Smurfs News

Recently I got a touch of the eBay madness. I saw a Jokey with Gargamel in trickbox Super Smurf on there in an Applause box. I decided I was going to have it! So I put in this ridiculously high bid thinking no one would outbid me, and they did within just a few minutes! I desperately wanted this smurf, my one has a broken catch and I don’t have one in a box, so I thought I would push the bid up again. I kept thinking that if the price only goes a couple of dollars over my top price then I will be very upset, so a little bid wouldn’t hurt. So I bid again but it wasn’t high enough. Then I had to debate whether I should bid again, by this time the smurf had gone over book value, was ridiculously expensive, but because it’s eBay and you can’t stand to lose it eats away at you. I was so desperate to bid but I had to sit on my hands and force myself not to! It was painful, excrutiatingly so! So now I have to forget about this smurf, but it isn’t easy..

EBay can be so cruel, you are always tempted by a bargain but sometimes items can be bid up to silly prices that you wouldn’t normally pay, except that competitive streak in you is driving you on, determined not to be beaten by your opponents! A lot of skill goes into bidding, and people have different ways of placing bids. Some wait right until the end (they must have nerves of steel!) and some just prefer to put a high early bid in and forget about it. I actually find the latter way works better for me in some ways, because last minute bidding wars invariably mean I pay more for something than I really wanted to. When I bid right at the end my blood is usually racing, my heart hammering, and my fingers shaking, the adrenaline really gets to you. EBay could almost become an olympic sport! You even have the equivalent of the drug takers, i.e. shill bidders (using an unfair advantage) to maximise on the race! So eBay isn’t really for the faint-hearted, and it is very addictive! There are some wonderful bargains to be had on eBay but I often find I have a selective memory and I forget about all the awful things I have bought, clothes with holes in, fake supposedly designer handbags. I mean, whatever possessed me to buy a “designer” (cough cough) handbag in the first place? I never buy designer clothes or accessories, but that’s eBay for you. Browsing eBay you end up buying the strangest of things! I wonder how many people typed in the word “Smurf” for a laugh one day and have now become a serious smurf collector? It’s a very dangerous thing, this eBay, you know..