I’ve been on an eBay binge lately. It all started because I wanted to pick up some cheap MF prime lenses, then I remembered that I had several CDs on my list which I wanted to buy, but were hard to find (not because they were rare or OOP, but more so because no one wanted them!). I easily won auctions for those, but what pisses me off about buying CDs on eBay is that you typically have to pay $5-6 shipping. Then, for some reason during the Auto Show, I shorted out (or otherwise broke) my second battery for my camera, so I bought another. It was cheap too, about $10 including shipping.

I’m still wary of buying expensive things from eBay, I think the most expensive thing that I’ve bought is ~$100 for a laptop power pack. On the one hand I don’t want to get ripped off by scam artists, but I also don’t want to get nicked on custom fees. I think the limit is $40CDN (if they mark an item as gift), so I try and buy lots and lots of things less than $10. Surprisingly, a lot of useful knick-knacks can be found for cheap from China/HK. I, on a whim, looked up the Nikon remote to control my camera, and won one for about $10 shipped.

But being so cheap, it’s difficult to resist the temptation of clicking those Buy-It-Now buttons. I saw a rubber, screw-on lens hood that I barely resisted buying, and I almost bought replacement iPod ear buds. My headphone wires are stripping in sections because I keep folding them in the same manner, and being superficial, I don’t want to wear black ones (i.e. non-iPod ones) around. At least from the pictures, it looks as though the Chinese have ones that look exactly like the real ones (kind of like knock-off clothes I suppose).

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: CDs, chinese, ebay, photography, shopping