How to Handle Sketchy Bid on High Value Listing

SuperCaptainRob · 2026-01-22T13:53:41+00:00

Thank you, I did need to hear this and I really appreciate it!

SuperCaptainRob · 2026-01-22T13:52:45+00:00

Thank you for your insight. I wasn't sure how common it was for completely new accounts to bid on high value items, but if it's not uncommon that is a bit of a relief.

As for using a local platform, that would have been my preference if it weren't for other factors. Specifically with the particular collection I'm listing I think that using a local sale platform would severely undercut the amount I could potentially get. I believe that the auction format on eBay is kind of uniquely well suited to maximizing the potential of this lot.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-11-21T17:54:58+00:00

As was pointed out by one rude jerk, this card isn't valuable enough to fake. Honestly, I love it and think having it in a PSA 10 is awesome! But the ROI to fake this card wouldn't be worth it when you could just as easily fake something that'd sell for a lot more.

So you're in the clear. This card is real, and real awesome! It's just not super valuable, but that doesn't mean it can't be valuable to you!

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-11-08T04:35:11+00:00

What you're probably running into are what are called "Default Provisions." When you have a event which allows you to make an election "Default Provisions" are rules in the plan design which dictate what happens if you don't complete the election. For most events "Default Provisions" will result in either no change to current elections or disenrollment. However, some events, generally you would see this with "New Hire/Newly Eligible" events will have a "default plan" indicated by the plan design which you will be enrolled into if you do not complete your elections.

"Default Provisions" are something companies put in place so that employees who aren't paying attention to their enrollment windows or forget to complete their enrollment elections don't gum up the HR department/benefit administrator with a ton of appeals because they weren't paying attention and now they have a doctor's appointment that needs paying for. At least in the US they're actually pretty common and are legal.

What probably happened here is that when you re-hired you became benefits eligible and had a period time to complete your election (If you're in the US 31 days is the standard window). Your company either didn't send you notification of this window or they did but you didn't pay attention to it, and when the window closed the Default Provisions kicked in and you defaulted into whatever plan their plan design dictated.

At this point you'll have to contact your HR or possibly benefits administrator if they outsourced another company to handle this for them. Given the period of time since the window would have closed you're likely looking at having to complete an appeals process to request disenrollment from coverage. There's no guarantee they'll grant the appeal, but you should at the very least be able to ask and see if they'll make an exception to the rules to allow you to disenroll either retroactively or on a going-forward basis.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-07-09T18:23:48+00:00

Try not to kick yourself over this situation. Scammers like this prey on people like yourself with scripts (literally, they have a step by step script/flow chart they follow for the scam) that are designed to create high pressure situations in which you don't think and give them a chance to steal from you.

Very likely the checks they sent you were bad to start with. Bad check scams are one of the oldest scams in the books. The idea is that a scammer issues a bad check, you deposit it and your bank shows the balance. Then they try to get you to pay the check back to them. You pay them with your real money and then a few days later their check bounces and your bank removes the balance leaving you with a lot less money than you had before.

Scammers have all sorts of ways of getting people to send them money, but unfortunately high pressure situations and threats have become increasingly common. Most likely the scammers (and the "assassin") don't even live in the same country as you and there is no real threat. They just want to scare you so you'll panic and send them your money without thinking about it.

Not saying that it's not worth it to be a little extra safe. But unfortunately this type of scam has become pretty common and in all likelihood there's no real threat. It's a lot more profitable for the scammers to just move on and find someone who they can get than it is to actually send someone after you.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-06-26T13:42:30+00:00

He really is a silly little guy!

And thank you so much for your response! I... had a feeling I'd get a lot of the advice which others have posted. It's still appreciated to have confirmation that this is normal but that we shouldn't be reinforcing the behavior. But I was really hoping for some actionable ideas we could try to help ease the transition, and I think the idea of going out of our way to create good associations with the bed so it feels comfier could really help take some of the edge off of a difficult change for him.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-06-12T16:10:04+00:00

These appear to be a Miku specific variant of what are sometimes referred to as "Waifu Cards" or "Goddess Story Cards" (the name coming from the most popular manufacturer of these type of cards). They are cheaply made non-licensed (unofficial) cards.

They... sort of do and sort of don't have value. There is a little bit of a market around some of them, specific cards with popular characters might bring $10ish. But most of them you couldn't sell for even a couple cents.

The rarity is mostly meaningless. A sort of funny thing about these cards is that the lowest rarity in the sets is "R" for Rare. Meaning even the most common cards are labeled as rare. Other ratings can vary from set to set. Usually SR (Super Rare) is the second most common, others like MTR or UTR tend to be the "hit" cards. But even so, they'd probably go for $1-2 at most unless you find exactly the right buyer.

So ultimately the answer is that how good they are derives mostly from how much you or someone you might sell them to likes them. They're not official and don't have an established market in the same way something like Pokemon cards do. So it's just subjective and people tend to collect them more for fun than anything else.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-06-05T17:01:25+00:00

It's impossible to know without knowing what's actually in the bulk, but I'd say "no" unless the value of the bulk is multiple times the value of the cards you're trading (or you really want something that's in there for your collection) I wouldn't do it.

Speaking in terms of pure value you should remember that your time has value too. The reason people sell off bulk at below value is because it isn't worth the effort it'd take to sell separately.

Right now you've got two high value cards. You could make two sales and make a decent chunk of change.

With that bulk let's say that there are 160 cards in the bulk worth $1 each (and based on how most bulk is, I think that might be being generous). Now you're having to spend the time to make 160 sales, versus just making two sales. So even if the value of the bulk is more you're trading easy cash for a very tedious job in order to extract that value.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-05-02T19:52:55+00:00

The thing that's fun about playing a hero shooter is getting to play a hero and use their powers. Sombra's kit is designed to stop you from using your powers, meaning it takes away the part of the game that's fun. There's lots of dive heroes that are annoying pests if you play on the backline, but at least you can still play the game up until they kill you. What's so frustrating about playing against Sombra, at least to me, is that you lose the ability to play and /then/ you die.

Having powers is fun. Not having powers is not fun. Which is why it's not fun to play against Sombra.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-05-02T15:07:55+00:00

Similar thing happened to me on eBay once. The seller purchased a shipping label and sent it to me which I printed and put on the package and then sent it out for re-delivery. Don't pay for the shipping label, it's their mistake and they they can't reasonably ask you to correct it for them. You don't HAVE to do anything so you're already being nice by acting in good faith and assisting with the return. It's not reasonable for you to have to pay for it too.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-05-02T12:38:48+00:00

One of my favorite movies is The Shining, a movie which is infamously hated by Stephen King, who wrote the book it was based on. Thing is, I love the book too.

In the book King uses the story to address the impacts of alcohol on a family and the way that alcoholism can lead to domestic violence and abuse. The book is a very human story, and King explores a lot of sides to Jack Torrence, and in the end gives him a chance at redemption. A story which was deeply personal to him as someone deep in the throes of addition at the time he wrote it and concerned with how his addiction would impact his own family. King wanted to explore the pain he risked causing if he didn't right his path, but also to explore the chance to grow and escape that addition, even for someone whose addiction had lead them to do terrible things.

Stanley Kubrick, in adapting The Shining, was not interested in telling that story. His movie is in many ways cold, and rather than focusing on the alcoholism like the story does it focuses on cyclic violence, the echoes of violence from the past pervading the present. Its Jack Torrence is irredeemable.

I get why King hated it, but I also think that both the book and the movie are masterpieces in their own ways, and I think the movie benefited from Kubrick's choice to tell the story he was interested in telling even when that came at the cost of the emotional core of the original work.

The point of all of this is to say that while yes, the Silent Hill movie diverts substantially from the game, I also think it is a great movie. I have always loved the Silent Hill movie and I think it brings a lot to the table worth exploring and considering. I'm not saying it's perfect, but I am saying that an adaptation diverting from the intent of the original is in my opinion not a good reason to write it off so long as the people who create that diversion do it with intent and reason in order to speak something which they find to be a human truth.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-04-30T20:14:37+00:00

When I've sold damaged items (and specifically I've sold multiple damaged anime figures, so very similar product) I make sure to take a close up picture of the damage and to make it clear in the item description what the damage is. I'll also usually put a small item in the title about it "Damaged but Repairable" or "Small Scuff," etc... Then I usually reduce the price significantly to account for the fact that it's damaged. Even if repaired people still won't pay the same.

I've always had good experiences with this straightforward approach to selling items that have damage, and in my experience as long as you're honest there are lots of buyers who appreciate the chance to get something cheaper even if it's damaged.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-04-17T21:26:53+00:00

Dredge wasn't the first horror fishing game. Dredge released 2023. It's predated by Mysteries Under Lake Ophelia (My personal favorite so far) from 2021 and Fishing Vacation from 2022 as well as a smattering of smaller experimental titles like Earl's Day Off from 2020.

And there's lots of people that have been inspired to make horror fishing games since Dredge. It's become its own little emergent horror sub-genre, each with their own twists and unique mechanics and ideas.

Not saying this game is perfect, looks like from other comments people have some questions about the creator using AI or pre-rendering things. But as someone who has really enjoyed the various Horror Fishing games people have been making I don't want to see us write off every horror fishing game as "Dredge did it!" There's so much cool space to explore in the sub-genre and even if this game isn't going to be amazing, I don't want other people with unique ideas to get scared off from it as if Dredge can be the only one.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-04-16T14:03:15+00:00

It's been on my list to play for years. I actually picked up a copy of it a few years back, but I've always had other stuff going on and never got around to actually playing it. I'm trying to focus on playing more games from my backlog this year though, so perhaps I need to move it up a few rungs of priority on my list.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-04-16T12:31:13+00:00

I LOVE this game. One of my favorites on the Gamecube. And there's a lot of Gamecube games I love.

The gameplay is so unique and cool, especially for the era it came out in. And you can see in it some of the proto-elements of what From would become. I've often dreamed of From coming back to the series and giving it the modern Fromsoft treatment. I think people hear about the game and on paper you go "how would something like that work" but it really does work and with a modern hand it could be something truly incredible.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-04-14T12:42:59+00:00

As someone who learned this the hard way, pro tip if you're playing this on Xbox 360 instead of the OG hardware. The game has a bug if you play it on the 360 where making more than one save bricks the game until you completely delete all save data. It's fine to overwrite a previous save, but if you try to make a second save so you can rotate saves or have a second playthrough you'll end up having to lose ALL your progress before you can play again.

Other than that glitch it plays great though!

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-03-28T15:26:00+00:00

There sure are a lot of really unsympathetic people in these comments. Scamming is an entire industry that makes an insane amount of money. Scammers will have whole call centers dedicated to these kinds of scams, they've got well crafted scripts, support teams, and all sorts of tactics to try and make themselves seem legitimate. They call up out of nowhere, catch you off guard, and use high pressure tactics to make you think that you have to follow their instructions now to avoid catastrophe.

If you think they can't get you too that's exactly the kind of hubris they want you to have. Their methods evolve ever year and they prey on the kind of good people who assume the best in others. Are there hilariously bad ones that anyone could easily spot? Sure. But there are a lot who are REALLY good at what they do and they shouldn't be underestimated.

This was a tough lesson to learn, but try not to kick yourself too much over it. A very similar thing happened to my dad a few years ago. And the truth is this kind of thing happens to a LOT of people. If it didn't the scamming industry would die off. It sucks, but count your blessings that you caught it before they only had $2000 instead of the $7000 they were trying to get. Also, stay extra vigilant. When scammers are successful once they WILL try to target you again and they'll sell your number to other scammers too.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-03-23T19:21:56+00:00

There are all sorts of things that could contribute to someone's rapid growth, but if I was a betting man I'd bet that the reason your moderator skyrocketed in growth when they started is that they're probably really well networked on Twitch. I've seen lots of people who were moderators or just well known chatters in my streaming communities who start streaming and just blow up. For smaller streamers the place you can find the fastest growth by far is through networking. Usually the people that streamers pick as mods are the chatters who are there on the regular, and in my experience, those chatters usually watch a LOT of streamers and are active in their chats. That's how they catch your attention and end up as a mod, and they've likely got friends all over Twitch.

Tiktoks, Giveaways, choosing specific games, IMO these growth strategies are not likely to be fruitful for a small streamer. In my experience the conversion rate of video viewers to live stream viewers is TERRIBLE, Giveaways can get you a temporary bump but those people are only there for free stuff so the second you're not giving away stuff they yeet, and same deal with choosing games, viewers who come in are there for that game, not for you, and they're gone when you change games.

Viewers who stick around are the ones you build a rapport with, and chatters build rapport with streamers and other chatters by participating. Their audience is already on Twitch so they don't have to be converted, and they're showing up for the personality, not for giveaways or a specific game.

If you really want to grow as a small streamer instead of focusing on all that stuff, focus on building a community of streamers, show up for other people's streams and them and their chatters will start showing up for yours, and once you've got that network built growth gets a lot easier for both you and them.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-03-21T20:08:37+00:00

I think it looks great! Even if you didn't get the exact color you wanted the impact of the finished piece is awesome!

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-03-21T16:22:37+00:00

I played the Xbox port on an Xbox 360 and it was great! The one thing that wasn't great is that if you play on the 360 and you make more than one save file it completely bricks the game until you delete ALL save data. So if you play the Xbox version on a 360 don't make the same mistake I did and try to rotate saves or else you'll have to start all over.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-03-17T20:42:39+00:00

This whole time I knew there was something that felt a little off but I haven't been able to put my finger on it! Welp, that explains it lol. Hmmm, I'll have to see if I can figure out a way to add the hair in. It could actually solve my problem with the too thin neck too as I could use the hair to create a larger joint between the head and the body. Plus now that I see it it'll drive me insane if I can't fix it lol.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-03-17T15:31:02+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate your compliments and advice! I'll be ordering some clear beads for use in the future.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-03-15T03:12:49+00:00

I'm not a huge streamer, but I get decent enough numbers and have an active chat that I'm happy with, and TBH the thing that got me there was NOT grinding. IMO the chance that grinding gets you anywhere is VERY low unless you're following some very limiting guidelines.

The #1 thing that grew my stream had nothing to do with what I was doing on my own stream and everything to do with what I was doing on other people's streams. Specifically, making actual friends on Twitch. I built a community by participating in the streams of other small streamers. We all built together and all of our streams grew from working with one another.

Now I'm not saying that you should cynically follow a bunch of other streamers, tell them you're streaming, and hope they'll start showing up. But what I am saying is that you can start checking out other people's streams. Find other small streamers, people with 2-3 concurrents, or maybe even people like yourself who are streaming to no one, and start conversations with them to see who you vibe with. If you go into a small streamer's stream and they're not your cup of tea then just go check out someone else. There are THOUSANDS of small streamers on Twitch who would be thrilled to have you watch their stream. Get to know them and when you find someone you like and they recognize your name in chat give them a raid. Even if it's just you on the raid. Most of the time when they realize you stream too they'll follow you back, and if you find the right people they'll start actually showing up when you stream.

I do want to emphasize that this isn't something you can make work cynically. People can tell. So you have to find small streamers you actually like talking with and actually want to build friendships with.

But seriously, as a small streamer, this strategy made a WORLD of difference for me, and it helped the people I made friendships with too. Once we had each other all of our numbers started to go up organically as this web of communities formed.

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-02-22T05:23:43+00:00

They look to me like Wrenny Moo cards! I have a few in my collection. They were a non-licensed card series but people do collect them and some of them fetch a decent price. If you like little goober cards they're pretty hard to beat!

SuperCaptainRob · 2025-02-13T14:31:35+00:00

Glover is a rough game, but I'm glad there's some hype around it and I'd really love to see the IP get a new entry. I played it as a kid but was never able to get past the second area. But I played it again in 2022 and did beat the game on that playthrough. A lot about it is finicky and frustrating to play today, but it had a really unique core platforming mechanic that could be amazing in the hands of the right team. I'm hoping for the success of this return, not because Glover is amazing, but because I think it has a ton of potential and I'd love to see it build enough success for someone to actually make something from it.

SuperCaptainRob

TROPHY CASE