maybe he heard the dollar was falling or he's a mortgage broker

Money laundering? Either that or just a complete moron.

Its POSSIBLE that this guy has all his money in PayPal and doesn't realize that you can take it out in a check or use the PayPal Visa....... No, this is just dumb.

he got caught up in the bidding high/frenzy

Four runner-up bids:
$54.71
$54.00
$52.00
$50.00

Goof! Also paid 20.50 for a 20 dollar card and 25.01 for a 25 dollar card!

1. Money Laundering (aka the owner of Illegal-drugs-R-US)

2. Nigerian National that is bored

3. 14 yr old looking to fark somebody over.

4. Miss read the listing and thought it said $500 gift card.

Maybe the buyer is hoping the seller doesn't use delivery confirmation - in which case the buyer can claim he didn't get the gift card and paypal will refund the buyer - so he gets the $50 gift card for free....

Or maybe he just wanted to be on the consumerist:)

@Scudder:

Money Laundering or Nigerian National are my best bets

@hillsrovey:

Ah yes, #5.

I had no idea selling gift cards on ebay was such a lucrative business. Im going to have to start selling them

Pretty sure this guy is getting rid of some IGG's (ill gotten gains). He's going about it the wrong way though, this obviously attracted someones attention...

Hmmm... This seems very fishy.. Maybe a close friend of the seller is over bidding to raise the price... which it quite against ebay policies. Also, what intrigues me is that why would someone go to ebay to buy a Target gift card when they can simply purchase it at Target's website. @Corporate-Shill: That would be my last guess!

I like the fraud ideas. But there's also "coupon codes".

For example [www.retailmenot.com] shows that there might be a $10-off-$50 item for any purchase using PayPal (expiring June 6). In the past, eBay has doled out coupons to specific users, too, which let them ramp up the bid.

Now, I don't know if you can get $10 off a gift card purchase, but if so, then it's like "only" bidding $40. It would also explain why $50 seems to be the sweet spot.

I think it should be pretty obvious it was purchased with a stolen PayPal account.
Anybody who has ever been an Ebay seller knows all-to-well the PayPal dispute.

It's likely the person who purchased the gift card did so with a stolen Ebay & PayPal account (as in figured out another persons password through some nefarious scheme). Then bid on the item with this account, and sent payment.

Now I would imagine the winning bidder is probably asking
the seller to simply email them the gift cards code, so they can purchase something from Target.com...

Than, 4 or 5 days later the seller would receive a PayPal dispute from the real account owner, because of a purchase they did not make... and since the seller did not physically send the gift card via a mailing service (to have evidence of the delivery) PayPal will favor the buyer, and the seller gets screwed.

How would this be money laundering? The money is coming via PayPal or a check/MO. It's not cash.

Some gift cards are/were "collectible" items also. Saw a $50 Dale Enhardt/ Walmart go for $100 a few years back.

save money on gas driving to Target?

I've seen people overbid for other items too, like used cell phones. Why would you pay $20 more than retail for a used, locked phone you can get new and warranted at the store?

Possibly the same reason you occasionally see crappy laptops going for over $10000 on ebay.
Either:
1) Someone trying to mess with the seller (Non-paying bidder like the $99 million PS3)
or
2) Someone trying to transfer money to someone through a "legitimate" business transaction (AKA money laundering)
Of course, it's equally likely the buyer's an idiot.

@SMSDHubbard:

Money laundering does not need to involve cash per se. Funny or Bad money just needs to be converted into another media. And to do so the holder is willing to take a hit on the transaction. Sometimes a big hit.

We all have seen the movies involving counterfeit $. Funny money is worth pennies on the $. There is also an entire organization devoted to making fake money orders. Getting caught with either form of bad money is going to land some serious jail time. So the bad guys know they need to convert their bad money for some good money. Getting caught with a legit gift card is not cause for being arrested and sent to jail, so buy up a bunch of gift cards. Then buy something with the gift card (and a little cash to make it a "cash" transaction) and then return the item to the store for a cash exchange. A lot of work, but the bad money is turned into good.

@ameyer: Oh, and the $10000 laptop payment probably would just look really suspicious if the feds noticed. I don't think "Yeah, I paid $10,000 for a broken 3 year old Dell laptop" is particularly convincing.

Had someone buy a 20 dollar xbox live card from me for 24 before.

Obviously he's going to turn around and resell it for a profit. I believe that's called "flipping" a gift card. No?

I wouldn't be too surprised if we see more stuff like this now that sellers can't give buyers negative feedback...

Maybe him and the seller are working together to increase their feedback ratings and no real transaction is taking place

But they're dumbasses because bidding $55 on a $50 gift card is a great way to draw attention to that.

Why do people bid only $5 or $10 less than B&H retail price for used lens?

Probably the same people who fall into the 24% that still approve of the The Shrub.

@ameyer:

That would make sense, except for the fact that the winning bidder has 98+ positive feedback...looking at the detailed feedback, most of it looks legit (i.e. not all from the same seller...and it's from a varied array of items, including a rocking chair cover and a charger for a cell phone...).

Come on, why are we giving this guy crap? Clearly, this auction was a steal with the FREE SHIPPING!!! Most other Ebay sellers would be charging him $10 shipping and handling for a gift card!

Target cards typically sell for over 90% face value on eBay.
Perhaps the buyer made a mistake with their auto bid options.
Or.. maybe there is market for reselling cards at more than face value?... to those offshore or without credit who want to shop online?

@LUV2CattleCall: I went through eBay hell trying to find legitimate bidders on a laptop I was selling. Most of them had 20-50 feedback and looked good enough. Until they bid on my item, where I immediately received a "This user had their account hacked and you should not accept their bid as being valid" email from eBay.

These are the same idiots that drove up home prices to ridiculous level, then leaving it to crash. You can bid up anything to any ridiculous amount, but are you willing to pay for it pay for it when the bill come?

Almost inevitably, when I'm bidding on something non-unique, I can find it for way less by simply clicking to see the Buy It Now offers. So a camera will have 13 bids, high bid of $400, but there are five or six sellers offering it for Buy It now for 300. It's always made me go hmmmmmmm.

Hah. I bet it probably doesn't even have money on it!

Ooh boy, I love people. Someone looks like a magic bean-buyer. Maybe lpinok is a Bank of America board member.

@Syrus28:

Oh No!

Foreigners.

Either a mistake or stolen credit card/account. Hoping the person ships the card before they find out they aren't going to get paid.

I pretty much had something like this happen to one of my auctions that was up on eBay: I had an auction in which allowed you to both bid, or Buy It Now for $350. It was bidded $400+, nobody purchased it for $350!

WHAT?!

@Greeper: Yep, I've noticed identical auctions where one will have 12 bids and the other none. Most people are lemmings who only want what other people want. That's why I never bid early on an item. Once you put down a bid, that is a red flag for all the lemmings to suddenly want the item too and they come out of the woodwork to start bidding. Then a bidding war ensues driving up the price.

If you notice, most auctions rarely have just 1 bid because the lemming phenomenon exists that once one person bids others will follow. Last minute bidding is the only way I would ever participate in an auction. Why anyone would bid early is beyond me. No way do I want lemmings to jump on my auction driving up the price. I'll not play that game of auction footsy.

This is a common charity raising approach. Im not entirely surprised it worked in a another context. $20 auctions were popular in the 90's. People would auction off a $20 bill, and people would bid 4 or 5 times that to win.

How else can you get Target to take Paypal without signing up for their Visa card?

I'm also guessing that in some neighborhoods a Target gift card can be traded for much more than face value. And those people don't even take the Paypal Visa.

So you've got a hefty Paypal balance, but don't have a clean ID. How you gonna get your money out?

I like Doug's thinking - it touches on money laundering and a market of non-creditworthy consumers.

@ChuckECheese: Running joke in the military is that people buy used cell phones on eBay to make IEDs

Seems perfectly reasonable. If there's not a Target in one's own hometown, but one wishes to get a Target gift card for a loved one who shops there in another town, overbidding the original price seems like a fair "run an errand for me" fee. Means they don't have drive a long way to get it.

I don't know this buyer's rationale (check gas gift cards, they always go over face value), but I have bidded over face value on gift cards/stamps when eBay/PayPal were offering a promotion where bidding over face would still benefit me.

Example: $10 off $50 code, I bid and win for $54, save $6.

I'm sorry to be so blunt and to the point, and brutally out of place, but I need to know how to get a hold of the consumerist for some advice, and maybe something to point to rogers. I'm having serious trouble with them right now, and i've fired off emails here and got nothing :( I'm really grasping at straws over a 1100 dollar bill with rogers wireless and anything I can get would be great in terms of help to fight this :(

Thanks

white(dot)eagle(dot)14(AT)gmail.com

@628: IIRC, the Buy It Now option goes away after the first bid

Ebay should have a policy (to prevent fraud/theft) that gift cards cannot be sold for higher than face value, pre-determined reasonable shipping costs excluded. By permitting this, I say ebay is partially responsible. It would be very easy to police. Just set a maximum bid at the face value of the gift card. It seems like it should be illegal to sell, at the present time (i.e. sell, not lend) a dollar for more than a dollar. I'm sure this was bought with a stolen cc, or with the intent to claim it never arrived. There is no legitimate, bona fide reason for purchasing a $50 gift card for even $50, let alone $56. Obviously, one fungible dollar is worth more than one (non-fungible) dollar that can only be used at one store.