Misjudged Ebay Seller

[manylittle]

I have totally misjudged an ebay seller. Many of us are familiar with his name. it has come up in many threads including some that I started. The last one I started was about a German handmade that I felt was polished. It was....terribly....the seller had several others like it and he was saying in his descriptions that they were end of cane. We know him as sdmad33. I had long had him marked on ebay as one of my favorite sellers...not because of marbles, but because of the great bottles that he gets...especially poison bottles. He is also known for his very high starting prices on many of his marbles. He seems to mark them down by about 33% until they sell.

I finally decided, that rather than just talk about him, I should follow the golden rule and do what I would want someone to do for me....I sent him a message and told him...very politely and with concern that he may have been defrauded when he bought the marbles....that his marble and many others that he had listed was terribly polished. I totally expected an angry and defensive response. I was terribly wrong. I got the most polite response ever. He...Shawn.....apologized....said that he had not known that they were polished and said he would change his listings, which he did...even before he contacted me with his message. t

That was the start of a growing friendship. I would give him advice when I would stumble on one of his listings, such as a mib that he called an oxblood that wasn't, etc. Each time he would respond politely, even eagerly for new information....He told me that he had only been selling lots of marbles for about 18 months and that he was basically self taught from books, etc. Many of us started out that same way.

[manylittle]

I finally got up the nerve to ask him why he started out so many of his marbles at such a high price. I have tried to post a link to our emails and even tried to copy and paste what we said to each other. If any of you know how to do that...to get this to accept a copied text from my emails...or to list the link to those emails, it would greatly simplify this explanation...as I want you all to see what a nice guy this guy really is....let me know how... Anyway...he said that it was due to ignorance a fear of a missed opportunity, that he priced high, considered all offers and hoped for the best...He said that he usually did not get his high prices, but sometimes...once in a few months or more, it resulted in him getting a higher than normal sale. He said that he is still learning all of the time and that as his appraising skills get better that his listings will also get better.

The reason I started this thread is that through my own reluctance to contact this person...I, rather than find out what Shawn was all about...judged him and talked about him in not a very kind manner. I did not give this guy the benefit of the doubt and thus, I almost missed finding out about a very nice person. I am telling you all about this and the fact that I was very wrong, in the hopes that we all can learn from it. I don't think that we should ever hesitate to contact a seller if we feel that they have made a mistake in listing one of their marbles....if we are going to bring up that mistake here in the forum. It is just too easy to attach personality traits to that seller that we just assume to be the case due to the evidence of his listing. We might be terribly wrong and terribly mis-judging that person. Many of us don't contact a seller because we have experienced the anger of some of these guys and don't want to run into it again...but we should never anticipate that one guy will act like the last one did.

Anyway....I was very wrong and should never have judged Shawn without contacting him first. I hope that I can learn from my mistakes in this case and that in posting it here, that I can open up some minds and hopefully prevent some of you from making the same mistake that I did.

[manylittle]

http://mesgmy.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewMyMessageDetails&View=MyMessageDetails&CurrentPage=MyeBayMyMessageDetails&SubmitAction.Show=x&emailUniqueId=a17e67a98d3c42718458b8015e95b5e0&sourceImagePreview=ImagePreview&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:US:3478

Hopefully you can now see the link to some of our past communications so that you can see for yourself what a great guy this guy is....and how kindly and eagerly he responded to my information and advice. Above is some of our last communications....I will try and find the first and post it below. There it is. The first link below is to my regular email but I'm not sure if you will be able to access it without my password so will also try and get a link to the same email from ebay messages like I did on top.

http://mail.aol.com/38442-111/aol-6/en-us/suite.aspx

http://mesgmy.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewMyMessageDetails&View=MyMessageDetails&CurrentPage=MyeBayMyMessageDetails&FolderID=0&SourcePage=MyeBayMyMessages&MyMessages2.Filter=&itemid=-1&SortOrder=DESCEND&SessionId=0&MoreViewFilter=NONE&GotoPage=1&MyMessages2.Period=Last122Days&Column=Received&CurrentView=all&SubmitAction.Show=x&readingPaneOpen=false&messageId=m54388187520

[mibcapper]

wrong thread ...

[manylittle]

Are you sure we are talking about the same person? I read oldmarblenut's thread and that was about a different seller altogether. He was talking about chriscollectibles2012 where I am talking about sdmad33.

[mibcapper]

Are you sure we are talking about the same person? I read oldmarblenut's thread and that was about a different seller altogether. He was talking about chriscollectibles2012 where I am talking about sdmad33.

oops ... wrong spot ... sdmad is not who i was referring too ... bill

[manylittle]

That is ok. For a moment there I thought I was going nutzo until I realized what had happened. lol