Post #137347 by Humuhumu on Tue, Jan 25, 2005 6:39 PM

I'm sorry you had such a heartbreaking experience. As Hale Tiki says, consider emailing the person who won it. They won it fair & square, of course, but they may be willing to consider parting with it. You never know... perhaps this person has their own history with the Hawaiian Room, you could get another piece to your history puzzle if nothing else.

And of course, you want to always bid as late as you can. This has been hashed & rehashed here before as one of the fundamental flaws of eBay, but in live auctions, especially for hotly desired items, you'll notice the heavy hitters who are actually interested enough in an item to spend a lot of dough never jump in right from the beginning, they wait as long as they can before jumping in. On eBay this works even more to your advantage because of the inherent time limit. Whenever I've bid on an item I simply couldn't stand to lose, I sat there watching it in person (don't trust the auto-snipers), and jumped in with my bid with only a very few seconds to go. That's how eBay works, those days of time leading up to an auction are essentially just days that an ad is running, the real bidding period is in those last few minutes. Again--less than ideal, but that's how eBay is structured. Who knows, you still might have lost. I have before, as when I was bidding on Traderpup's Zombie Village mug.

If nothing else, remember that at the end of the day a mug is still just a mug... you want it for what it represents, and there's value there to be sure, but that value resides in your own warm thoughts of the place, and those are still intact.