How to find good deals on legos on Ebay

[Lego Fox]

Ive seen that many of you find lego sets for good prices on ebay. How do you do that? I cant seem to find a good deal with the sheer amount of lego sets out there

[Thumper]

 

5 minutes ago, Lego Fox said:

Ive seen that many of you find lego sets for good prices on ebay. How do you do that? I cant seem to find a good deal with the sheer amount of lego sets out there

easy... just go back 3 years in time...

sorry, just had to say it!

[gregpj]

47 minutes ago, Lego Fox said:

Ive seen that many of you find lego sets for good prices on ebay. How do you do that? I cant seem to find a good deal with the sheer amount of lego sets out there

The reality is that a) some people spend far too much time searching on eBay and b ) others exaggerate how good the deals are... but general hints are:

- look for common spelling errors (millenium vs millennium)
- mis-categorized items
- learn to use the advanced search features to group words and exclude words
- and most of all, don't trust eBay's search feature since it uses a highly complex and unpublished sorting algorithm .. there are services out there that will search eBay's listings for you based on criteria you set and they'll do the search all day long (sometimes up to every 30 seconds) looking for matches.

People don't like to give too many hints about how they go about searching for the deals... using an automated service or writing their own scripts to monitor eBay and other retailer websites (or paying someone to write them) is a lot more popular than people think.
 

[exciter1]

It depends on what you define as "good deal".  Sometimes I like to by exclusives on EBay if I can get them below MSRP.  That's a good deal to me.  I do stumble upon decent deals from time-to-time, but I don't have my business plan wrapped around it.

[Sandwraith]

I've never found a  "buy it now" good deal, but i have won a couple items at great prices with auction listings. Sometimes auction listings (either due to bad ending time, bad time to sell, or poor item exposure) can go for a fair bit less than market value.

I see this fairly often, but don't always bid on everything. Just the other day a 10188 auction ended with no bids at $525CAD (seller put the starting bid at $525). Given that the cheapest you can get this (online from retailers) in Canada is from TRU at $600 + tax, this seems like a pretty good deal, but no biters.

[Deadfraggle]

I don't buy a ton of sets for resale investment purposes from Ebay, but probably buy 5-10 sets per month on Ebay for my personal collection. I often like to pick-up recently retired, new in open box exclusives, used sets this way. I've scored some decent deals. Also, if you can get some rarely discounted exclusives for a few dollars off from sellers like NIKO with free shipping and no tax, + 4x-5x  Ebay bucks, that's a win in my opinion.

[BrickLegacy]

14 minutes ago, Deadfraggle said:

I don't buy a ton of sets for resale investment purposes from Ebay, but probably buy 5-10 sets per month on Ebay for my personal collection. I often like to pick-up recently retired, new in open box exclusives, used sets this way. I've scored some decent deals. Also, if you can get some rarely discounted exclusives for a few dollars off from sellers like NIKO with free shipping and no tax, + 4x-5x  Ebay bucks, that's a win in my opinion.

Throw in a discounted ebay gift card and the deal is even sweeter!

[asharerin]

I use this sniping software for alot more than just lego on ebay. Works flawlessly and the price is right:

http://www.gixen.com/