most of you know it: surfin‘ through online-auctions etc. for the unit you only know you can‘t ive without when you see it. off course you also see hundrets and hundrets of fooked, terribly worn blah-units - but if you believe those ones who offer them so many of them have something in common: they are rare, super-rare, some even mega-rare - and so often they come with uncountable attention-marks. that pisses me off. nobody offers a unit as „common rubbish“ or „cheap junk“....
Or you look at the Japanese Sites and they are all listed as "junk." Is all I know is that all of mine are super-rare and if they ever get sold, those are the first word's in the description.
Agreed. I don't know why some sellers feel the need to include the word "Rare" in every other title. Does anyone ever use it as a search term ? Two ways to determine if something on eBay is really rare. Is anyone else on eBay selling one? Turn on completed listings and see if any have been sold during the last few months Recently I have been looking for, and buying Casio "Film" watches. The latest came from Israel as it was the first of that model I had seen for months. Does that make it rare ? P.s On the toy train front I once did a listing "Tinplate equivalent of Barry Scrapyard" (Google that name to find out about it) All items rusty, broken, or incomplete.
it's not the definition of the word "rare" which is a pain in the bud, it's the permanent use of it. as for the definition, for me super-mass-produced "Cloneman" Goldstar TSM-22 is far rarer as a "Walkman" Sony TPS-L2 or a Goldstar Jockey 7 rarer than the same unit, just "Sony Walkman" labelled WM-7, but almost the whole of the f***king TPS-L2-load on Ebay is "rare" or "super-rare" - but there are tons available (...i don't have even one left; as price went incredably high i sold the lot and they weren't "super-rare" in my boxes). on the other side, luckily the multiple use of attention-marks uncovers the seller as a "semi-pro-seller", or at least as somebody who's intention is, to make as many bucks as possible (...and maybe in that sense not to be too honest with the item-discription ?)...
In the beginning of ebay, a lot of this stuff was pretty rare, a least in the little part of the world people lived in. Now that the market is world-wide, rare doesn't happen as often. I'm still glad to see all of these wonderful units but I think even the action sites take little notice of the description.
I'd never use the word 'Rare' as a search term on eBay, you'd have to syphon through every listing on there! What pisses me off more about eBay is the postage fees. Some are more than what you are looking to buy, I know eBay takes a cut and you are trying to make money on something, but there is fair and just plain greedy. Puts me off buying some items, and I realised a long time ago that if you wait long enough, something will turn up and be the price and condition you are happy with.
Throwing my post of sympathy into this thread as I share your thoughts on this topic. It's like with "special offer discounts" in super markets and discounters. Just slap a big fat attention-catching -% sign on something and most people will actually look at it. Make plenty of those and they might fall into a frenzy - overdo it and people start ignoring it. The use of "rare" on eBay is an equivalent of those signs. People who don't know much about a topic read "rare" and go "Oh, damn! I must have this! If it's rare, the price must be fair/justified!" without putting some more rational thinking into it. This will probably work especially well on auction sites because people are very aware of other bidders and this fuels the desire for many to get it anyway. It's a means of speaking to our primal instincts and those uploaders have gone overboard with it to stick out from the mass. Well, too bad the majority of the mass does this... Congratulations on looking not-so-serious that way. Those auctions and users that don't use rare on (fairly) common items make a far better impression. Long story short: Clickbait. That's what it is. You can even compare it to clickbait YouTube videos (including their thumbnails). I assume we'll most likely have either more superlatives of rare 10 years from now or it will be replaced or gone entirely because it will stop working. Or eBay actually introduces a filter for this word and only allows it for verified cases or when you're the first in X months to upload said item. But considering auction sites in general are often fairly chaotic, I doubt this will happen (at least anytime soon). What irks me more than the "rare"-issue is how auction descriptions itself tend to be uninformative. If I buy a used item, I want the seller to at least check it out roughly, give some details on usage (or at least say what's unknown), list which items come with it if there are any additional ones that might be necessary and list it in the proper category. I get the feeling this practice is getting (pardon the word) rare too. Also I get that not everyone does have a proper camera, but at least some proper photos with good lighting would be nice... Even a phone camera can do if you light it properly and show various angles and distances. And I'm not even going to start with marketing-images of products being put as the only image of an auction or as the first of all. Show your item as it is and then you can show a comparison photo. Some of these are (or can) be spam if they use official photographs of products, so I'm usually not paying these a second thought/look, too suspicious - even though I will acknowledge some might be merely lazy or didn't have a camera for whatever reason at the time. Still: Family and friends might lend one so that's probably a poor excuse too.
I’ve sold a fair few boxes on eBay over the years and never used the term ‘rare’ as it bugs me too and has become meaningless
Of course it's not limited to electronics. I also play with old sewing machines. The "R" word shows up often there too. But even more aggravating is the phrase "Industrial Strength" applied to everything including certain home machines that are known wimps, some driven by motors that draw less than half an amp. To illustrate the difference, an industrial machine is built to stand up to all day hard use while driven by a half hp continuous duty clutch motor or, more recently, a servo motor with huge output for it's size and weight. Many years ago, a young guy working for one of the outdoor clothing companies summed it up pretty well. "Marketing and BS are like peanutbutter and jelly." Don
