I wonder how many shrink wrapped items are genuinely vintage shrink wrapped items and how many are shrink wrapped at some point after the item left the publisher.

mbassoc2003 wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:I wonder how many shrink wrapped items are genuinely vintage shrink wrapped items and how many are shrink wrapped at some point after the item left the publisher.

I bought the Lost Tombs series the day they hit the shelves at Barnes and Noble (if they are still around?) and not a single one of them were in SW.  I see them all the time in SW however.  hmmm...  

-SKA

I bought 12 copies of Yggsburgh and 12 copies of Upper Works back in the day.
The six copies of Yggsburgh and Upper Works I received directly from TLG were not shinkwrapped, but the 6 copies of Yggsburgh I received from Esvidium (A importer/UK distributor) and the 6 copies of Upper Works I received from NKG were shinkwrapped.
So my default assumption is always that shinkwraps (with the exception of carded TSR hangers) as not original.
Its then just a matter of knowing whether they have been done to increase the valuation or conceal condition.
In most cases they are probably just a means of preserving condition from back in the day, but with easy access to shrinkwrap everywhere, there has been a fair amount of modern VGC or NM condition things suddenly becoming Mint in Shrink when they appear on eBay over the years, and worn corners to 'explain' the evidence of VGC while still trying to dupe people into paying for Mint in Shrink is often a giveaway.

I used to collect NM condition books, but obtained so many so fast that I could not read all the content so I switched to shrink collecting. Shrink collecting is a thing because the market says so. That's really the best justification for it. It's considered the highest mark of rarity even with the risk of a reshrink. I think that risk of reshrinks has increased only recently, since just a few years ago shrink items were readily available and barely more than a NM non-shrink version. Sometimes with dusty shrink items that patina would take away from the value but that's often not the case any longer.

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In shrink! ...and now the question: is the BIN correct according to the recent trends?!?

Most shops back in the day had shrink wrap machines and shinkwrapped stuff themselves. I worked for a nationwide high street retailer in the UK and we would inspect stuff that was returned to us and re-shrinkwrap the stuff and sell it as new, and that was in the days when shrinkwrap machines were the size of an office table. Now-a-days anyone can shrinkwrap anything and say its new in original shrink. Without a certificate of authenticity or photographs proving the same, the odds are overwhelmingly against original shrinkwrap. At best you have a shrinkwrap applied to a new product in a shop, possibly a shrinkwrap applied to a second hand product, at worst a shrinkwrap applied to a product to deter/conceal evidence of usage and damage.

This is creeping up with 5 hours left and 49 people watching. Currently @ $630.


** expired/removed eBay auction **


-SKA

I don't believe I've ever seen this before...  very strange auction indeed... Roughly $350 per item.


** expired/removed eBay auction **


-SKA

Vismore wrote in Interesting Items Currently on eBay:I was thinking that was a special cut deal between some buyer that hand picked some modules at an agreed upon price and the seller made a special listing for the guy to Buy Now.  But its been up a while.  Weird.

Vismore

The listing title is truncated. The full title is 'Special Listing For A Particular Buyer Upon Request Whom I Don't Really Like So I'm Going to Put Up A Listing With A Passive-Aggressive Price Just To Shut Them Up (8 total).'