Nobody wants to "Jump the Shark", so to speak. We all want to keep a good thing going for as long as possible before it inevitably starts to suck. Wheras the initial premise of determining when the 'shark' had been 'jumped' pertained only to television shows, I think we all realize that pretty much anything is eligible.
I've had my eBay account since May 1999. It's been good to me through the sale of my old bed, some shoes, and really supported me through my obsessive Brendan Shanahan phase. I remember the times before PayPal, and having to actually go and get a money order from Speedway. Most people just entering into the workforce don't even know what a money order IS. Anyway, times change and web storefronts are updated and new features are tested and added and eBay is no different. The addition of the streamlined checkout process was key, About Me pages have become worthy of standalone traffic, and PayPal is bomb. However, eBay's "Buy It Now" (BIN) feature totally cast aside the auction giant into the 'sharked' bin.
Think about it this way: eBay, with its hundreds of thousands of daily new listings, was like the online flea market Mecca. There was all the allure of actually going shopping at a worldly flea market without having to worry about having to wash out the scent of cigar smoke, bad decisions, and middle-aged hygeine issues. There was a chance, just a chance that we might be the ones to find that hidden gem of a treasure that some homely-looking archaeologist guy from Iowa -- the only person who collects that very thing that you happened to find -- looked over and missed. There was achance that we might be lucky enough to underpay for something great and possibly even unopened. The pursuit was nearly as exciting as the purchase. Well, those days are fucking over, and we have BIN to thank for it.
BIN turned my beloved local-feel eBay flea market into the Mall of America. No more forced bidding wars, no more secret great deals, no more pursuit of frugal happiness. It's now just set prices for mass-produced crap, fake autographed items with outlandish reserve prices (just ask Joan Jett), "vintage" items with laughable BIN prices, ways to shoplift (check out esnipe), and a bunch of annoying people with fake foreign accents trying to squirt you with sticky shit from their kiosks. Ugh! Go away! The 'new and improved' eBay is now just a bunch of stuff that you can buy locally, but instead you have to wait 2 weeks and pay some suspiciously high shipping price for it.
There is no more 'new' information. In the days of pre-promotion and hypermarketing, everyone already knows about a good thing before it's even good yet, making its reputation completely precede the actual thing itself. We've totally done a 180 by banking on the phrase 'supposed to be'.
Adding to eBay's bag of suck is the resurgence of 'vintage' items, or should I say items that are branded as 'vintage' but are just logos heat-transferred onto a new t-shirt. The vintage look is all the rage thesedays and the demand of such items far outweighs the supply. 29 minutes before an auction ended on an authentic vintage (seems redundant) 1979 Van Halen World Tour concert T-shirt, the price was $50.50. It closed at $130.00. The exact same t-shirt in another auction was a BIN only "auction" set at a fixed price of $250.00. Six months ago, I bought two small sleveless Van Halen concert tees for no more than $10 apiece. I mean, what the hell is going on here? It can't be just because they announced their upcoming tour...
Vintage 80s concert t-shirts + BIN option = 'Fuck that'.
No comments:
Post a Comment