Being Kind of Stupid on eBay.

Do you ever buy something where you rely entirely on your own memory rather than using your carefully maintained online want lists?  Well,  you'd think I'd know better than to do that...but alas, today's tale is a semi-sad tale of me being kind of stupid.  Not entirely stupid, luckily, but kind of stupid.

You see, a few weeks (actually months) ago, I found an eBay auction for a Collectible LEGO Minifigure that I needed.  That figure was this Series 9 minifig called the Fortune Teller.  

For some reason, this particular minifig had eluded me for years - so when I saw it available for a decent price, I pounced.  As per usual, I decided to see what other minifigs the seller had on offer...and that's where things went mostly awry!  Before I get to that though, let's take a closer look at the Series 9:  Fortune Teller.

The figure comes with two tarot cards (1x2 printed tiles) and a nice dress print along with a unique hair mold.  Overall, it's a super nice minifig - and one that I'm glad to now have in my collection despite me not knowing the first thing about tarot card reading.  As for the rest of Series 9, I'm still not done with it:

Series 9 Wants (need 4/16):
Chicken Suit Guy
Plumber
Roller Derby Girl
Waiter

As I said a bit ago, the seller that had the Fortune Teller had a bunch of other minifigs for sale so I quickly threw three more into my virtual cart and checked out...never once bothering to see if I actually owned the other minifigs.  As it turned out, two of the three impulse buys were duplicates - whoops!

We'll start with the Tribal Chief from Series 3.  

Many, many years ago I had owned this minifigure but I ended up trading it away to my brother.  At some point since then, I must have picked up a second copy for myself...and then promptly forgot that I had done so (despite having my want list updated correctly).  So now, I've got an extra...and it's already listed on Swapfig though that site hasn't done much for me lately so I may end up resorting to reselling it on eBay in the future.  

While the Tribal Chief was a Series 3 duplicate, I am missing two other figures from this series:

Series 3 Wants (need 2/16):
Hula Dancer
Samurai Warrior

The other duplicate buy was this Ice Fisherman from Series 5.  

I'm not sure why I thought I didn't already own this figure at the time of purchase.  When the package arrived at my house and I opened it up, I immediately thought then that the seller made an error since I knew I had this one.  Somehow my brain did not know that when I was spending money...again, whoops!

The worst part of the Ice Fisherman purchase was not only was that a duplicate but Series 5 is one of the Collectible Minifigure Sets that I've actually finished off!  

Finally, the tiniest bit of good news - a Series 2 Explorer minifig that I did actually need still:  

I've got a long way to go on Series 2 yet so any progress here is good progress! 

Series 2 Wants (need 7/16):
Spartan
Surfer
Pop Star
Mime Artist
Lifeguard
Ringmaster
Pharaoh

Overall, I can't say this was my most shining moment!  

That being said, at least two of the four minifigs ended up being truly new to me...and I'm guessing the other two won't be terrible difficult to trade away for other figures that I'm still missing (after all, the older minifigs are kind of hard to come by these days so having a few available for trade might not prove to be the worst thing).