Northwest Collector

My Love-Hate Relationship with eBay

by

(This post is an updated version of one I originally wrote in 2011 for AmeriCollector, the previous incarnation of Northwest Collector, titled “eBay: The Thin Line Between Love and Hate.” It contained two lists: “Seven Things I LOVE About eBay” and “Seven Things I HATE About eBay.” Many of my complaints back then are no longer valid today, like “The word count for feedback is too low” and “It’s a pain in the butt to sift through 16 pages of feedback to find the negatives and neutrals.” I’m now up to eight things I love about eBay and down to five things I hate about it. It reminds me of advice columnist Ann Landers’s advice to women complaining about their mates: “Are you better off with him or without him?” With that in mind, I regard eBay like a partner who is chronically late or forgets to fill your car’s gas tank until the fuel gauge is at “E”: I’m irritated at times but not enough to leave.)

I’ve been buying on eBay since 2001 and selling there since roughly 2011. Since I hadn’t sold much at that point, my likes and dislikes were written from the perspective of a buyer only. In some ways it’s changed, for better or for worse, as anyone whose been bidding or buying on eBay that long can tell you. No surprise there.

Anyway, here are . . .

Eight Things I LOVE About eBay

1. It’s the world’s largest flea market. Virtually EVERYTHING shows up there sooner or later. If you’re patient and experiment with key words, you can find some great stuff at incredible prices just because other eBayers miss them.

2. Entrepreneurs of all types can sell online and even make a living without having websites of their own. eBay is the embodiment of cyber-capitalism. I predict that e-commerce will achieve in this century what America and Pamela Anderson couldn’t in the last: the destruction of communism, once and for all.

3. It’s a great place to meet people with the same interests. I’ve met a number of people—both buyers and sellers—on eBay who are experts in their collecting areas. They’ve been great sources of information, and I’ve reciprocated by keeping their wanted items in mind and sending them links whenever I come across something of possible interest. Camaraderie

4. The countdown feature is a big improvement. eBay used to discourage sniping, which was silly. Now they facilitate it: You no longer have to refresh the page to time your bid.

5. The rating system gives a decent idea of the kind of seller you’re dealing with. I’ve run into a few idiots and several cheapskates—people who charged for Priority Mail shipping, then sent the item by media mail—but after well over 1,000 purchases I’ve never really been ripped off by anyone. (Paying with PayPal helps.)

6. The “Watch This Item” feature is a big help. Ditto for “Buy It Now or Best Offer”—although you could always make an offer just by messaging the seller. And now, if you “watch” an item—or even just view it—a dealer may offer you a discount, and you can make a counteroffer. Unless I’m afraid that someone else will snap an item up, I always “watch” it first and wait to see if the seller voluntarily lowers the price.

7. You can collect without leaving the house. Sure, that can be bad for old-school collectibles dealers who like in-person transactions, but let’s be honest: More often than not, those same dealers buy and sell on eBay themselves—and even buy items on eBay and relist them there. (Possibly, Covid has also affected buying habits, but it should no longer do so.) eBay is really no different from any other auctioneer that allows absentee bidding; they just do it online, on a much larger scale.

8. eBay has increased the number of characters for feedback. It used to be 80—not nearly enough to blast a bad seller. Now it’s 500 characters. Have at it!

Five Things I HATE About eBay

1. eBay takes a big bite in seller’s fees. According to AI Overview, this is a top buyer complaint. eBay’s final value fees for most items in 2011 (again, according to AI Overview) were about 10 percent plus a 2.9 percent PayPal processing fee and another $0.30 per transaction, so 12.9 percent and change. When I sold a photo for $250 last month, I had to pay a transaction fee of $38.14, or 15.3 percent—not huge increase in 15 years, but enough to make me get serious about selling through Northwest Collector instead. (Check us out in a month or so.)

2. eBay lets sellers cancel auctions after you’ve bid—and doesn’t let you leave bad feedback. I complained about this in my August 1 post. I get it that people make mistakes. But wasting people’s time because you don’t bother to proofread your own listing, then cancel the listing the day before the auction is due to end, really sucks—especially when it seemed clear that the seller expected wild bidding and didn’t get it. I had bid $9.99 and may have won it for that. The seller said he intended to make the starting bid $99.99. The upshot: The item is still listed—at $49.99 or best offer, with two watchers. (I’m not one of them.) Good luck, jerkoff.

3. The “Saved Feed” option means you have to wade through loads of garbage-filled emails every day. I don’t know whether it’s because sellers use a lot of irrelevant key words (which used to be against eBay rules) or if it’s eBay’s algorithm, but it’s irritating. I get plenty of junk from USPS already; I don’t need it from eBay.

4. I attempted to snipe an item and eBay did not accept my bid. It was about six seconds before the auction ended. I was plenty pissed off when it happened: It was something I really wanted and I bid high on it (over $1,200); it sold for, like, $150. Fortunately, it went to an eBay friend (see #3 under “Eight Things I LOVE About eBay”), so I don’t feel too bad about it, but I still don’t know what the problem was. It never happened to me before.

5. The system of encrypting bidders’ names sucks. I griped about this in 2011. Under the old system, when people’s eBay “handles” were shown, along with the number of their transactions, I learned the bidding habits of folks I regularly bid against: Some would bid high; some wouldn’t. Some would bid in huge chunks; others would bid in little increments, like old biddies (no pun intended) at a high-stakes Vegas Pai Gow table. Some were even professional collectibles dealers who wouldn’t bid beyond a certain point if they couldn’t resell the item at a reasonable profit. This was valuable knowledge that enabled me to bid effectively. Nowadays it’s anonymous, with names like “t***1,” although you can still see how many eBay transactions they’ve made. eBay claims this is to protect bidders’ privacy, but it’s really because you could message them directly, which eBay of course wanted to stop. And now sellers can mask even coded bidders’ names and the numbers of their transactions. Not nearly as much fun as bidding against missfit and whitezombie . . .

‘Dealer’s Special Pick’: Gene Baade, Books on the West

by

I’ve been planning to feature Gene Baade for a long time—not only because his business, Books on the West (www.booksonthewest.com), specializes in nonfiction books on the American and Canadian West (subjects I’m especially interested in, as regular readers of this blog may have gathered) but also because he’s located here in the Pacific Northwest, in Renton, Washington.

Gene has also established a niche in one of his favorite interests, Sasquatch, aka Bigfoot, and has published a critical bibliography on that subject, along with a number of articles. However, his inventory includes theology, modern first editions, and books in other fields.

The complete set of The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, published by the University of Nebraska Press from 1983 to 2001, includes the atlas, seen below.

Originally from rural Garfield County in northern Oklahoma—he grew up six miles from the Old Chisholm Trail!—Gene graduated from OSU and taught U.S. history at a high school in Oklahoma City but felt the calling to enter the ministry. He earned theological degrees from Concordia Theological Seminary in Illinois and Valparaiso University in Indiana, including a yearlong pastoral internship at the University of British Columbia’s Lutheran Campus Centre. (He was ordained in 1971.) During that time, and newly married, Gene and his wife, Joyce, traveled to the Canadian Rockies three times, sparking his deep interest in western Canadian history.

After Gene’s ordination, the Baades started a family in the Northwoods city of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where Gene ministered to two congregations (in the city and the country) over fifteen years, then moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1986 when he was called to serve a congregation there. It was in Portland that he got started in the rare book business.

“Bookselling has always taken a back seat to the responsibilities of the ministry.” —Gene Baade

“I began to buy books at Powell’s, the Great Northwest Bookstore, and Preston McMann’s Old Oregon Bookstore,” Gene told me. “While visiting another shop, I purchased for a measly $15 a rare book on the James brothers outlaws published in Swedish. After that, a major outlaw collector in Texas freely offered me a huge mailing list of collectors and libraries to help me get started selling books more extensively.” (Gene gave the collector the James book as a token of his gratitude.) In 1988 he started mailing out simple catalogues printed at Costco and collated by his family. Nowadays he produces digital catalogues of Old West books two or three times a year, limited to about fifty titles each. 

When I asked Gene what he’s interested in purchasing, he replied, “I’m doing only a small amount of buying at this stage of my life, but I cannot resist making purchases either for inventory or my personal library”—a familiar defense by those of us of a certain age. “I’m drawn to hard-to-find Old West books and ephemera, scarce Bigfoot books, Western Canadiana—specifically the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the Canadian Rockies—and British Columbia,” he noted, adding, “Also, unusual material on my home state of Oklahoma.”

Gene is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, the Book Club of Washington, the Wild West Historical Association, and the Oklahoma Historical Society.

He does not exhibit at book fairs because he still leads worship every Sunday at a small Lutheran congregation on Mercer Island, Washington. “Bookselling has always taken a back seat to the responsibilities of the holy ministry,” he said. 

When I asked Gene about a special item he has on offer, he suggested the following set, which will no doubt be of interest to Lewis and Clark enthusiasts:

Lewis, Meriwether, and Clark, William. The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Ed. Gary Moulton. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001. First editions. Thirteen volumes, volume 1 being the folio atlas published without a dust jacket. Eleven of the other twelve volumes in large octavo, volume 13 being the set Index. Volume 12 is the herbarium volume with black-and-white reproductions of the “more than 200 pressed and dried plant specimens gathered by” the expedition (actually 239). This volume larger than the others. Aside from the atlas, the other twelve volumes are fine in fine dust jackets. The atlas is very good, with minimal fading and also minimal fading to the spine, which is often the victim of sunshine. The atlas is a presentation copy inscribed by Moulton to Samuel Davis III. This edition is critically edited by Moulton and the press. Other than the original two-volume 1814 edition of the journals, this is the quintessential edition and is now scarce in fine condition first editions. $1,500.

eBay should tighten its auction cancellation policy for sellers

by

Today I am totally pissed off: I made the opening bid of $9.99 on an item six days ago. The auction was due to end tomorrow. I was the only watcher.

Then, this morning, the seller canceled the auction, citing an error in the listing. When I messaged him through eBay, he replied: I meant to start it off at $99.99 and did not realize my mistake until just now. I paid way more than the $9.99 I had accidently [sic] started it at.

I messaged him back: You waited until the day before the auction ended to do that?

His reply: Quote “did not realize my mistake until just now.”

Me: You got only one bid (me) and one watcher (me), and you think you’ll get $99 for it? Good luck. And you’re totally unapologetic. Great eBayer.

Him: I will bet anything that if you had listed either of your two item [sic] for $2 instead of $200 or whatever as buy it nows, and someone had won it for $2.00, you would have cancelled the auction. And yes I do. Everyone is not always on at the same time.

Me: If you had canceled the item 5 days ago and apologized, I would have understood. But every seller checks the bidding on his items. And they start low to attract more bids with “no reserve” [per the listing]. More likely you expected more people to bid and weren’t happy with it, so you weren’t taking chances. And I wouldn’t have made the error of listing a $200 for $2. That would be careless and unprofessional. Like listing a $99 item for $9.99 and then canceling the day before the auction was due to end.

Him: ok 1572 feedback [mine] compared to 21988 [his]. You win and I have over 900 items listed and sorry that I just noticed one not listed correctly. You have had your say. Are you hoping I will say, here you can have it for $9.99? Too bad!

(Note: All of his other 900+ listings are “Buy it now or best offer.”)

Me: No, I don’t expect to get it for $9.99, and I wouldn’t want it at this point anyway—and I couldn’t care less about your feedback. You could have been more professional about canceling the listing.

Him: yes it gives you so may [sic] options….nope

Me: I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. And the fact that all your other listings are “buy it now or best offer” also suggests you expected a lot of bidding on this item. Or did you “mistakenly” list it as an auction in addition to the $9.99 starting bid? You’ve wasted enough of my time. Have a great day!

I would have said a lot more, but eBay has a rule about abusive language.

When I tried to complain to eBay, their irritating chatbot informed me: The seller ending the auction early is generally discouraged but can happen. If the seller ended the auction due to an error in the starting price, this is within their discretion.

Which begs the question, as I suggested above: What’s to stop a seller from ending an auction at the last minute just because he feels the bidding is not getting as high as he hoped?

This actually reminds me of a painting that some brain-dead seller in New Zealand listed with a $99 starting bid many years ago. I asked him if he would consider selling it for $150 on “Buy it now.” He said, Oh, no, it’s worth much more than that. So I bid and, predictably, won the painting for $99. Then . . . no reply from the seller. No request for payment. Nothing about shipping. Dead silence, despite multiple polite emails from me asking how much to pay. Needless to say, I never got the painting.

It was the first of only two scathing feedbacks I’ve ever left on eBay.

The second time was when I purchased a historical letter from some nut in Germany. That time I did pay, then waited to receive the letter. It never arrived. I got eBay involved and PayPal refunded my money. When I sent a nasty message to the seller about listing an item, accepting payment, and then not sending the goods, he replied, “Why are you angry? You got your money back and I got to keep my letter!” Certifiable loon.

What’s to stop a seller from ending an auction at the last minute just because he feels the bidding is not getting as high as he hoped?

Long story short, eBay really needs to protect bidders/buyers more:

(1) Sellers should have a deadline—like, five days before an auction is due to end—after which they can’t cancel the auction if someone has already left a bid. You can’t invite bidders to bid in your auction and then end it because the bidding isn’t as crazy as you hoped. Professional (by which I mean ethical) auction houses don’t do that, nor should eBay. And it does waste buyers’ time to bid and plan to up their bids—only to learn that the seller has weaseled out.

(2) Given that, under current eBay rules, sellers can cancel an auction after someone has already bid, ostensibly due to an error in the starting price, they should be penalized for that. It’s their responsibility to proofread their own listings. You don’t get a pass for being lazy or careless.

(3) If a seller does cancel an auction after someone has bid, the bidder should be able to leave negative feedback. The fact that bidders have no recourse when a seller is careless or acts in bad faith is really enraging. eBay should do more to ensure the integrity of its auctions, and that means establishing rules that allow mistakes to be corrected within a reasonable amount of time but not allow a loophole for sellers to game the system. Every auction without a reserve is effectively a gamble: You may have a treasure that gets a lot of high bids, or you may get one bid. If a seller doesn’t want to run that risk, there’s “Buy it now or make an offer.” That’s what it’s for: a straight purchase.

About 15 years ago I wrote a story about seven things I love about eBay and seven things I hate about it. I think it’s time to revisit that.

‘Dealer’s Special Pick’: Kol Shaver, Zephyr Used and Rare Books

by

Welcome to the first of a new feature here on Northwest Collector: Dealer’s Special Pick, in which an interesting item of my choosing in a collectibles dealer’s inventory is showcased!

Our first dealer is Kol Shaver of Zephyr Used and Rare Books (http://www.zephyrusedandrarebooks.com), located in Vancouver, Washington, here in the Pacific Northwest. Kol got into the rare book business in 1987 while at UCLA, where he was in the PhD program in medieval history with an emphasis in the history of science. He got a job at Rootenberg Rare Books & Manuscripts (https://www.rootenbergbooks.com/), specializing in the sciences and medicine. He worked for Rootenberg until 1994, then started his own business.

He issues ten to twelve catalogs a year, exhibits in six or seven shows annually, and is a member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (https://www.abaa.org/).

I asked Kol what he specializes in; he answered, “I’m definitely a polymath, as anyone looking at my catalogs can see. I tend to focus on pre–World War II for the most part, with a heavy emphasis on nineteenth- and twentieth-century illustrated books, technology, trade catalogs, sample catalogs, photographs, photography, Western Americana, Pacific Northwest history, world’s fairs, children’s books, mysteries and science fiction in dust jackets, and archives as well.”

I also asked Kol what kind of material he’s looking to purchase. He said, “I usually send people my catalogues and say that if they have items in those veins, then I’m interested. Often, though, I just flat-out need to see them. A key issue for me is condition. I often have people looking to sell me material and state that ‘it’s pretty good for its age.’ I always reply, ‘I’m looking for material that’s as close to what it would look like if you went into the store in 1880 to buy it.’ It should be clean and crisp, as projects are always a hassle to have repaired.”

Looking through Kol’s really excellent December 2025 catalog (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YSzSro5JZWE4NWP3CDd24yQ7oh10iLBW/view), I was especially attracted to a portfolio of British ferns, which reminded me of other British trends of centuries past, like having a resident hermit on your estate, or creating “phantom bouquets” of skeletonized flowers. Here’s the description of the item, which is still available as of this writing:

63673 [BOTANY — CHROMOLITHOGRAPHS]. HEATH, Francis George. The fern portfolio: all the species of British ferns are included in this volume. . . . London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, [Emrik & Binger, Chromolithographers, 15, Holborn Viaduct], 1885. Folio. 12 x 15.5 in. [38 pp (unpaginated).] With 15 chromolithograph colour plates, each with facing text leaf. Olive-green pictorial publisher’s cloth, gilt decorative lettering front cover, British ferns depicted in green & black, decorative endpapers (minor edgewear, minor bumping to corners, head & foot of spine, slight occasional foxing), still a VG– bright copy. $750.00

First edition of this wonderful production by the noted British botanist, designed to depict all British fern varieties in nearly life-size formats through the chromolithography of Emrik & Binger. This was designed to serve as a key visual reference for the legions of specimen and herbarium collectors during the Victorian fern rage, or Pteridomania, where enthusiastic and often zealous collectors during the last half of the 19th Century filled ferneries, created fern cabinets, and herbariums. Ferns varieties illustrated within encompass Royal Fern, Broad Buckler Fern, Hartstongue, Mountain Buckler Fern, Holy Fern, Brittle Bladder Fern, and many others.

Heath (1843–1913) was a noted British botanist, civil servant, editor of Gilpin’s Forest Scenery, and a pioneering force in the Open space and Green Belt movements across Victorian England. Emrik & Binger produced chromolithographs & lithographs for very few British & European illustrated works, and are not included in Twyman’s A History of Chromolithography.

All images courtesy of Kol Shaver, Zephyr Used and Rare Books.

Will you be in the San Francisco area between February 27 and March 1? Visit the 57th California International Antiquarian Book Fair. See https://www.abaa.org/events/57th-california-international-antiquarian-book-fair for details!

Butch Cassidy wanted flyer: The upshot

by

In case you missed it, the 1901 Pinkerton wanted flyer for Butch Cassidy and fellow gang members that Freeman’s auctioned off on January 29 realized $12,800 including the buyer’s premium. The estimate was $8,000 to $12,000, so it didn’t do badly at all, although I expected it to go for more, based on earlier auction results. The original listing can be viewed at https://freemansauction.com/auctions/6465-printed-and-manuscript-americana/lot/152.

Meanwhile, look forward to a couple of new features on this page: “What the Experts Collect” and “Dealer’s Special Pick,” in which a dealer will be invited to talk about an exceptional item he or she has on offer.

We’re also interested in what subjects you’d like to see featured and any questions you’d like to have answered.

And, as always, we’re grateful for feedback here at NorthwestCollector.com. Let us know what you think!

Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy. Carte de visite photograph taken in 1893 at the Wyoming State Penitentiary, Laramie, Wyoming, and mounted on a card from Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency with information about Parker, giving his aliases as George Cassady and “Butch” Cassady. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, lot 15027, no. 28 [P&P].

Where have you gone, Butch Cassidy?

by

Just when I thought I’d said pretty much all I had to say (for now, anyway) about wanted posters, I’m eager to report that Freeman’s in Philadelphia (FreemansAuction.com), in their Printed and Manuscript Americana auction on January 29, will be auctioning a rare Pinkerton flyer for Butch Cassidy, Harry Longbaugh (aka the Sundance Kid), and other members of the so-called Hole-in-the-Wall Gang (alternatively the Wild Bunch—not to be confused with the Sam Peckinpah film), issued after the robbery of Great Northern Railway Express train no. 3 near Wagner, Montana, on July 3, 1901, in which $40,000 (almost $1.25 million today) was taken. The estimated hammer price for the flyer is $8,000 to $12,000.

From the Freeman’s Printed and Manuscript America auction on January 29 at 10 a.m. EST: [Wild West] Cassidy, Butch, and the Sundance Kid. Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency Wanted Poster for the Wild Bunch. Courtesy of Freeman’s, 2026. 

I find this exciting on so many levels . . .

For one thing, it’s not just one of the rare Pinkerton flyers for Butch and Sundance (who is not pictured); it’s an early example I’ve never seen before—circulated a good three years before the better-known one of November 14, 1904, issued after the gang knocked over the First National Bank of Winnemucca, in Winnemucca, Nevada.

I asked the great Marshall Trimball, former columnist for True West and my go-to authority for all things Old West, if he knew of this particular flyer; he told me he’d seen it in an old book some years ago—further evidence of the flyer’s rarity, because if Marshall Trimble has seen it only once, then there have gotta be precious few of them in existence.

For another thing, as readers of this blog already know, a 1901 wanted flyer with printed photos rather than affixed photos is really early.

As for the auction estimate: it beats the hell out of me. All I know is it’s out of my league. That said, a somewhat damaged example of this flyer came up in a Heritage auction in 2011 and sold for $14,340 with the buyer’s premium—and Heritage notes someone offered $19,000 for it in 2014. So Freeman’s estimate may be on the low side. (Incidentally, I note that an example of the more often encountered but still extremely rare 1904 flyer with the Sundance Kid’s photo sold in a Morphy auction on June 24, 2023, for $19,965, including the buyer’s premium.)

For those who would like a really interesting description of the train robbery that prompted the issuance of the 1901 flyer—which offers a $6,500 reward, incidentally—have a look at the listing for the auction lot at https://freemansauction.com/auctions/6465-printed-and-manuscript-americana/lot/152. The Freeman’s folks note that, “while this circular lists Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as having participated in the July 3rd crime, there is debate as to whether one or both of them actually took part in the heist. Some accounts indicate that at the time of the crime they were in Argentina, having fled there earlier that year, while other accounts record them arriving there the following year, in 1902. Furthermore, the exact number of perpetrators or members who participated is unclear, and while this poster lists Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, Kid Curry, and Deaf Charley as the culprits, others such as Bill ‘News’ Carter and Ben Kilpatrick could also have participated.”

That’s one of the big things about the Butch Cassidy legend: where he was and when—and even if he was actually killed in the remote settlement of San Vicente, Bolivia (population 50 in 2001), on November 7, 1908, at age forty-two. Family members insist he survived the shootout and turned up in his hometown of Circleville, Utah, in the 1920s, but that’s another story.

What does seem to be widely accepted: Butch never killed anyone himself and was as smart, good-hearted, personable, and charismatic as the character portrayed by Paul Newman in one of the iconic “rebel” films of the 1960s.

Anyway, look for an update with the auction result on NorthwestCollector.com!

The 1969 film that made Butch and Sundance household names, directed by George Roy Hill, from a screenplay by William Goldman.