Buy/Sell/Trade Forum

I suppose that is certainly a possibility Dave. I'm not aware of being blocked by any sellers.  Do you receive notification if you are?  As I mentioned, I've noticed that some sellers / listings say they won't accept offers. I don't ask on those. I've found that a polite inquiry and a reasonable (reasonable to me) offer, never more than 10% off, has produced favorable results. I don't ask every time that I attempt an order on eBay, but probably 50% of the time. My requests have certainly been "ignored" from time to time but I've never had a price raised.

@KC: A seller raising the price when someone contacts them about purchasing a card on ebay is absolutely true! I've had it happen to me several times, even in cases where I told them they were asking for something well over "Book Value" even before the shipping costs. This has happened many times for cards that sit for years on the same BIN. When they jack the price up, the BIN goes off my Watch List. Then the price comes back down, but usually only to what it was before they jumped it up. I make sure to avoid those sellers in the future b/c that is just greedy! I could name a few, but then other people here will blow up this thread talking about how they got good "deals" from these sellers. They weren't deals at all b/c they paid exactly what those sellers wanted to get and it was too much IMO. I've also seen several sellers leave ebay entirely for multiple reasons that mostly dealt with ebay themselves jacking up fees and changing rules and practices.

As a seller on ebay I usually accept messages containing an offer like the one kcjays pointed out.  There are exceptions such as if you start your message with things like "Hey Bro" or "Hey Man" then it gets ignored.  If the offer is written intelligently then I am more than willing to work with the potential customer.  I never raise a price after an offer that just seems goofy.

Cool story, kcjays!

Glad to hear everything worked out so nicely. Let us know when you complete that 1957 set.

As a seller on eBay, I'll gladly do 10% off of anything if you find a way to contact me outside of eBay.  On any expensive items, I usually try to find the sellers website if they have one or any forums they are on to get a better deal.  I don't understand why anyone would buy from COMC or 4SC on eBay when you'll get more than a 10% discount just going to their site.