It was my 13-year-old son, altar boy and Boy Scout and all-around good kid, who suggested I go to the black market in my quest.
We will get to that.
It's subtle, but you might have noticed some people are losing their minds right now, some with irrational fears and some with rational concerns about the "novel" coronavirus COVID-19.
My wife, son and I had just returned from a cruise on the Caribbean, and we left from and returned to the port of Fort Lauderdale. If you hadn't heard, Port Everglades has had a some trouble with at least one ship arriving.
Thankfully it was after our cruise ship, so we dodged that bullet.
But I didn't heed what my cousin in England was writing on Facebook, Had I reacted then, we might not be in the pickle we're in at our household.
No toilet paper.
Somewhere over the years, we joined Costco. When we had our son, and started buying a LOT of milk, we compared the cost of a gallon of milk there to the cost of the cheapest gallon of milk nearer to our home. Buying two gallons a week at Costco, we figured would be saving about a buck a week. Milk savings alone would cover the annual cost of our membership and the slightly longer drive.
"That's thinking smart," we thought.
"You're cheaper off," as Jimmy Breslin wrote during the 1970s stagflation days of his mother-in-law's comparison shopping.
So that's what we did. And we picked up some other things in bulk, saving some money here and there.
Somewhere along the line, we stopped buying the milk there, though it's not like my son has stopped drinking it.
But we settled into the in-store brand of toilet paper, Kirkland.
I don't want to get into the intricacies of toilet paper (it's two-ply). They also sell Scott Tissue, which claims to be single-ply, but I don't think so. I think it is an atom thick. It's not like real toilet paper. It's like a virtual simulation of where toilet paper ought to be in reality. Not good.
At Costco, the Kirkland brand is twice as thick as the Scott brand, but still cheaper.
And as we kind of settled on this as our brand, along the way, I guess I kind of forgot how to shop for toilet paper.
In the Coronavirus Pandemic crisis, those skills are sorely needed.
Costco has been sold out. Two, three weeks ago, we stopped by Costco on our way back from church, as we are wont to do every two or three months, intent on picking up some toilet paper. It was our normal "time," maybe a week or so delayed because of the cruise.
It was not to be, because of COVID-19 and what has been described as buyer "panic."
They even had stories on it, in which psychologists say the "panic-buying" is people trying to assert control in an uncertain world.
As such, it's been described as an almost rational response.
But after going two days in a row without finding it, I broke down and started thinking it was time to become a full-bore 21st century consumer.
I went online.
For toilet paper.
I went to Costco.com, but they do not deliver their brand. I obviously didn't want to bulk-buy Scott. This crisis won't be that long.
So I thought.
I then checked on Amazon.com.
Again, not being sure what kind of TP I needed, it was an imperfect search.
I thought I had finally found a brand and style that might work.
Then my son, who was hovering over my shoulder as I did this, pointed out something before I hit the buy button.
Delivery expected anytime between April 7 and April 28.
So the delivery window opened in 21 days, and was 21 days wide.
I don't think I could wait two months for a TP delivery. I am pretty sure at least one of us is going to need TP before then.
So, as I said, my innocent son suggested the black market.
He didn't use those exact words.
"Why don't you try eBay?" he said.
EBay?
Why not?
On a lark, I decided to put in the Costco brand itself for my specific search.
And there it was — eBay is the land of Canaan of Kirkland brand toilet paper, a land flowing with two-ply milk and honey.
So excited was I, I almost hit buy, way too early. The prices were marked up, I saw, but one would expect that.
Now $39 seems a trifle much for something that's been like $17 to $21. But it was fresh off the TP tree, second hand maybe, but not USED.
But I read closer.
Costco sells a big bulk-buy pack, which contains, I think, 10 packs with six rolls each.
It wasn't $39 for that. It was $39 for one six-roll pack.
So that would be more than $6 per roll. I scrolled down, and I kept seeing individual six-roll packs by almost every seller. These sellers had bought packs with 10 six-roll packs, cut the individual packs out, and were reselling. If you get $39 for one, you've bought back your "investment." Sell two and you probably have made enough to pay to "free" ship all these to new unwary buyers. So your third through 10th packs are pure two-ply profit, if you can sell them all.
There were many sellers, and that's the way most of them were going about it.
But at least one guy took it a step further. My son and I were laughing the whole time at what we were seeing, but it was a shocked laughter when we got to the guy selling — auctioning actually — individual rolls. The shocked laughter was not at the audacity of that seller.
No, shocked laughter because there had been at least 18 bids — for one roll of toilet paper. The bid was up to $20.
For ONE roll of toilet paper.
"It's a black market," I told my son. "A black market for toilet paper."
Yeah. These people buying up all the toilet paper aren't people reacting to assert some kind of phantom control over a scary situation that affords no control.
They are profiteers. Price gougers.
I thought about filing a price gouging complaint. But I live in South Carolina, while I Costco shop in Charlotte, N.C. I would have to be able to tell whichever Attorney General I talked to that eBay seller "JTootles" was operating out of North Carolina to have a prayer.
EBay might stop it if the seller of the item, Costco, would complain. I got that much by gleaning eBay's complaint policy. Hand sanitizer and items like that were being restricted. But TP? No.
I did an online chat trying to get more than a "We'll look into it," from Costco, but no going.
All I know is that it doesn't say much nice about society.
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