Is it par for the course for sellers to overcharge for shipping?

No.  Lots do, but plenty don't.

Overinflated shipping is how they recoup the amazon cut.

Shipping is the new mafia. They get a cut of every sale.

Heh.  And they said on-line ordering and email would destroy the post office.  Instead it's been an economic boon.

Bought my first stuff off of there a few weeks ago. It arrived in due time, but I paid like $11+ for shipping on 3 cds that came in nothing more than plain white sleeves with manuals in them. They were all put in the same little cardboard envelope and sent U.S. Mail for $1.

Three copies of the same old game, they were $5/each.

Not a big deal, just seemed a bit underhanded.

Well why'd you agree to $11 shipping?

Yeah, there are scumbags everywhere.  It's not an Amazon thing it's a HUMANITY thing.  I've had very pleasant dealings with Amazon.  I order from there 3-4x a month, including 3rd party sellers.

I am a rookie. I just searched, found what I wanted and put my cc/address in and bought it. I didn't realize I had the option of haggling over shipping?

Well, you don't, per se.  But you don't have to use that seller.  If he's the only one, you either suck it up or you don't.

Oh.

Well, there were some others. Buying 3x copies probably made it the cheapest route because each was about 1/2 the next closest price.

$26 for 3 games isn't so bad. I suppose I could have just pirated it. It's an old game you can't really find in any brick and mortars any longer.

What'd you buy?

Majesty Gold

It's a real-time strategy where you build a town and men and such. Only, you don't have direct control of your units. They go about all their business on their own, killing monsters and exploring the map. You can palce reward flags to explore or attack things to help influence them. They'll make money and then come back to your town and spend it to buy themselves stuff (or they'll just squander it in the untaxable elven lounges and gambling halls, freaking elves...).

I think I was off on the $5 thing or the dude lowered his prices. The same guy is still the cheapest but it's ~$3 a copy + $4 for shipping.

Ah, I played that once.

Once.

It is different.

A friend of mine found it in his collection and reignited interest so we've been playing it over hamachi.

He just finished building a new rig, so we've pretty much already moved on to the new fangled fancy stuff. Company of Heroes is gorgeous.

It's not the concept that I had a problem with.  I just didn't think it was a very good game.

Then again, I was sort of "growing out" of computer games at the time.