Horse Cents
My daughter Katie turned 6 yesterday. She loves toy horses. Up until yesterday she only had 22 them. Since Christmas, when she got the pink castle, she has been obsessing over the “My Little Pony” brand. Even though Chris had a handful already wrapped, she went on a late night shopping spree earlier in the week to get some more for her birthday. Chris even signed up for the Pony Points Program to earn more merchandise.
There was definitely an itch that needed to be scratched because Chris was also searching eBay.com for them. She would come up from the computer room with printouts and request that I put bids on them with my account. I’d do her bidding (pun intended) after being told what her desired maximum bid was for each. Of course as soon as even her maximum bid was exceeded, she raise it again.
For the uninformed, the hollow plastic toys sell at Toy-R-Us (NEW!) for $7 to $9 and she was requesting that I put $6 bids on used ones. And tack on excessive shipping charges for eBay. We were competing against collectors for items that Chris was going to give to a 6-year-old. Katie doesn’t care that the purple one was extruded in 1989. Secretly I was hoping to be outbid even as I was placing the bids.
While we were outbid on most (with two going for $13 and $16), we did get two of them from the same seller. Shucks. The next day the seller indicated that she would tack on almost $6 for shipping the 3-ounce toys.
They didn’t arrive in time for Katie’s birthday, so Chris had to settle for giving her a mere nine Little Ponies. The smallest was 3 inches. The largest was 3 feet. Today, the used toys arrived in the mail. They reeked of smoke. It had permeated the plastic so much that even after washing them four times, they still smelled. Even Katie noticed. Chris wanted to notify the seller, but I had visions of a ruined eBay rating because of it and we weren’t going to ask Katie to give up the toy for a refund and sink more money in shipping it back, so I suggested that we just chalk it up as a lesson earned.
So the count stands at 33 toy horses–two of them a little stinky.