Tag: eBay

#oneaday Day 616: When collecting goes too far

There's a listing on eBay right now for, I quote, "Unopened Vintage Super Mario Bros Kraft Cheez Whiz 1989 Glass Jar 7" Inches". It looks like this:

For the unfamiliar, Cheez Whiz is not supposed to be that colour. It is supposed to be this colour:

The seller, "Black Cat Antiques and Art", has put their Unopened Vintage Super Mario Bros Kraft Cheez Whiz 1989 Glass Jar 7" Inches on eBay for a selling price of $174.99 Canadian (about $128.57) and has claimed the condition is "new", but in the description is a little more honest about things:

This is being sold as a Collectable Container!

I have not opened this jar, however the lid seal may not be intact as it appears to be popped up. Likely from 33 years of sitting on a shelf. (I have not noted a smell)

Would you trust something that is that colour to not register a smell, particularly if its rancidity had forced the little poppy thing on the jar lid to pop — something which is only supposed to happen when you actually open the thing?

It continues:

PLEASE, do not open on receipt.

1. Value will drop significantly

2. It won't taste good, and may cause significant medical issues including…. (Anything you can imagine)

3. It will likely smell bad, really really bad!

4. You may haves opened the last bottle in existence.

PLEASE, don't do it!

Number 1 and 4 are the things that interest me here. Black Cat Antiques and Art appears to think that having a glass jar in the shape of Mario that is full of Cheez Whiz so old it has turned the colour of chocolate spread is somehow worth $174.99 Canadian (or Best Offer) — and, moreover, appears to think that opening the jar to remove the biohazard within will hurt its value significantly.

Not only that, they appear to think that there is some sort of inherent value in keeping the contents intact, even though they also admit that it will probably make you very sick indeed.

I mean, come on, man, it's Cheez Whiz. The jar is vaguely interesting, but as a "collectable container" it's not especially useful or collectable if there's a chance that what's inside might be sentient and waiting to devour you in your sleep. (For reference, empty instances of the same jar are currently listed on eBay for anywhere between $25 and $55 Canadian — this was evidently a Canada-specific product)

"No, no, no, don't open it, you'll tank the value" is by no means uncommon in the collectors market. Hell, there are people out there who buy two of every Evercade release "to keep one sealed" for some reason. But this is perhaps the most baffling instance I have ever seen of it.

Who would want this? For anything other than a funny bit online, I mean. (There are, at the time of writing, a couple of folks deliberating over buying this for the funnies, including Dan Ryckert of Giant Bomb.) Like, I want to meet the sort of collector who thinks buying a jar of rancid Cheez Whiz for over a hundred dollars is somehow a good investment. And then I want to ask them, sincerely, why?

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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1834: Rate Us Five Stars

I rarely leave user reviews on things, be they App Store/Google Play downloads, Amazon purchases, eBay sellers or Steam downloads. And I've realised that in not doing so, I'm being a bit of a fool.

Why? Because whenever I consider purchasing something, one of the first things I do is have a look at the user ratings and reviews and determine whether or not they're 1) genuine 2) worth listening to and 3) something that might need to make me reconsider or confirm my purchase.

Of course, user reviews are very much open to abuse. You only have to look at some of the more notorious examples on Amazon or Metacritic to see the system at its worst… although these incidents can often provide a certain degree of amusement. (There's at least one Twitter account devoted to amusing Amazon reviews alone.)

But when they work, they can be extremely useful — and every time I write one, I'm reminded how much I have always enjoyed reviewing things. Not necessarily critiquing them in depth or from any sort of theoretical perspective, but providing a simple, straightforward analysis of how much I liked something, how it made me feel, whether I think other people would like it and all that sort of good stuff.

It's also really fun to write a negative review, though it's also very easy to be extremely unfair when you're doing so, which is why I try and remain positive most of the time. (People are also more inclined to disagree with something negative than positive in my experience, too, and I really don't enjoy arguing with people.) I have made one fairly consistent exception over the years, though, and that's with mobile games that have been truly, truly awful, particularly those that have desecrated beloved franchises like Dungeon Keeper, Theme Park and SimCity. (Oh, hi, EA.)

But I've decided as a belated and rather lame resolution that I'm going to start making an effort to review things that I've bought, played, used, whatever. Because if I make use of user reviews for their intended purpose — to find out what the average Joe on the street thinks of something that I'm considering purchasing — then I'm sure other people will do too. And, not to blow my own trumpet too much, but I feel like I'm quite good at expressing myself about the things I do and don't like about something.

I give it a couple of weeks before I stop doing it, but for now it's a little something I can do to help make the Internet as a whole a slightly better place. I made a start this evening by reviewing HuniePop on Steam; see if you can spot my review if you're pondering whether to drop some cash on a pornographic puzzle game!