Ah, I suppose online resale would make the difference nearly impossible to tell? That’s unfortunate.
I hope someone eventually posts a pic of one of these sheets. I’ve seen non-foil ones, but never a foil one. I’d also be curious to see if they have card backs or not. I think reddit had some mild speculation about making them not worth cutting by removing the backing.
Sunday evening got email that my package shipped, about 20 minutes ago knock at the door. Fedex guy handed me a package it was the Masterpiece box. All I can say is I have my fingers crossed for those still in limbo.
Any pictures? I'm still unable to find any photo proof of it being delivered on the internet.
There was one post on reddit. Guy posted a very suspiciously vague picture of an all black box with a mizer's labeling. Many called him out, he then posted the invoice. Frankly, I'd call that confirmed, but something still strikes me as odd about it since no one else has posted pictures. He also posted it the day people started getting shipping updates.
Sure. Probably a secondary issue that I'm not sure how to account for and can't see the actual workings of from the outside. Many are talking about how taxes were wrong and resulted in canceled orders, I'm inclined to believe that angle, not sure if it applies to you.
I'm not familiar with the inner workings of either the eBay site's build or the PayPal API. I'm just making assertions based on what I've built in the past. Part of me would love if someone more experienced would give a better analysis of what happened, as far as the technical portions go. I've been interested in this whole thing for a few different reasons, but seeing this as a tech issue is the main reason I keep sticking my nose in here. It's just an interesting UI case study I can put in my back pocket.
As an aside; not all PayPal orders were canceled, I used PayPal.
So for those of you who are actually getting their boxes:
What time did you first attempt to purchase it, and what time did your payment finish processing? I'm trying to get a general idea of when the 12,000 limit was reached.
I first tried to order at around 12:00:45 Pacific time, but my payment was pending and eventually got canceled. I then managed to "successfully" buy two at 12:23.
I wonder if my initial order was within the first 12,000 attempted, after discounting all the bots.
Well... Hold on a moment. This is partly about when you tried to buy and partly about actions taken during purchase. I've been looking over this thread and the various (innumerable) Reddit threads about what exactly people did during this rush. If you waited more than 5ish seconds for your payment to process you should have canceled the whole thing and went through the process again. I have yet to see someone say they waited more than 5 minutes for payment and got a positive confirmation for that purchase.
Why?
Because your API call was hung. It seems to me that clicking "buy it now" and moving to the next window does not reserve you a box, it just moves you to the next window to process payment. If your payment hung until past when 12000 boxes were sold then you missed it. This is why you needed to cancel and redo the purchase; it makes another attempt to get a good API call through the payment system. Once your call is hung though, there's nothing to pick it up from that state, it's just dead. There's no point in waiting for it.
Source: Am confirmed on 3 boxes via 2 congrats emails, did not use a bot, and refreshed my API calls every 5ish seconds during the initial minutes of the rush.
Imagine a drive through like McDonald's with an infinite number of lanes through which you order, pay, and pick up. You pull up to the window and order (click buy it now), move to the next window to pay and spend 20 minutes paying (or however long). While you were doing that thinking you were secure to pickup your product at the next window the other infinite lanes were processing payments faster than you and some 1000 people could sneak through the whole process before you could pay. Now once you go to the window with your receipt in hand because your payment processed, it simply says they are out of stock. Processing your payment was not putting you in anyone's way, so when someone found a faster lane than yours they could cut in line ahead of you. If your payment window was slow, it was beneficial to leave that window entirely to find a faster window even though this required driving around the whole process again.
This is not like an ordinary store where you go to pay with your product secured in your hands. Despite there being a "cart" it does not act like an actual cart.
Edit: as for the actual time 12000 was reached, I saw it stop at 11,995 sold at 5 minutes after open. It stayed that way for some 10 minutes then a bunch of chaos happened and I stopped tracking it.
That's interesting. A digital queue would probably be effective at fixing the sales counter and it would fix the PayPal overload.
I do think it would just create a new point in the system for people to complain about though. It would probably cut back on complaints in total though since we wouldn't be seeing this 42k number thrown around, the relisting, and other purchase related complaints. Likely we'd only be seeing "I didn't get into the queue despite being told I was in the queue", but that's probably not as bad? I don't know.
Any time there's a limited supply like this I'm surprised when people think that everyone is supposed to be satisfied.
Hasbro did not list more than 12000 items. the eBay counter just tracked 42k unique clicks on the buy it now button. This is not a Hasbro issue, this is an eBay issue.
As far as not being able to cancel orders, they only have 12000 boxes. Should they just keep all the money even though they cannot fill the orders? Of course not, so they should refund the people and notify them. They aren't getting more product, it was very clearly stated that "once it's gone, it's gone".
It's very likely that that counter does not decrement when orders are canceled. This is likely because rushes on a limited product like this are rare and a the metric matters even more infrequently.
The 32k you saw (the 42k I saw) are very likely the number of orders that came in in total and not the actual amount sold. I would trust the official announcement from WotC more than some ticker on eBay.
It honestly just depends on what point in the sale the ticker ticks up. On clicking "buy it now"? Clicking the payment button? When they actually receive the payment? When they finally ship the box to the consumer? Which one makes the most sense? They can cancel even paid orders right up until they ship you the product, so are they even sold until then? You can make a reasonable assumption, but it is also reasonable to assume that clicking "buy it now" will result is a sale. Where do you think it was actually taking count? My guess is that it was taking count on the "buy it now" button, which is probably pretty accurate in 99% of situations, but this was not part of that 99%.
I hope someone eventually posts a pic of one of these sheets. I’ve seen non-foil ones, but never a foil one. I’d also be curious to see if they have card backs or not. I think reddit had some mild speculation about making them not worth cutting by removing the backing.
"Reveal a Dragon"
Also, got my shipping confirmation.
"Reveal a Dragon"
"Reveal a Dragon"
"Reveal a Dragon"
"Reveal a Dragon"
I'm not familiar with the inner workings of either the eBay site's build or the PayPal API. I'm just making assertions based on what I've built in the past. Part of me would love if someone more experienced would give a better analysis of what happened, as far as the technical portions go. I've been interested in this whole thing for a few different reasons, but seeing this as a tech issue is the main reason I keep sticking my nose in here. It's just an interesting UI case study I can put in my back pocket.
As an aside; not all PayPal orders were canceled, I used PayPal.
"Reveal a Dragon"
Why?
Because your API call was hung. It seems to me that clicking "buy it now" and moving to the next window does not reserve you a box, it just moves you to the next window to process payment. If your payment hung until past when 12000 boxes were sold then you missed it. This is why you needed to cancel and redo the purchase; it makes another attempt to get a good API call through the payment system. Once your call is hung though, there's nothing to pick it up from that state, it's just dead. There's no point in waiting for it.
Source: Am confirmed on 3 boxes via 2 congrats emails, did not use a bot, and refreshed my API calls every 5ish seconds during the initial minutes of the rush.
Imagine a drive through like McDonald's with an infinite number of lanes through which you order, pay, and pick up. You pull up to the window and order (click buy it now), move to the next window to pay and spend 20 minutes paying (or however long). While you were doing that thinking you were secure to pickup your product at the next window the other infinite lanes were processing payments faster than you and some 1000 people could sneak through the whole process before you could pay. Now once you go to the window with your receipt in hand because your payment processed, it simply says they are out of stock. Processing your payment was not putting you in anyone's way, so when someone found a faster lane than yours they could cut in line ahead of you. If your payment window was slow, it was beneficial to leave that window entirely to find a faster window even though this required driving around the whole process again.
This is not like an ordinary store where you go to pay with your product secured in your hands. Despite there being a "cart" it does not act like an actual cart.
Edit: as for the actual time 12000 was reached, I saw it stop at 11,995 sold at 5 minutes after open. It stayed that way for some 10 minutes then a bunch of chaos happened and I stopped tracking it.
"Reveal a Dragon"
"Reveal a Dragon"
I do think it would just create a new point in the system for people to complain about though. It would probably cut back on complaints in total though since we wouldn't be seeing this 42k number thrown around, the relisting, and other purchase related complaints. Likely we'd only be seeing "I didn't get into the queue despite being told I was in the queue", but that's probably not as bad? I don't know.
Any time there's a limited supply like this I'm surprised when people think that everyone is supposed to be satisfied.
"Reveal a Dragon"
As far as not being able to cancel orders, they only have 12000 boxes. Should they just keep all the money even though they cannot fill the orders? Of course not, so they should refund the people and notify them. They aren't getting more product, it was very clearly stated that "once it's gone, it's gone".
"Reveal a Dragon"
The 32k you saw (the 42k I saw) are very likely the number of orders that came in in total and not the actual amount sold. I would trust the official announcement from WotC more than some ticker on eBay.
It honestly just depends on what point in the sale the ticker ticks up. On clicking "buy it now"? Clicking the payment button? When they actually receive the payment? When they finally ship the box to the consumer? Which one makes the most sense? They can cancel even paid orders right up until they ship you the product, so are they even sold until then? You can make a reasonable assumption, but it is also reasonable to assume that clicking "buy it now" will result is a sale. Where do you think it was actually taking count? My guess is that it was taking count on the "buy it now" button, which is probably pretty accurate in 99% of situations, but this was not part of that 99%.
"Reveal a Dragon"
Frustrating, to say the least.
"Reveal a Dragon"
I know some supplemental products have ranged from very good to very bad in the past.
"Reveal a Dragon"