eBay of the Day: 5 Barrel Jazzman Drum! Hepcat Vouch!

Kaden pointed me towards this strange auction. eBay item #7361780807. It's a 'Yahada' drum kit from a Chinese seller who seems to have put the whole auction through babelfish: "Every bidders buy arts from my store will get... 5,000 years history which includes the fertility, economy, culture and history background". It was bought for £4.99 by a US buyer with zero feedback, although the item description says: "Shipping cost: GBP1500.00" It's either some intricate scam or, as Kaden says, it's "cunningly marketed to the fast growing surrealst demographic."

Posted by Tom Whitwell.

Comments:

Well, if all the hepcats vouch for this kit, it's gotta be the real deal. Seriously, this is likely not a real item. You'll see that, linked on the page, there are other items 7361780807, 7362391115, 7363683416, etc. that are exactly the same.

I've run into this sort of thing on eBay before. You'll see sellers with an obscene amount of feedback for a short period of time that they've been a member - maybe it all looks the same, or is very similar, and is from other users that have had some vague or confusing activity on eBay.

This is perhaps, the start of a scam. My guess is that there is a group of people, or one person with a lot of email addresses and credit cards, who is building what may appear to be a reputable profile by selling to themselves or other scammers. Or, perhaps they're out to scam people now. Who the hell knows.

Thing is, if you're a buyer, ask a lot of questions up front. Check their profile, and also check the profiles of people who've left comments for them.

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:04 pm

Damn, I've been looking for a Yahada kit for ages...

# posted by

Anonymous : 3:07 pm

yahada be joing about that.... sorry.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:35 pm

Enjoy your NICE CHinese food with Chopstike, glorious Chinese Traditinal and curlural. Hold as you hold pncil. Now you can pick up anything!

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:30 pm

there are literally hundreds of these sorts of things on the 'bay.
they usually consist of the suitably nonsense title with a starting bid of 99p or similar and then catch slow/lazy/stupid people out with the shipping cost.
one of my personal favourites is the "china classic blueness music guitar" which is seemingly "carved very wonderful" as well as being "important and significance for investigating the old Chinese culture..."

avoid like a crazy cow-chicken!

s.e.

# posted by

Anonymous : 11:21 pm

So what's not surreal about that?

I mean, besides the giraffe?

# posted by

Anonymous : 4:23 am

Ya Ha Da is a brilliant knockoff of Yamaha. Ever seen the "Rolax" watches for sale in Hong Kong? ;)

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:18 am

Yeah, I keep coming across these things on ebay when I search for slightly obscure instruments. The postage is ridiculous, for that it's £1500! I don't like the fact that the Chinese people can advertise their products on the .co.uk site without the searcher having to select 'search worldwide'. It's deceptive and just plain wrong.

# posted by

Anonymous : 2:41 pm