Crypto-Mugs. Do these legends exist and who has them?

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This must be a new eBay record. I don't even recall the ELVIS TIKI BOB or REN SEVERED HEAD going for this much. Congrats to seller!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255923331812?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=UPvsGK0IT-6&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=Sk1xeKx4RYS&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Just for the record, that Zombie Village mug did not sell for $5000. The high bidder had zero intention of paying for the item. After the auction, the underbidder and seller both agreed to a price on this incredibly rare and beautiful mug that dates somewhere between the late 40s to 1953 or so that was very beneficial to both parties. Both were very happy with the transaction.

[ Edited by TikiSOX on 2023-01-28 16:40:37 ]

[ Edited by TikiSOX on 2023-01-28 17:51:38 ]

This "record price" scam is very prevalent on eBay!

So, if the underbidder and seller came to an arrangement, I'm guessing somewhere between $2,250 and $4,805.

So maybe $3K?

Still a very expensive mug.

Man, I hate this scam. It happened back at the beginning of pandemic with some Ren Clark menus. Dude bid up crazy high prices on everything then ghosted. Fortunately the underbidder who got them for a reasonable price was from Fort Worth and a huge history buff. So they went to a good home.

Wow. Here’s another one.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/225437197273?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=iU8sC4BjQDW&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=Sk1xeKx4RYS&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Have NEVER seen that ashtray

A lot of sellers "test the water" so to speak. Talk the item up in the blurb, put it on for a hugely inflated price and see if anyone is dumb enough, (or fooled by the claims) to actually buy at that price. Sometimes it works and the seller really cleans up! However more often than not, the item fails to attract any interest, it is taken down, only to reappear later at a far lower asking price. Not really a scam, but certainly misrepresentation.

I’d also like to remind everyone of “shill bidding” practices. A seller, or associate of the seller, continuously bids up the price all the way up to the end of the auction hoping other bidders will stay in the game and continue to up the ante…. usually well above the market value of the item. Within a week or two after the auction, the second place bidder will receive a ‘second chance offer’ message from the seller citing that either (a) the auction winner refused to pay or (b) the seller has an identical item which they are willing to let go for the second highest bid. I’ve received many of these offers over the years, some I’ve accepted if the auction item was truly rare , others I’ve attempted to negotiate with the seller offering my highest bid placed preceding the winning bidder’s initial bid.

Yes kohalacharms, ....a very common scam indeed Although anybody who bids anytime in advance is just setting themselves up for this sort of thing. You are only putting the price up for yourself!

So you want something on eBay? DON'T MAKE ANY BIDS OR SHOW ANY INTEREST DURING THE LEAD UP AT ALL! NONE!!! Ascertain just when the auction will close, (yes you might have to get up in the middle of the night) but the time is clearly shown in all ads. Then sit by your computer, enter an amount WELL ON THE GENEROUS SIDE, ...then press the first button, which will bring up a "review offer" panel and a small countdown clock. Just sit, watching the countdown and wait until the very last TEN SECONDS (or even less) before hitting the Place Bid button.

This short period does not give time for any competition to outbid you, and your very generous offer should automatically outbid any hidden pre-made ones. Remember, the way the auction works, you will never pay your full amount. You will get the item for $1 over the previous top bid. I have used this method frequently, and have lost out only once to a ridiculously over the top "hidden" bid.

You guessed it, ....only a few hours later I got a message to say I had a second chance!

[ Edited by TIKIGIKI on 2023-02-26 17:11:13 ]

These scams are why we're probably never going to add sale prices to https://mytiki.life

What a load of rubbish. The person with the highest bid is going to win. They could place their bid the instant the auction goes live and not look at the auction again until it's over. When/what time they place the bid is completely irrelevant.

[ Edited by swizzle on 2023-02-28 05:02:50 ]

It just doesn't work that way swizzle, whether you may think it's a "load of rubbish" or not. I'm guessing that you do not do much business on the 'Bay?

Experience shows that placing your "highest" bid on a highly desirable item the moment the auction goes live is just asking to be outbid. You're assuming no one else will see that and decide to better you. There's probably a week to go before the auction closes. That's plenty of time for others, (including some unscrupulous owners) to outbid you, thus forcing you to go even higher than your first supposedly highest bid. Only lousy poker players give away their hand at the very first deal!

I see so many bidding wars taking place days before the auction closes, and invariably somebody else swoops in at the last second and gets the item, leaving those who were so valiantly trying to outbid each other earlier in the week really only raising the price against each other. And they have literally placed their highest bid there for you to see. Yes, there can be "hidden" bids, but it becomes obvious if that is the case because each time another buyer bids, it then gets automatically outbid immediately. (You can constantly track the bidding by clicking on the bids and it shows you the history and numbers of the individual players) This is the clue to make an even bigger bid in the last ten seconds if you REALLY want the item.

***NOW HERE'S THE IMPORTANT BIT!

It's vital to remember that on eBay, it's NOT the highest amount bid that has to be paid at the close of the auction. (Unlike at an auction house!) It's just one dollar over the previously highest bid. So if an item is standing at say $156 dollars, you can bid $280, or even $300 at the very last moment and you will still get the lot for just $157.00. YOU DO NOT PAY YOUR HUGE BID! That's what those in the know exploit. So many people fail to realise this. [ Edited by TIKIGIKI on 2023-02-28 13:58:59 ]

[ Edited by TIKIGIKI on 2023-02-28 13:59:53 ]

TIKIGIKI... Two things to consider: (1) there is an advantage to placing an initial bid on an item. If the item is rare and desirable, I place a low ball bid on it so that the seller is less tempted to cancel the auction in order to accept an offer to sell the item privately. I've found they're much less likely to cancel an auction once the bids have been begun.... I suspect its a concern with bidders lodging complaints with ebay. (2) No need to be on line to place a last-minute bid on the auction, its an inconvenience and there's always a risk that something could go wrong with your connectivity when you need it the most. I'd suggest utilizing e-snipe, place your max bid to be entered a few seconds before the end of the auction and forego the anxiety and risk of getting caught up in the bidding frenzy. Just my two cents.

And mine too was just "my two cents". I do have quite some experience using eBay, but I'm just documenting what has worked very well for me in the past. (And I do enjoy "the chase"!)

Naturally people are free to bid the traditional way as you would in an auction house where the highest bid wins, but there that same amount has to then be paid, but eBay does NOT work on that system. You will only pay $1 over the last bid, and as mentioned it's a way to exploit it in your favour.

Making initial low bids can test the water and flush out if somebody has put in a hidden bid, but invariably if the item is a desirable one, somebody else will do that for you. In innumerable auctions I have never ever encountered any failure in the computer system that has prevented my last seconds bid being accepted, and I'm working from Australia and more often than not bidding OS.

Of course NO system is infallible, but the way I describe has a much higher success rate than showing all your cards to the competition right at the start. Try it or ignore it....all depends on how much you REALLY want the item up for auction. However if your shown bid gets trumped at the very last second and you lose something you were so sure you were winning, you will now know how it was done.

[ Edited by TIKIGIKI on 2023-02-28 16:29:44 ]

Just because you can be aware of hidden bids that doesn't tell you what the maximum bid is of those hidden bids/bidders.

Let's say an Elvis Presley Blue Hawaii Bob goes up for auction and we use that as an example, as that is something that will sell at a high price. Obviously i have no idea exactly what it will ultimately sell for but if i feel pretty confidant that it will sell for something around what the previous one might have sold for (we'll say $2,000 for arguments sake) then i add another $500 on top of that just to play it safe, BUT, if i really, really want that mug and put in my maximum bid of $10,000 early, even if someone uses an e-sniping tool as kohalacharms mentioned, that person is going to have to have set his maximum bid at more than $10,000 to win.

If i bid early i might be raising the cost of the mug on myself but if i'm willing to pay $10,000 for it then that is the least of my concerns. There could be ten other people all of who were willing to pay somewhere 'around' $2,500 and each one of them is going to drop out when they see that they've been outbid as the price gets progressively higher. Even if bidder #1 (after me) thinks they have it in the can buy bidding AT THE VERY LAST SECOND $1,000 more than what the final bid they can see is, even if that is $4,526, then I'M still going to win the auction, because they didn't come anywhere close to my maximum bid which i placed DAYS before.

[ Edited by swizzle on 2023-02-28 16:38:37 ]

My purpose here was not to say there's a right way or a wrong way for bidding.

I just documented a process that has always worked very successfully for me. End of story.

You are perfectly free to use whatever method you think will be most successful in securing an item.

It's those incendiary shipping prices that have curbed my bidding now anyway.

[ Edited by TIKIGIKI on 2023-03-01 18:26:32 ]

Got this seemingly rare-ish mug today

I came across this menu for the Mai Tai Resort Motel in Osage Beach, MO for sale on eBay a while back, which I haven't seen on any TC forums:

Interestingly, it's illustration for the "Tall Tiki" features a crypto mug...

...that has so far only been associated with Judge's Beyond the Reef, in Brookfield, WI. For example, it is listed in this Crypto Mugs thread in a 2014 post from Tattoo:

Other versions are shown in the Judges' Beyond the Reef thread:

https://tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic_id=38367

The somewhat mysterious mug has been found with markings other than Judge's, so it looks like the Mai Tai Resort could be another source. I am curious if anyone else can confirm the connection.

[ Edited by The Professor on 2023-03-06 13:54:45 ]

Not so much a crypto-mug, but here's a pretty rare variation of a bowl posted earlier

[ Edited by TikiSOX on 2023-04-01 09:33:22 ]

I scored a Tiki-Tiki mug from The Kalua Room in Seattle. It’s a different glaze than others I’ve seen.

Ha these are actually my mugs, believe it or not!

If you place an early bid of 10,000 then you will just have people bidding you up, raising your price because they can which will force you to pay more than you need/want to for that item. If you use a sniping service and place that same bid amount (10,000) in the last 3 seconds, you will no doubt win and nobody will have bid up your amount because it only came into play in the last 3 seconds. If someone else has the same tactic as you and throws a super high bid like that, well thats just funny because Elvis Bob isnt worth 10k of course. At that point you might as well just ask the seller to cancel.

Love this topic, and the dream of uncovering a cryptid/crypto mug at some thrift store! I get 95% of my tiki from thrifting.

Side note, I also use the snipe method on eBay pretty successfully, often bidding in the last 15 seconds - the key for me is to know how high I REALLY want to go and then just stick to it. Don't get caught up in a bidding war, and if I get counter-sniped, well, so be it. There will be another time.

As for bidding early, I've had sellers cancel a low auction I had a bid in on, and refuse to honor a low win... so either way it can fail.

[ Edited by Holofernes on 2024-03-28 07:02:58 ]