There is nothing more annoying than having to relist an item on eBay after a sale falls through. Well, unless the relisted item sells a second time for $500 less than the previous auction. That is exactly what happened to a seller’s rare collection of graded Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures.
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The professionally graded set of vintage Wave 1 TMNT toys, including a real holy-grail mail-away black-suited Super Shredder figure, originally sold on eBay for over $4,200. This seemed like a pretty good price for the collection, which included 16 figures in total, all housed in protective cases that come with full grading. The buyer became the owner of two full sets of all four turtles, plus an extra Michelangelo, Splinter, April O’Neil, a regular Shredder, a Foot Soldier, Bebop and Rocksteady.
Most of the items in the collection held a high 80+ grade, with others ranging from 70 upwards, and this would definitely have helped add several extra bids to the lot as it came to its frantic final minutes. The resulting $4,275 top bid seemed like a very healthy amount for this set of figures, and one the seller should have been happy with. It was therefore unfortunate that the collection had to be relisted several days later. There are many reasons why this could have been, but the most likely is that the buyer either did not pay or simply decided they no longer wanted the items and cancelled the sale. Relisting can sometimes result in a better sale the second time around. This one did not.
Relisting This TMNT Collection Did Not Have the Desired Outcome
The second auction gave those buyers who missed out the first time another chance to secure this hard-to-find collection of original Ninja Turtles figures. However, the appetite to bid the job-lot up to the same heights was not quite there, with the new listing closed at $3,717 after 33 bids – 15 fewer than the previous sale – and costing the seller over $500 in the process.
This is a massively frustrating outcome for anyone, but when talking about highly sought-after collectors’ items, it also becomes costly. The lower number of bids in the latest auction suggests that the original had likely been fought out between two determined bidders. The second auction clearly did not have that one person willing to keep pushing up their maximum bid to secure a win. The swift relisting could also have turned some potential buyers away, as the new listing did not mention why this unique set was available again after seemingly being sold just days earlier.
Whatever the reason, the simple fact of the matter is that the result was a $500 loss for the seller, and the frustration of knowing that, on another occasion, the set could have made at least its original $4,275 sale price. It is not often that we get such a clear-cut example of how valuations and auction results for even rare and coveted items can be skewed by so many things outside the seller’s control.
eBay is a perfect place for collectors to sell their items in a quick auction, but sometimes it can be worth going through the process of taking this kind of grail offering to a specialist auction house to get the most out of it. When all is said and done, almost every auction has a “what if?” hanging over its result. This time, we have a clear example of how no two auctions are the same, and how sellers are always at the mercy of the right buyers coming along at the right moment to get the most for their prized possessions.
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