Found a nice example of this in action, this is international shipping to Australia on a 49 USD item.

Now its not the eBay service but rather UPS which are a scummy company doing scummy things.

WAT , 1129.22 usd?! am I reading that right?!

AppleSauce wrote on 2025-02-13, 08:15:

WAT , 1129.22 usd?! am I reading that right?!

Yes you are and I see this a lot on eBay though not to this extent but its usually 1.5x to 2x the cost of the item.

I usually put it down to the seller trying to make the item look cheap to get it to the top of the search results and then hitting up the postage to recover the lower BIN price.

Happens on every auction site I use. I'm looking at a crappy 17" used Syncmaster CRT right now, $190 + shipping. Asinine.
I see the same listings year after year and nothing ever gets sold. Negotiating the price is impossible because they adjust their prices to the highest BIN price they see on other sites and in other listings. To them old = retro = rare = valuable. If you offer a lower price they'll think you are lowballing and never respond.
I just "blacklist" these sellers so I don't see their listings and move on.
Sometimes sellers know what they have and adjust the price accordingly. I've seen Amiga 1200 go for $1200 because it's a desirable item and some people have more cash than others. I see the same thing whenever anything Voodoo, GUS, IBM or Commodore pops up. It's an expensive hobby.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-13, 07:48:

Now its not the eBay service but rather UPS which are a scummy company doing scummy things.

Are you sure that it's not the seller fudging the shipping weight?

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-02-13, 12:29:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-13, 07:48:

Now its not the eBay service but rather UPS which are a scummy company doing scummy things.

Are you sure that it's not the seller fudging the shipping weight?

Scummy is Scummy right, they both do it, UPS nearly always has crazy shipping costs for me and the cheapest used to be the GSP but ebay doesn't use that any more or sellers choose to not use it.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-02-12, 19:02:

This is just super annoying. Like, I want to buy things, but some of these sellers price things stupidly.

Their inflexibility should be their loss, as they don't listen to your suggestion you only have the choice - pay or don't pay

i recommend don't

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-02-13, 07:34:

AppleSauce wrote on 2025-02-13, 07:26:

I'm not sure what's up with eBay shipping and American items ,but for whatever reasons , speaking as an Australian your shipping prices are out of whack , I've basically stopped buying any American items from ebay because the shipping is too damn much and the global shipping program service is terrible especially for what you pay, it gets stuck and held in mail storage in Erlanger for eons before they deliver and in total it takes a month + to arrive and when it reaches Australia they pick the cheapest garbage tier couriers like DAI.

I'd rather take my chances with a Ukrainian or Chinese mail tbh , stuff tends to arrive much quicker and more cheaply.

Aussie here and yup Chinese stuff can get here in as little as two days if they use the air speed pack service, but if they use DAI .. its a week or two. Ukraine has a lead time of 4 weeks but stuff usually only takes a week or so and is pretty reliable.

International shipping is broken (especially on eBay), hence why I don't deal with it if I can avoid it.

Some items can ship to the US and it's reasonably affordable, however it's almost always crazy expensive to ship from the US to somewhere else. It's crazy.

I always thought it's just people who were getting into retro with the Covid hobby boom, buying at already inflated prices and wanting to get out of the hobby at a profit or at least without a loss so they try to sell the stuff they barely used at the same inflated price if not higher they got them.

alphaTECH wrote on 2025-02-13, 05:09:

The reasons for inflated shipping prices are twofold: (1) you keep any money that you don't spend on the shipping and (2) sellers are so lazy that they won't actually measure and weigh the items to get an accurate figure, they'll just use templates, ie. a DVD case goes in a pre-paid international 1kg 50x30 satchel that costs $60 USD to ship to Australia.

There's additional factors that I don't think people who don't sell on Ebay don't realize.

Ebay's fee structure is such that they take a percentage of total costs including shipping. What this is means is that if a seller charges $20 for shipping and Ebay is taking 20% of that, the seller only gets $16. If shipping costs are only $16, to the buyer it looks the seller has pocketed the difference when in fact it's Ebay pocketing that amount.

Another factor is materials cost of shipping supplies. I've purchased things like boxes, labels, etc for shipping. It doesn't add a huge cost to each package, but it's still an incremental cost to shipping goods.

The price will always seem stupid until you start selling, that's the market

I can't stand buyers who haggle over every penny

eBay won't let me choose Betamax tapes with Media Mail shipping, so what now?

StriderTR wrote on 2025-02-13, 06:13:

Personally, I limit all my searches to US only. I hate paying international shipping and I don't trust many of the listings (mainly for old PC parts) coming from places like China, Ukraine, etc. I do sometimes limit it to North America if I notice some good deals from our northern neighbors in Canada.

Speaking a Canadian, I've found it's faster to ship stuff from overseas (including China and Ukraine) than it is to ship stuff in from the U.S.

I once had a video card take 2 months to ship from Los Angeles to Canada via USPS.

MAZter wrote on 2025-02-13, 17:40:

The price will always seem stupid until you start selling, that's the market

I can't stand buyers who haggle over every penny

My biggest peeve is when I post something for sale and immediately get people asking for giant discounts (50% or more sometimes). I've had people get angry with me for refusing their offers when the listing has been live for barely an hour.

If something doesn't sell after a few weeks, I'll look at dropping the price. But right away, no.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-02-13, 17:41:

Personally, I limit all my searches to US only. I hate paying international shipping and I don't trust many of the listings (mainly for old PC parts) coming from places like China, Ukraine, etc.

This is not quite right, last year I got a laptop for free from Italy, seller sent it in a regular box without any bubble wrap, some of the plastic was chipped off the CD-ROM part, but it can be glued or replaced, so I am happy with such a gift after receiving a full refund option available at eBay.

MAZter wrote on 2025-02-13, 17:46:

This is not quite right, last year I got a laptop for free from Italy, seller sent it in a regular box without any bubble wrap, some of the plastic was chipped off the CD-ROM part, but it can be glued or replaced, so I am happy with such a gift after receiving a full refund option available at eBay.

Poor packaging isn't unique to any specific country.

My single worst experience was ordering a Matrox M3D card from a seller in the U.S. They threw it in a thin bubble mailer with no padding. It got damaged in shipment and arrived broken in half.

Even a getting a refund, it pissed me off that a rare of a piece of hardware needlessly destroyed by a seller to lazy to put it in a rigid box.

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-02-13, 17:49:

My single worst experience was ordering a Matrox M3D card from a seller in the U.S. They threw it in a thin bubble mailer with no padding. It got damaged in shipment and arrived broken in half.

This one has to be seen to be believed. I remember it well. 😁

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Shipping multiplies the price but lets you hoard from anywhere in the world. Not something to complain about in general.

Shipping seems to have gotten more expensive and people a bit more greedy - nice retro combo. Up to 450 Euro for a Pentium60 board.

If I really want something I'll buy it on ebay because some of the German sellers are expensive but trustworthy.
Only cheap older stuff I can find on there is from Ukraine where some of the sellers are also more than ok in my book.
Bad example is Poland with surreal prices.

The US still seems to have the best stuff - besides expensive shipping(at least to Europe) prices are good.

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-02-13, 18:43:

This one has to be seen to be believed. I remember it well. 😁 […]
Show full quote

Shponglefan wrote on 2025-02-13, 17:49:

My single worst experience was ordering a Matrox M3D card from a seller in the U.S. They threw it in a thin bubble mailer with no padding. It got damaged in shipment and arrived broken in half.

This one has to be seen to be believed. I remember it well. 😁

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

The attachment Matrox M3D shattered.jpg is no longer available

That's the one. 😢

I managed to salvage the memory chips from it, but that's about it. The PowerVR IC had been cracked and was unusable.

That's too bad. I always try to salvage memory chips like that. I've never found a use for them, but maybe some day I might.

I've had a spectacular PowerVR failure of my own. Check this out.

PowerVR psychedelic failure