Bye Bye Old eBay: A Rambling RantInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

We Loved Ya, Buddy

Back in the old days, when eBay was just a vision of what the Internet could become, there was a nice little place where you could sell a trick or book when you finished with it. Heck, you could even buy a book or trick that someone else had used, turn around and sell it on eBay and for a higher price than what you paid.

Times have changed. eBay?s magic tricks category (technically, “Toys & Hobbies Classic Toys Magic, Magician Supplies”) is now another outlet for stores and mail order vendors to offer their wares. The prices aren?t set up to support bidding and are usually right at ?street price? retail ? not quite the manufacturer?s suggested retail price ? and certainly not wholesale.

If you were to check right now, you?d find 577 effects listing and the overwhelming majority are from established magic mail order houses. There are less than 10 percent of the effects listed with more than one bid (if you look at the auctions ending today).

The bidding is gone but that?s because those who populate the site don?t want bidding. Selling a piece on eBay and looking for bids is risky. Real risky. I sold a Perfect Pen and a Thought Controller (total retail about $100.00) for a combined total of $10.00. But I have also sold effects for slightly more than I paid for them.

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We Loved Ya, Buddy

But if you are a big mail order company that can afford to the listing costs for 70 tricks a week, you get cheap advertising for your mail order site and heck you might even sell a trick. I have nothing against the mail order shops. I think they?re doing a great job keeping magic prices down while encouraging newer magicians to develop newer tricks.

On the negative side, some of them are encouraging or actually selling effects that are clearly stolen ideas or gimmicks from magicians. The reason some of the larger or traditionally more expensive effects are so cheap on both eBay and the mail order sites is because they have been made for nothing overseas or domestically but without the need to factor in the cost of development.

Could you sell an Any Card to Wallet for less than the $75.00 charged by Collector?s Workshop? Sure, the actual materials could be bought for ten bucks but the time and effort that went into developing the trick justifies the price of the trick. The inventor has to recoup the costs of the trial and error to make the marketable effect as well as make a profit to encourage him or her to continue inventing.

So I don?t mean to rant about the number of listings on eBay that are just window dressing or a method to get folks to their site.

I do bemoan the loss of true auctions for magic on eBay. It used to be fun to buy or sell. I do mean to encourage those who would buy from mail order or any magic outlet to avoid complicity in theft. A listing on eBay gives the impression that the seller is just a magician involved in an electronic version of a garage sale.

Selling an effect that may be a knock-off at a garage sale could be excused as an innocent mistake. But using eBay as a method to sell effects that violate the property rights of another magician is not excusable. It is, as my dad used to say, ?badly bad!?