Opportunities Lost on eBay - Disneyland Panorama Postcards

When dealing in a niche hobby where there aren't that many people collecting on a subject, determining the value of something can be really tricky.  I learned this lesson (again) the other day when this auction:

ended on eBay.  This auction was selling three jumbo cards from the late 1950's...one of which is a rather uncommon J-19 panorama postcard.  I have all the cards in this auction, so I did not bid.  But being the friendly eBayer that I try to be, and since the seller was fairly new to eBay, I emailed and told them that they should expect to get a pretty good result, over $100, on this auction due mostly to the J-19 card.  Well, the auction fell a bit flat and the seller only got about $27 or so.  Why was I so confident?

Not three months ago, I bought the card shown here for $30 on eBay...a total steal, I thought.  And it was.  This is the same card that was sold in the auction I was just talking about.  The day after the end of the auction, the seller emailed me to say that another buyer would pay me up to $120 for the card...would I consider it?  I said no, I wanted to keep the card (these aren't easy to find)

Anyway...at the end of the day, I should have probably thrown in a $50 bid on the lot above.  That card could be sold for significantly more than it just sold for.  It just proves to show, that there are values still to be had on eBay if you are paying attention...and that when only a few people are in a hobby, prices can vary widely.

Until next time....