Can THIS Even be Justified??

[shuttlebuggy]

I hope whoever gets the handmade item with that yarn appreciates it!!! That is insane!!! But I guess some people will pay it - I am not one of those people though!

[trin]

I think what might happen sometimes is that the seller bids on their own item under a different name to make the item look legit and makes other bidders drive the price higher. When the auction ends, the pseudo-bidder "backs out" and the next highest bidder wins, sometimes at a much lower, but still high price for such an item.

 

I bid on a pattern (12 pointed star I believe it's called) and stopped my bid at like $7 and was outbid way higher. Much to my surprise I got a message saying I'd won due to the higher bidder not being able to hold to their bid.

 

Which means actually that there was at least one other real bidder who backed out, OR the seller had a bidding war with at least two other "personalities" and you didn't jump for it.

 

Though I had one where I won the yarn at a really reasonable price and then zapped $16 shipping for 2 skeins... from CALIFORNIA. I complained to Ebay, as probably other customers did, and that account, when they finally ran out of items, was never seen again.

 

$20+ per skein, at the very least should be a natural fiber, maybe even hand spun. (I get smallish skeins of silk for around $25ish.) Maybe even something more exotic than wool... I get alpaca for less than $20/skein... $40+ had better be something like cashmere, vicuna, angora (rabbit), buffalo... some exotic plant fiber....

 

I bought a paper grocery bag with several skeins of something similar to this, some skeins of something like wool ease, mostly vintage 1970 something (The colors were awesome!) for $2... from a friend's resale shop. I felt really blessed. ( I might still have some of it in my stash. the wool-ease type stuff became a poncho for my daughter right away, with a fun fur trim.)

[Trinket]

Actually, I can see a few reasons for this to have happened (besides the always suspicious possibility of shill-bidding). This looks like it's probably discontinued yarn, because I haven't seen that yarn anywhere, even though JoAnn's is selling holiday Bernat yarn and Walmart has holiday Red Heart.

 

1) Someone really loved this yarn and wanted it for a project very, very badly. This would be me if the price was lower. Though, see, I'd have been one of the first to bid on it when it was still at a reasonable price.

 

2) It's holiday yarn, and with Christmas coming up soon, some people are willing to pay more just because it's holiday stuff.

 

3) They're working on something that uses this yarn and REALLY need some more.

 

4) They're a yarn collector and they don't have this yarn in their collection yet.

 

Back in May, I sold 2 skeins of Lion Brand Homespun yarn in the discontinued color "Pagoda" for something like $20-$22. I forget exactly, but it was at least $20. It was a hard to find color the begin with, but then it got discontinued. I figured the person who paid that much (which would've been around $10 a skein) needed it for a project they were doing, but couldn't complete because the yarn got discontinued.