I have a number of cd's & dvd's I'd like to own bookmarked on Amazon. I find it fascinating how the prices go up & down, it's kind of like watching the stock market. And with some of these giant sellers, it may be quite similar to the stock market, speculators & all. Back in 1998 when I started on the net I never woulda thunk it was going to become this corporate.

I don't tend to see these kind of swings nearly as much on ebay, & when i do it's usually 1 seller - 1 item, rather than a group of sellers playing follow the leader like they seem to on Amazon!

I also find it interesting that a number of the large sellers are cheaper on Amazon & ebay than on their own sites, despite the commission they pay Amazon & ebay. I'm the opposite, other than desperation sales on ebay when nothing is selling (a frequent occurrence these days) I'm cheaper if you buy direct.

As an Australian buyer I have seen some disgusting postage costs from 3rd party sellers on Amazon. A recent item I refused to order wanted $26 postage for a $4 book.

Interesting. As a US buyer, sellers in both the USA & UK have to follow Amazon's shipping prices, even on box sets where they lose a fortune. Sounds like Amazon is starting to treat some countries differently.

Amazons like eBay in some cases.

I looked on Amazon last week for the Shaggs album on cd it was $59.99 used from a third party seller, checked back this week and got it for $10.29 used. I don't understand how this works either. Like what happened with Shaggs between last week and this week?

I thought Philosophy Of The World wasn't out of print. Great album.

I find it amazing (and annoying) whenever I put up a listing at Amazon, and another seller has to undercut me by $.01. I have no problem with a bunch of sellers charging the same price, so I'll usually match the undercutter's price, only to be undercut again by $.01. I'm guessing they have something built into their account to do this, but it's still annoying. Since I don't sell very often (maybe 30 items in the last couple of years), I make it a point to give a very detailed description of the item & its condition, which makes my listing more appealing to buyers than the generic listings by the bigger sellers.

Getting back to Geff's original post, though, I'm also amazed my the price fluctuations at the Amazon Marketplace. It usually works to your advantage if you follow the pricing closely, but if you miss out on the cheapest offers sometimes the lowest price becomes very high. That's why I go to my Amazon wishlist every day, usually numerous times.

And of course, whenever applicable, I find the IMWAN links to whatever I'm buying, and place the order that way. Gotta help out our hosts.

On a related note, I'll never understand how certain sellers, such as "any_book" and "woodys-books," make any sales at all with their outrageous prices. They routinely list their out-of-print CDs at prices that are 500% higher (or more) than the majority of sellers. Who in the world buys from them?

On top of that, those boobs always have dreadful feedback numbers.
I don't care about the cheapest price-if I see someone selling at the cheapest price with only 90%, I will gladly pay a dollar, 2 dollars more from someone with 98-100%.
I also list the same way. I sold a book on Free/Bad Company for about $100. Morons with horrible feedback were asking $300-$500 which nobody in their right mind would pay. I'm not greedy in that way, so I listed it at $100 with perfect feedback to see if it would go and it did within one day.

I sell on amazon as a hobby and I rarely undercut somebody by a penny, unless they have 96% or lower feedback to my 100% and I don't need to go any lower, or if my stated condition is much better than theirs is, such as like new compared to good. Sometimes they'll state theirs has a barcode punch so I'll go in at a penny lower stating that mine doesn't. In general, I try to go lower enough that the other seller won't want to match. Like Geff said, it's almost like buying and selling stock on amazon. Buying, the closer to the Thursday at 2 am PST that ends a pay period you get, the better deals you'll see, the seller is trying to get it on that period. I dropped my City To City-Gerry Rafferty gold DCC to $99.95 on Tuesday and sold it yesterday just to illustrate that. Not that you can't request earlier payment from a sale or sales, but I always go the full 2 weeks usually.

Rich, the .01 cent is done automatically by software that the seller has purchased.

That's one thing I HATE about the music & movie retail biz in 2011: it used to matter that I knew what I was doing from years of doing this. Now the advantage is to sellers who know nothing about music & movies, but pay Amazon $60 a month for an android app that lets them scan the bar code of every title in a pawn shop & decide what to buy. At least they leave me the BMG Club cd's, they can't scan them.

I sold a number of items on Amazon over the last two years but I've recently been on hiatus due to surgery, not to mention growing frustration with foolishness such as the one-cent undercutters. I'm back at my real job now but still deciding what to do regarding Amazon. My new schedule makes it impossible for me to mail out items for seveal days in a row, so the timing of putting them up for sale and taking them down again will be trickier. I'll probably list a handful of items when I have a few days off again, but I can't see getting back into it as strongly as before.