Too good to be true? The times it all worked out great.

I'd like to hear some stories or even some bragging on a deals you took a chance on despite them appearing too good to be true. Where you came out on top through either critical thinking or dumb luck.


While hunting for a high capacity micro sd card on ebay I ran in to hundreds of obvious fakes with a few peppered in that look legit. Taking a chance on many and had to have them returned. One day a used listing came up. He actually said he had used the cards on a trip and was now selling. Figured chances are good its real so I bid $25 on a 256gb micro sd. I kept a $95 bid ready to snipe at the last 5 seconds. Only no other bid ever came. It sold for $22 shipped. I figured it must have obvious bootleg indications I am not familiar with. Why else did none of the other bidders try? Guy shipped it and I tested it. Legit card full capacity and fast. $22 for a $150 retail card.
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The infestation of fake cards makes it great for finding those needle in a haystack deals. Used to drive the price of anime boxes way down.


That wasn't very exciting but tell us all some of your incredible finds from too good to be true sources.

Not video game related, but I had a great one from earlier this year. On a whim, I did an eBay search for a very expensive out of print manga volume: Flower of Life vol. 4. This book that rarely even shows up there and regularly goes for over $100 from third-party sellers on Amazon, and I've had to put off reading the whole series because of it (doesn't help that it's also the last volume).

This past spring, I found a lot for ex-library copies of all four volumes for $17.05 shipped, and IIRC, it was Buy it Now! I decided that it was cheap enough to take a chance and went for it. For former library books, they were in pretty good shape-- there was some wear and tear, but they were all complete and readable, with no loose pages, bad spine cracks, or anything like that. Read the series, loved it, glad to have it after so long.

This set off a little OOP manga buying binge on eBay. Wound up with a handful of books that were in worse condition than advertised (avoid the sellers for3sight and thrift.books), a reasonably cheap Saiyuki set which was in mint condition and amazingly well-packed (if you're ever in the market for comics/pop culture stuff, throw all your money at digauctions!), and another rarity, Domu, for a very good price, but not quite as good as for that Flower of Life lot.