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I found a 5D Mark II for a reasonable price on Ebay and pounced when the seller offered to allow me to pick it up sameday not far from where I worked.  I met him at a gas station and received the camera for six hundred dollars cheaper than the equivalent new in box but with the caveat of no accessories.  How much could replacing the accessories possibly cost? Well, 5 D Mark II batteries are apparently fashioned from the tears of the pope and cost $120 for battery plus charger.  The neck strap is made from the breath of fish, the roots of mountain, and the noise of cat chiming in at $30.  Finally, Compact Flash cards are forged by union dwarves that fashion them with potent runes of storage costing about $130 for 16 GB storage.  Oh, also, the camera’s from Australia so the normal two-year limited warranty and 100k shutter actuation warranty is also void unless I want to remail it from Sydney.  I determined the value of this by checking what a homeowner’s policy rider would cost to cover the same thing.

So how much did I save?  $12!  This final dose of savings was removed by the gas spent driving to the location and the extra money I spent on getting lunch out that day.  Another amazing move like this and I’ll lose a corner from my Personal Management merit badge card.

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If you don’t look at the comments section, you may have missed this:

Um, hi. This is Drew VandenDries, ex-owner of the ipod you purchased off of ebay. I am not in any way interested in getting the ipod back or anything, but I would like to know the person that you purchased it from off of ebay if you are willing to share the information. My email addresss should be attached to this profile, and I would like to start a dialogue if possible. Thank you, Drew

Drew,  I’ve looked through ebay and it’s only letting me look back 60 days. I’m going to look through and see what I can find and contact eBay should I need to.  I’d love to hear the story of how you found me and would very much like that response as a comment.

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Having purchased a large item on eBay I was hoping to pay for it via credit card but not Paypal so I could get airline miles through American Express, so I Buy It Nowed the thing and clicked “credit card” on check-out.  I shortly got a note from the seller telling me to pay via credit card and I replied that I was waiting so he sent me an invoice.  The invoice of course, simply contained the selling information.  I replied that it didn’t contain the correct information, and in response got another invoice.  I again asked how I could pay and sent, another invoice.  All said and done I’ve received 5 invoices for the same item all containing the same information and am weighing just taking a point of negative feedback against trusting this man with my credit card number.