The elusive few

So I've been an active eBayer for well over a month now. I have made a total of 12 purchases totaling less than $200. I got a gold star for achieving a positive feedback score of 10. I successfully completed my collection of Care Bear books (to be fair, I only picked up one on eBay. I found the others at a used bookstore in the area). I finished out my collection of Oliver & Company finger puppets from McDonalds. I have secured four Muppet figurines, one Care Bears glass, on Grinch snowglobe, one Grinch ornament, one Cat in the Hat ornament, and three Dr. Seuss figurines.

But alas, there are a handful of things that are seemingly out of my reach. The most glaring example is Of Muppets and Men, the definitive book on The Muppet Show. This is probably the best book about the Muppets out there. It was published in 1981, and has been out of print for a long time, so it's difficult to find. More than anything else in the world, I want this book. Actually, I have a copy at home right now, but it belongs to the library and they want it back next week. The book has shown up in a few auctions here and there, and I've been after it ever since I joined eBay. So far I have been outbid on it in three different auctions. The most disturbing auction was one from almost two weeks ago, when I was the highest bidder but the seller had a reserve price that I didn't meet. On that one, the seller made a second-chance offer to me the next week, which basically meant that I could buy the item at the price I had bid. I was quite excited and very much looking forward to getting it, but I made one fatal mistake. The offer was supposedly good until Sunday night around midnight. I got the offer Friday morning, but we had a busy weekend going and I didn't really have time to sit down and do the Paypal transaction until Saturday night. When I went to make the purchase, I discovered that the seller had ended the auction early. If only I had made time to get it on Friday! It made me very upset. Especially now that I lost an auction earlier today where the item went for $10 more than I would have paid for it and the one I almost had was in better condition. It is quite frustrating when there's something you want but can't have.

Then there's the Friend Bear glass from Pizza Hut. I have Good Luck bear (it was the first item I bought on eBay!), but lately the Friend Bear glass auctions have been few and far between. With the demand for them pretty high, I haven't had a fighting chance. There's an auction ending tonight, so we'll see if I can have any luck with this one. I'm not counting on it.

And finally, there are my beloved Dr. Seuss figurines. In 2000 and 2001, Hallmark released the Dr. Seuss Collection, an assortment of figurines based on Seuss characters. I loved them at the time, but only got a few of them before I found out they were being discontinued. That's when they went on sale for 50% off and I had to make a mad dash to every Hallmark in the Triangle trying to find the things before they were gone. I was able to get all of them except five. Ebay helped me get three more, but two are proving elusive. They don't show up on eBay very often, and when they do there's apparently a pretty high demand for them. I lost an auction for the Great Birthday Bird a few weeks ago, and I haven't had a chance to bid on Hop on Pop (I almost did once, but I felt bad for the current high bidder - whom I had outbid on two occasions for other Dr. Seuss figurines. I figured he deserved to win something). Of course, eBay's probably not the place to try to be nice to people, and now I may never see the beloved figurine.

I have favorite searches set up for all of these, so eBay alerts me every time one of the items comes up in an auction. In the meantime, I have to wait. And hope that somewhere out there is a Muppet book, a Friend Bear Glass, a Great Birthday Bird figurine and a Hop on Pop figurine just for me.