Q*bert
Well, it’s been a really long time since I’ve posted. I’ve been busy with animating, Christmas, and the ever so annoying ribs. Oh, yeah, and rock band.
This was supposed to be a post about either Christmas or the Perler Bead crafts that I’ve been doing lately… but then something happened that made me think and made me need to write this entry.
Yesterday I was on ebay and I found a plush Q*bert figure. For those of you kids who weren’t alive in the 80’s … this is what it was:
I have wanted this for a long time, and most of you know how much I love to collect toys, right? Well, It was going for $3.99 this morning. I put my maximum bid to 30 dollars. … and then I went to Church.
When I returned from Church, I had been outbid. I set my bid a little higher and was immediately outbid again. I decided I would give up and that it wasn’t worth such a high sum of money, even though it was extremely rare. I returned to animating and didn’t give it a second thought.
About an hour later, I received this email in my inbox:
I am bidding on this for a sick child.
I don’t have much money.
Please let me get this for him.
Thanks,
Your fellow e-bayer
Sadly, my first thoughts were not: “oh, this is terrible, I must not bid anymore”… …I really wanted them to be…
my first thoughts were “if this jerk is lying, i hope they rot in hell”…Not a very nice thought, but thanks to a personal experience from my childhood, it was the only thing I could think.
It’s amazing what people will do when they WANT a material thing. They will do just about anything. That woman last year died trying to get a wii for her child. People will lie. People will cheat. People will say that their child is sick and dying just to get something for them.
I went and read the person in question’s feedback. There was nothing to lead me to believe that this person was dishonest. I decided that I’d give them the benefit of the doubt, and maybe they were a nice, honest person like myself. I replied to them, saying:
I would be a pretty horrible person if i were to outbid you… on a sunday… after i’ve just come from church… when you are trying to win this for a sick child. Enjoy the qbert. There will be other auctions for me.
best regards,
sara
If your child is really sick, “fellow ebayer”… then I meant what I said above, and I hope your kid gets great happiness from the little guy.
However, if your child is NOT sick and you lied to get some rare piece of 80’s merchandise, you are a sick individual, and God help you.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:41 am
I’m willing to call bullshit on their claim. Think about it: how many kids know about Q*bert, let alone know plush dolls of that gosh-darn cube hopper even exist? It’s an old game. I have my own opinions as to what I’d do in that situation, but I’ll keep them to myself.
I went looking for the auction and wow, that is getting up there in price. I did find an auction for a doll that looks the same: http://tinyurl.com/33pspv
January 21st, 2008 at 10:09 am
wow. thank you very much. I put a bid on it! … i thought about that, about how qbert is old, but then i remembered that it just came out on the playstation network, and maybe some kid really loves it. you just never know. I have a personal experience that i can tell you about sometime that leads me to believe that the claims could be false, but… what’re you gonna do…
how did you ever find that, matt?
January 21st, 2008 at 7:02 pm
I’m one to believe that if I think someone is lying over the Internet, he or she probably is. Fun story: a long time ago, a DDRFreak user made a topic announcing that a frequent poster on one of the boards had been killed by a drunk driver. A few pages of sympathies and condolences followed. Then, the supposedly deceased user chimes in to say it was all a hoax; the topic’s creator said he (creator) was going to use the replies for some school project on the Internet and lies or something. People can be very, very evil and uncaring. But not me! (smiles, points to self with thumb, mumbles, “Most of the time…”)
I was trying out a lot of search queries (Q*Bert, q bert, q-bert, plush, doll, etc.) to try to find the one with the pictures you posted. I actually stumbled upon the one I linked you to before the one you bid on.
I mean… I’m a stalker and I want your autograph! I’m watching you as you eat, sleep, shower, and decide on what to name your characters! You don’t think that’s creepy, do you?
January 28th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
I see you won that plush doll at half the price of the other one. Good jorb.
January 28th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Yeah, I know. The funny thing is that those things are impossible to come by. It’s like finding two pink tails one right after the other! Thanks again for linking me to that auction!
January 29th, 2008 at 2:27 am
I could go for a pink tail… problem is that the battery inside the FF2 cartridge hates me and everyone who plays it. I’ll get to FF4 for the GBA someday.