending links of other auctions to family members for them to buy/bid on gifts for Anna. But after the whole experience, I just didn't want to subject anyone else to the same process. Target is probably better.

But I still couldn't let go of the gift idea, which I still thought had merit. So I started shopping around a bit more on eBay. I picked out one auction with fewer professional collectors and staked it out with a proper strategy. What kept me going were two things: (1) I still wanted to get the toys and (2) the only people more cut throat than collectors are Dads buying presents for their little girls. Don't get in our way people.

So I waited for the last hour, got a bit edgy, and placed my bids. I had five tabs open on my computer and was quickly hitting refresh on all the different pages. In the end, I had done my research well and I ended up winning four of five auctions, and the vintage toy that would have cost me $130 a few days ago, now cost only $36. It felt good, but I will honestly say that I will try avoid this experience as much as possible.

I still have to get Kerry's vintage gift, and there are a couple of missing pieces that I will try to locate. In the end, however, I have learned two things: (1) eBay and Christmas are not good matches (it feels like you are gambling for gifts) and (2) don't mess with Daddy when he needs vintage Fisher Price.