EarthBound Price Update (June 2013)

When I see items go for huge amounts over market value, I generally assume it is a “shill-bidder”. They’ll bid on their own items to jack up the prices, then buy them out for ridiculous amounts if they aren’t turning a good profit.

You can sometimes tell this is happening by looking at the bidding history. This guy went from $90 to $500… most likely buying out because he wanted more.

I did a blog post about EB Prices a few weeks ago, and I really suggest that people wait until about August to buy. Prices should keep trending downwards, but I do suspect a rebound sometime before the holiday season.

Heh, love that picture.

It would be so rad if you did a ‘greatest hits’ gallery of the worst condition carts out there.

Mato for the guy that paid $510 for the cartridge, it says in the Detailed Item Info section that it comes with a 128 page guide. Yet it also says it was apart of the 3D Ultra Pinball series 🙂

The info in that box is provided by eBay, not the seller. It’s used for all EarthBound listings. The seller’s description says:

Cart only, saves work, slight damage to the game cover, other than that it is in perfect condition

What may happen is that people get it on virtual console, ad then want the real deal.

I’m assuming the Wii-U release will make it continually go down in price, it’s seeming too already.

Through my personal hunting I found a seller who actually sold an Earthbound cartridge for $30. I tried to buy it but they told me they had already sold it 🙁

I’m glad to see the price going down. Hopefully it’ll continue.

I have questions about that $510 auction. First thing that raises a red flag to me is that the listing says it was “ended by the seller because the item was sold.” This means that the seller didn’t let the auction play out. If he did, the note would say, “Bidding has ended on this item.”

So the big question is why would a seller end an auction early if it was receiving 27 bids at a vastly inflated price? If I put a used sock on eBay and it was receiving bids of $1,000 I would NEVER end it early. I would let the auction run its course to see if I could get $1,500. The insanity of the price combined with the nonsensical action of the seller gives me serious suspicion as to whether this was a legit auction (meaning that someone authentically bid and paid for this item at this price). It is hard to think of reasons for why someone would “fake” an auction, but I’ve seen some crazy stuff on eBay. The one constant you can rely on with eBay auctions, though? SELLERS WANT MONEY. Anybody have any thoughts on why he/she would end this auction early?

Obviously the biggest red flag is the fact that you can get complete sets for this price. I just have trouble believing that anybody is stupid enough to pay $510 for an Earthbound cart when there are 30-40 other copies selling for <$200 at any given time? I just can't wrap my mind around this one.

The other thing that seriously arouses my suspicion is the fact that seller has allegedly never sold anything on eBay. All his feedback is as a buyer. This dooesn’t prove anything but it’s food for thought.

Good point, FlyingManCourage. 🙂 I once saw a copy of Earthbound on eBay.com for $7.80 but they didn’t ship to the UK! That made me a bit mad….

EarthBound is my favorite game in the “3D Ultra Pinball” series.

One thing I noticed on that auction was that the “winner” has a zero feedback rating, if I’m reading it correctly. That seems out of place since it could be the “dummy” account.

Good work, FlyingManCourage! You are definitely onto something!

FMC, I think that’s enough to make us suspect any “sale” in that particular price range.

Yeah guys. I think my points combined with The World Is Square’s point about the bids jumping from $90 to $500 and PSIpunky’s point about the “winner” having zero feedback on eBay….we can probably safely assume that this was not a legit auction.

@Burglin Pork: LOL, I wish eBay would fix that already.