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I was going through a recently acquired crate of heavy metal records, looking for the ones I wanted to list (on eBay) next.  Two albums had the name of the band written in old English style lettering that was not easy to read. To me, it looked like the name of the band was "Batlord" or "Bathord".  But why would a self-titled Batlord album have a goat on the cover?  Why not a bat?

So, I grabbed a bunch of other records including another one by Batlord and prepared them to be listed.

I didn't think much more about the goat on the Batlord cover until I learned the real name of the band -- it was printed in a normal sans serif font on the label of the other album I listed, "The Return...".  It turned out that the last letter -- that I thought was a 'D' -- was a 'Y'.  "Bathory?!"  What kind of name is that?  What does it mean?

According to their biography at allmusic.com, the band Bathory took its name from the title of a song by another metal band, Venom.  The name of the song is "Countess Bathory".  I know I've got a few Venom records -- one picture disk is listed this week.  I will check to see if I have the one with that song.  Additional research revealed that "Báthory" was the name of a Hungarian noble family.

A search for BATHORY LP YELLOW returned only one item in the result -- MINE!!!

I surfed to the  wikipedia.org article so I could cut-and-paste the lyrics.  First I listed "The Return..." then I listed the self-titled album.  I started reading the article for Bathory (the album) and learned that only the first 1,000 copies had a yellow goat on the cover.  Copies 1,001 and up have a white goat.

Wow!  Only 1,000 yellow goats in the entire world and I have one of them!  It must be really rare.  But I never heard of this band.  They're Swedish.  "They probably didn't even sell more than 1,000 records," I thought, "and now, over 20 years later, who would even remember them?"

A quick google search led me to popsike.com, a site that tracks auction results for rare records.  So whereas you can find auction results going back 90 days on eBay, popsike.com retains and displays several years worth of data.  For this record, I could see auction results from 2006.

I could not believe what I saw next.  Other copies of the record sold anywhere from $350 to over $600.  I was excited to get the listing done.  The scheduled listing was posted later that evening.  Less than 24 hours later, there were 25 buyers "watching" the item.  And it already had a bidder at the starting price of $9.99.

I've been watching the item (number 310121295838)  all week.  Twice I returned from my lunch break to find that the high bid had gone up $30.  Right now there seems to be a bidding war between a buyer in the U.S. and one in Spain.  One wants to pay by money order, the other by bank transfer.  But with over 70 buyers currently watching it, it's possible neither will win.

The auction is over in less than 24 hours.  At the current price of $152.50, it will be the best price I've ever gotten for a record, beating my previous all-time high of $90.

The suspense is killing me.  No doubt this item has drawn buyers to my other items.  It's going to be a great week -- my best ever.  Thank you, Bathory!  And thank you to the guy who unknowingly sold me this treasure!

• I woke up at 5AM and went to the bathroom.  I decided to check the active bids before going back to bed.  The Spanish buyer outbid the American and the high bid is now $202.50.  No doubt the American will try to re-claim his winning position at about lunch time (New York time) while over 70 others sit back and watch until the final minute.

• Last night I finished listing whatever records I had ready to list.  So this morning, at around 6:15AM, I selected a few more records from one of dozens of crates and grabbed a small pile of records that I bought this week.  I checked the price again -- bid number 16 - up $10 to $212.50, held by another American buyer.  I thought for sure that this record would be bought by someone in Sweden or some other European country, but now I'm not so sure.

• 6:35AM - 74 watchers.  A minute later, 75 watchers.

• 7:20AM - A Norwegian buyer wants to know how much it will cost to ship the record to Norway.  Dude, the record is currently going for over $200 and will, hopefully, go for much more than that.  If you have to ask how much the shipping charge is, you probably can't afford this record. :)))  The calculated shipping charge in the listing is incorrectly based on the weight of a double album.  When I discovered this, I had to go back and make a bunch of corrections.  Since Bathory already had a bid on it, I could not correct it.  The difference, if shipped internationally, will be $1.45.  Since the item price is very high, I may decide to ship the item for free.

• It's almost 8:00AM.  The price is the same but there's another watcher.

• With less than eleven-and-a-half hours left, the price has gone up again.  It looks like I missed some of the action.  The bidder from Spain, after 3 attempts, set the price at $230.  The second American buyer snatched it away for a mere $2.50 more.

• It's been quite some time with no activity.  At about 1:15PM, the high bid was $302.50 and it was placed by a third U.S. buyer.  I'm still expecting the first American, the one who outbids everyone at lunch time, to show up any minute.

• Well, the first American may be out of it.  But now the other two U.S. bidders are going at it.  The 2nd one outbid the 3rd one and the 3rd one bounced right back with a bid of $344.99.

• I went to pick up my wife's Valentine's Day gift.  When I got back, the high bid was over $400.  A few minutes later, I refreshed the screen and it shot up to $516.66.  Notice the "6.66" in the price.  The auction will end in about 1 hour and 20 minutes.  The current high bidder is French and has over 3,000 feedbacks.  77 buyers are "watching" this item.

• I received a question from a French buyer who apologized for his poor English.  He asked if I shipped to France.  I typed "I ship everywhere" into the Google translator on my iGoogle page, changed the setting to [English]->[French] and clicked [Translate].  I cut-and-paste the result and replied to the buyer with "Excuse my French: Je expédier partout dans le monde."  When he wrote back, he said I "speak good French".
  

• In between scheduling more records for listing, I check the price.  With a little more than a half hour to go, the price has hurdled the $600 mark.  A Brazilian bidder has set the price at $602.22.

• $612.22 with a 3+ minutes to go.....

• .....still the same with 2+ minutes to go.....

• .....still the same with 1+ minute to go.....

• .....and the ending price, with less than 10 seconds to go, is.....$640!!!!!  Sold to the buyer from France!
  

• Some quotes from the winning bidder:  "Arghhhhhhhhhh! I am happy. Very thank you."  and "The Bathory LP yellow goat is great battle for the fan people.  [eBayID] fight for ebay to the item.  Thank you pour le suivi de cet enchere."