Bicycle Trace Decks - They sold for how much??!??!!

[Kanped]

They're the same decks... I think the exact same decks.  I guess he bid on his own products the last time round to make them seem valuable and then the buy it now is set just under what they allegedly went for at auction, trying to get people who bid on it last time to buy it outright so that it doesn't go above the $50 mark again.  I'm pretty sure bidding on your own stuff is against eBay rules... I wonder if we could prove it and get him removed?

[John B.]

no way to prove unless he admits it or you can track his accounts, also i had a friend who did it and im not for sure if it is illegal but i know its not right. also WTF with those jokers?

[CBJ]

Well if anyone cares... Merz has dropped the price of the Trace decks to 39.95 per deck

lol what a deal.  only 160 for a set of 4

PASS!

[Joshua Robinson]

my family uses a thing called "auction Sentry" to bid. She puts the product number in and sets her highest bet and your good to go! It does your bet right at the end with like 2 seconds to go and it will make a siren noise to tell you that someone has done a higher bid than your highest. Its awesome

[Don Boyer]

I hear people going back and forth about Merz and his business practices.  Is he foolish for selling decks costing a few bucks to make at outrageously inflated prices?  Especially when they're almost completely devoid of art or originality?  Perhaps.  But to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi:

"Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?"

No one forced anyone to bid on anything.  I don't know what the asking price is, but people could just as easily have walked away and said, "thanks, but no thanks."

If he's bidding against his bidders, it's both immoral and against eBay policies - it could get him kicked off.  The thing is, can you prove it?

I doubt that he won his own auctions and is reselling the exact same decks.  Each picture of the tuck box displayed two decks - he therefore had more than one to sell of each.

Will his business practices make him a success over time?  Another famous quote, often believed to be by P.T. Barnum but is actually attributed to Abraham Lincoln:

"You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time."

There will always be the gullible who'll buy anything.  But the majority of us who aren't gullible won't be fooled by his practices and won't buy up his expensive decks in the aftermarket.  More people will see these once-expensive decks plummet in price/value over time and will stop buying them over time.  Eventually his house of cards will either topple over or be propped up by just enough of the gullible to keep going.  I don't see there being enough of the latter to allow him to thrive.

[ronyo_faukx]

I hate to pump this topic back up with Herbert West's Re-Animator serum, but what is this about?

While surfing eBay, I just happened upon these decks of cards. I'd never heard of them, so I googled the name. All the links are links to either Merz's eBay auctions, Amazon and this topic.

If I understand correctly, Merz had a whole bunch of these cards printed my Bicycle, and now sells them at an astronomical price to unsuspecting people thinking they're getting a good deal on 'rare' decks?

[Don Boyer]

I hate to pump this topic back up with Herbert West's Re-Animator serum, but what is this about?

While surfing eBay, I just happened upon these decks of cards. I'd never heard of them, so I googled the name. All the links are links to either Merz's eBay auctions, Amazon and this topic.

If I understand correctly, Merz had a whole bunch of these cards printed my Bicycle, and now sells them at an astronomical price to unsuspecting people thinking they're getting a good deal on 'rare' decks?

Yeah, that pretty much sums his business up in a nutshell.  To my knowledge, Bill Merz is still the #1 customer in USPC's Custom Department, ordering all these weird deck designs made mostly of clip art found on the Internet or elsewhere.  Then he pushes them off as "rare collectibles" on eBay, trying to drive up the price, and eventually they appear on his website - pretty much exclusively, since few people want anything to do with the majority of his custom-designed decks.  But there are those collectors who have a compulsion to own any deck with the brand name "Bicycle" on it, no matter how horrible it actually is.  As well as collectors who simply don't know any better.  For a good while, he was one of my pet peeves around here with all the crap decks he was cranking out at record speeds.  Now I mostly ignore anything he releases, beyond simply charting it on the NDR or the 2013 Releases topics.

His Internet store's not bad, if you ignore all the non-deck crap he's got up there, especially his "hillbilly" line of novelties.  He has some hard-to-find stuff and the prices are usually quite competitive, but a few people have had beefs with how he packages things for shipping and his customer service or lack thereof.  Personally, I've had no problems with it - made one or two orders, they arrived as described, no hassles.

[John B.]

I hear people going back and forth about Merz and his business practices.  Is he foolish for selling decks costing a few bucks to make at outrageously inflated prices?  Especially when they're almost completely devoid of art or originality?  Perhaps.  But to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi:

"Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?"

No one forced anyone to bid on anything.  I don't know what the asking price is, but people could just as easily have walked away and said, "thanks, but no thanks."

If he's bidding against his bidders, it's both immoral and against eBay policies - it could get him kicked off.  The thing is, can you prove it?

I doubt that he won his own auctions and is reselling the exact same decks.  Each picture of the tuck box displayed two decks - he therefore had more than one to sell of each.

Will his business practices make him a success over time?  Another famous quote, often believed to be by P.T. Barnum but is actually attributed to Abraham Lincoln:

"You may deceive all the people part of the time, and part of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time."

There will always be the gullible who'll buy anything.  But the majority of us who aren't gullible won't be fooled by his practices and won't buy up his expensive decks in the aftermarket.  More people will see these once-expensive decks plummet in price/value over time and will stop buying them over time.  Eventually his house of cards will either topple over or be propped up by just enough of the gullible to keep going.  I don't see there being enough of the latter to allow him to thrive.

There was a saying I heard. "Its only weird if it does not work" So in this sense, it works so go for it. But I won't support him.

[Anthony]

Its kind of funny, we have the same "Issues" on the site I belong to for my Zippo's. You can disagree with what he does, but Don's Obi-wan quote could not be truer. I think the problem in the last decade is that a lot of collectors are not collectors, they are speculators and most of the times don't have a clue about what they are speculating on, they're looking to make a buck, and that's why you read articles about a guy investing in Beanie Babies to put his kids through college and now is declaring bankruptcy and his kids have to work at McD's instead.

Is it wrong, for me, yes....can you blame him? Well, if Apple can put out a new iPhone every six months in a new color and millions flock to replace the perfectly good one they've owned for the last 6 months at full cost...can you really blame the little guy?

If you dislike his business practice you can do 2 things, one let people now, just as your doing here, and 2, don't support him.

Note: I see these decks are now selling with a $10.00 BIN

[Mike Ratledge]

Well, as if the trace decks weren't enough, he's hawking a set of (Merz-only) "Santa Maiden back" decks.  They were $49.95 a pair (red/green and swapped), then $39.95 and now $29.95.

[Sher143]

Well, as if the trace decks weren't enough, he's hawking a set of (Merz-only) "Santa Maiden back" decks.  They were $49.95 a pair (red/green and swapped), then $39.95 and now $29.95.

I saw those. Honestly, when I first started collecting (which was not very long ago, lol) I might have fallen for this. Overwhelmed with so many choices and sooo tempting to get something that's "rare"! Plus, I didn't know there were the original Santa backs and the Merz version.

[Don Boyer]

Basically, it's hard to genuinely say how rare his decks truly are.  As far as worth, he always starts high, then lowers the price when he stops getting nibbles from the whales who like to throw money at things.  Eventually they become available for "mere mortal" prices.

Honestly, I wouldn't pay dollar-store prices for his decks.

[Utterfool]

*whew*.
Thanks Jay

I have been wondering where I could get so e of these for a while now.
Now that you posted the links, I now know.

.....
I mean I am still not going to buy this crap.
But at least I can sleep easy now that I know where I can if someone held a gun to my head and forced me.






On second thought....
I would probably let them shoot me.