What was your BIGGEST STEAL on ebay?

Probably best to mention cards that are already in-hand for obvious reasons. Perhaps it was a mistake in the listing or some other reason, but what card did you absolutely STEAL from ebay?

Not my biggest profit, but 47x my money and it was my first big one when I started back up on ebay. Bought a Don Mattingly 1993 Finest Promo Refractor for about $28, resold it for about $1400. Probably would have gotten more, but my feedback was low at the time, since I had to start a new account.

I won a poorly titled 3200 ct lot of mid to late 90's inserts back in 2004. The scan just showed the view from the top of the box and I was able to see that there appeared to be some tough 1 per case inserts plus some other things that looked intriguing (just couldn't tell who they were). I verified with the seller that the lot that was being sold was the exact lot that would be shipped. The auction had an opening bid of $75 (and it was a relist -- it failed to get a bid the time before at the same price). I placed a snipe for a little over $350. I won the auction for the opening bid of $75. When I received the lot I was absolutely floored. All cards were mainly commons and minor stars, with a few slightly off grade superstars thrown in. There was about a half a set of 1994 SP Holoview Die-Cuts -- mainly commons but commons routinely went for $15-25 back then. There were ultra platinum medallions, donruss crusades, flair showcase legacy's, Stadium Club First Days, and about 400 other cards that were serial #'d to 100 or less (which was still a pretty big deal in 2004). I think I ended up clearing around $7,000 on the lot (and probably still have a couple thousand of the more common inserts and parallels around here somewhere). It was a lot of work but I would love to stumble onto another one of those deals sometime.

Some years back, bought a ginormous jeter lot with cool inserts & tons of classic draft cards.

But the icing in the collection was a 500ct lot of "cream of the crop" jeter cards. Ive sold so many of those that I have been using them as freebies now.

Not sure if it was my biggest but it was the most fun. Found a poorly listed auction of a small booklet with 4-card pages, FULL of cards #'d/60 or less (the ones #'d/60 were Topps blacks). I would say about 70 cards total. I still have about 15 cards left (mostly Topps blacks) but I've sold every card for at least $10.

Highest card was tie - sold Jorge Posada red refractor #/5 and a Joe Mauer 1/1 sketch for $45.

I only paid $60 for the booklet. Probably looking at around $500 straight profit when all is said and done.

I used to have a guy on my fav sellers list that only put the player name in the title. Absolutely nothing else. This was back in 2005-2007. I staged a crapload of high grade RC's from him at 99 cents. Best one was a John santana bowman best 9.5. This was back when said John was hitting $80 plus.

John?

Bob Loblaw said:

John?

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Autospell. Thought it might be easily figured out though.

Johan

markakis8 said:

Not sure if it was my biggest but it was the most fun. Found a poorly listed auction of a small booklet with 4-card pages, FULL of cards #'d/60 or less (the ones #'d/60 were Topps blacks). I would say about 70 cards total. I still have about 15 cards left (mostly Topps blacks) but I've sold every card for at least $10.

Highest card was tie - sold Jorge Posada red refractor #/5 and a Joe Mauer 1/1 sketch for $45.

I only paid $60 for the booklet. Probably looking at around $500 straight profit when all is said and done.

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What about 001/999?

The the highest percentage, but these two are my favorites.

Three Satchell Paige autograph cuts for under $40 shipped and a rough lot 40 1934 Goudeys with a poor scan. The Paige cuts were dead-on, two signed in pencil and one in ballpoint...one of my first purchases on eBay. The Goudey lot listed that a few of the cards had writing on them...7 of which I would have called "autographed."

vwnut13 said:

What about 001/999?

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Oh yeah valid point. I guess I didn't think of that as a steal right away b/c I wasn't sure if it was going to work.

I'm way over $500 profit on that and still have about 150 cards left from the set.

PM sent!

trauty said:

I won a poorly titled 3200 ct lot of mid to late 90's inserts back in 2004. The scan just showed the view from the top of the box and I was able to see that there appeared to be some tough 1 per case inserts plus some other things that looked intriguing (just couldn't tell who they were). I verified with the seller that the lot that was being sold was the exact lot that would be shipped. The auction had an opening bid of $75 (and it was a relist -- it failed to get a bid the time before at the same price). I placed a snipe for a little over $350. I won the auction for the opening bid of $75. When I received the lot I was absolutely floored. All cards were mainly commons and minor stars, with a few slightly off grade superstars thrown in. There was about a half a set of 1994 SP Holoview Die-Cuts -- mainly commons but commons routinely went for $15-25 back then. There were ultra platinum medallions, donruss crusades, flair showcase legacy's, Stadium Club First Days, and about 400 other cards that were serial #'d to 100 or less (which was still a pretty big deal in 2004). I think I ended up clearing around $7,000 on the lot (and probably still have a couple thousand of the more common inserts and parallels around here somewhere). It was a lot of work but I would love to stumble onto another one of those deals sometime.

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Great thread. I can't ever remember any absolute STEALS from eBay, although I've had plenty of good deals over the years. I think one of my favorites was winning a 7 card lot of Mike Stanton 08 Chrome Xfractor Autos for something like $975 last season and breaking up the lot and selling them for over $1500 total this year.

Do you all think steals of the level mentioned in this thread are still out there?

Or is it a thing of the past?

Types of steals that are definitely still out there:
-- Breaking up large lots for a decent (but not huge) profit
-- Investing $1000 to get $1500 later in the season (like All the Hype's example)
-- undervalued prospects in offseason / before callup (but this is based on future value rather than current value, so not really a steal)

Types of steals that I'm not sure are still out there:
-- mislabeled cards (like charsupv's example)
-- lots with quick, huge flip value (like trauty's example)
-- poor listings / misspellings etc

bobthewondercat77 said:

Do you all think steals of the level mentioned in this thread are still out there?

Or is it a thing of the past?

Types of steals that are definitely still out there:
-- Breaking up large lots for a decent (but not huge) profit
-- Investing $1000 to get $1500 later in the season (like All the Hype's example)
-- undervalued prospects in offseason / before callup (but this is based on future value rather than current value, so not really a steal)

Types of steals that I'm not sure are still out there:
-- mislabeled cards (like charsupv's example)
-- lots with quick, huge flip value (like trauty's example)
-- poor listings / misspellings etc

Click to expand...

Sure there are, just sort by newest listed, by now and specific keywords. I make a pretty good amount of money every month buying cards that have been listed for less than 3 minutes. Dual monitors and Reload Every is awesome.

This software blows dick.

2010 Topps Chrome Superfractor Drew Brees
$20

Not really a "steal" but I picked up 2 1950 Bowman cards for $.50 + $.50 shipping (each).

I also got a box of junk commons off eBay once and found a perfect Mo RC. I am going to sub it to PSA one of these days.

SydBarrett said:

Sure there are, just sort by newest listed, by now and specific keywords. I make a pretty good amount of money every month buying cards that have been listed for less than 3 minutes. Dual monitors and Reload Every is awesome.

Click to expand...

I do the same thing. When I'm bored or mindlessly surfing Sunday night, I F5 the hell out of the baseball Modern Era newly listed BINs. I like finding the $9.99 BINs that I know are worth $30 easy; that's pretty common.

Although, every once in a while, I see a BIN where someone fudged the price upon listing, and I hit it and then save the seller the hassel and allow him to relist.

Fun thread. I had to go to some my archived purchases to figure some out.

eBay listing title:
donruss elite 61 card rookie auto lot football
$30 dlvd and they were all from 2001-2002 which were sp'd to 40 and 50. Sold them all for $5-$10 each

eBay title:
Lot 375 Auto Game Used RC Ref BGS From All 4 Sports
$97 dlvd: this had 100 autos and 275 inserts from the 90s including a ton of rare ones

$7.99