I love going through the Denver ads for baseball cards. They always bring a smile to my face, kind of like this ad:
Original 1987 Topps Complete set Baseball 792 Pic cards
Original old never opened(sealed) from 1987 complete set of Topps baseball cards. box marked 1985.give me offer.(its not cheap thing)
My First Take: OK where should I start? Let’s start with the pictures. What a ratty old box. I have a few boxes that look like this and the outside matches what the cards look like. So my first guess is that the cards inside are probably not in the best of shape. Now for the ad, “original never opened(sealed)”, just in case you don’t understand that never opened means sealed, he was nice enough to explain it. Next he says the box is marked 1985, when it clearly says on the box Baseball 1987. Finally the “give me offer.(its not cheap thing)” sorry man, it is a cheap thing. It’s worth $10/$25 in the book, I think my offer will be $8, you know for the Craigslist discount.
The Emails:
Me: Is the set still available?
Craigslist Idiot (CI): It sure is, it’s a heck of a great set, a real antique collector’s item. What are you willing to offer? (Antique? Really? Because it’s over 20 years old? Fat chance getting me with that line!)
Me: I was wondering how much you are looking to get?
Craigslist Idiot: It’s got a whole bunch of rookie cards in it, bo jackson, barry bonds, jose canseco, mark mcguire, ect… It’s not a cheap set as you can tell, I’m taking offers. (Fucking hate people that just won’t tell you what they want for it, I’m gonna make him/her tell me)
Me: What kind of offer are you looking to get.
CI: I’m just collecting offers right now. (WTF? Give me a damn price!)
Me: What is the highest offer you have gotten?
CI: Like I said right now I’m just taking offers and the highest will win. I don’t want to give you an advantage over the rest of the people who have offers in. (Come on fucker, give me a damn price and then we’ll negotiate if you wanted to do it auction style put it on freaking eBay!)
Me: My bid is $100.00 . . .
CI: Wow that is by far the highest bid when do you want to come by and get it. (Never, ever ever notice the 3 dots . . .)
Me: . . . less than the highest bidder. Now will you tell me what you want for this set. If you give me a price, I can see if I like it, then we can exchange money for set and be done with each other.
CI: I guess you aren’t interested then, because I said serious offers only. (You fucking piece of garbage, give me a price! I’m not going until I get a price.)
Me: Please I beg you, tell me how much you want. What if I say $40 would you take that?
CI: That seems low I’m gonna pass.
Me: Low compared to what? You haven’t even given me a price you want. Do you even know what you are selling? Obviously you have a problem determining what this is worth, I know when I run into an issue like that I go to this video and it helps me assess the values: http://voiceofthecollector.blogspot.com/2008/10/long-awaited-junk-wax-how-to.html. I hope it helps you.
CI: Asshole!
Me: So an $8 bid would be out of the question?
End of Emails.
My final take:
I hate so much when people refuse to let me know how much they want for the cards. Over and over I kept asking this person what they wanted and they never told me. In the end I guess I kind of lost it but I did my best. The truth is that they haven’t a clue what it’s worth and they were just fishing for prices before they let it go. My wife pointed out to me that the box does indeed say copyright 1985 so the person was technically right. What happened was that the 1987 set was placed in that box, so it’s not even a factory sealed set.
Antique? I never knew 1987 was a long time ago. I would say vintage more than antique, even that is stretching it.
We all know that ’87 Topps is one of my all time favorite sets, and a lot of love has gone into putting my set together card by card… but there’s no way in hell I’d pay more than $15 shipped for a factory set.
Bo and Barry are the only standout rookies in the set and their cards are much more than commons.
The only factory set I’ve ever bought was 1991 Upper Deck, in 1991. And I dno’t think it was much more than $25 at the time.
I don’t even think I’d have offered $8 for this, just based on the condition of the box. Cardboard boxes aren’t shields against what looks like coffee stains. Maybe %8 shipped, but I’d offer no more than five bucks.
I wonder if it’s the box design that’s copyright 1985? But wasn’t the 87 factory set in a green box?
hahahaha that was funny!
Apparantely Topps used to “factory seal” their boxes with boxing tape. Maybe the guy works in a factory and he taped it shut there, after he got it out from under one of the legs of the punch press it was helping support.
And now my Monday is complete, thanks to anotehr Craigslist Idiot post.
Dude, I love these posts so much. Don’t stop exploiting morons for our enjoyment. Peace.
I’ve been checking in faithfully every single day for another installment of your CI posts, and whaddaya know, here’s another one! Thanks for the laugh! Keep it up bud…You’ve had this girl in stitches from laughing so hard at these idiots. I shall forever remain a CIF (Craigslist Idiot Fan). You can rest assure that I will continue to check back for more posts.
That gave me a good laugh. Atlanta’s Craiglist is exactly the same. This one idiot in atlanta posted at least once every 2 weeks for over 2 years trying to sell a dozen 1989 Topps Braves commons for $15…
It was great how he typed out “wow” how impressed he was with your $100 offer. No wonder it was way higher than the bids he has already got.
$8 is way too much to offer – I’ve seen 1987 Topps sets selling for $5 at the Raleigh card shows, and I’ll be I could negotiate the price down to $3…
Whule he was a fool for not think $40 was a good price, that really is a factory sealed 1987 Hobby set (and, yes, in 1987 they were still using the 1985 boxes). Topps really went all out back then for the hobby dealers. The retail stores got nice colorful boxes with pictures of the cards on them, hobby dealers got the ugly white boxes.
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