OK
We’ve heard from those of you collecting old books. There are enough of you guys that someone somewhere sets prices for them.
But what about us other guys. Like me.Who sets prices on old animal clippers.
Probably no one.
I have to rely on the seller to be honest.Use that information and a little common sense to decide what I am going to bid.
Boris is really right in my case. I had no idea what they were worth so I had no idea what to bid. The only thing I knew was what it would cost for new ones.
These are old.
They are in working condition.
The blades are worthless and one has an adjustment screw missing.
Blades are still available for one of the clippers and at $20. a pair I think I got a deal.
The other clipper is an Oster,for those of you not familiar with clippers Oster is probably the biggest name in clippers in the US.
Good chance I will find blades and the adjustment screw even though that model is not advertised in any of the farm supply catalogs I have.
So even though I didn’t know my mind I did pretty well.
Thanks for the discussion.
I learned a lot.
I have, sitting on my desk right now, a brand new copy of Amelie on DVD. I looked on Borders.com. They want $24 + shipping. I called Border’s on the corner here and they want $29 + tax. I looked on Ebay and bid $20. My bid started at $8.99 and I got it for $17.50 + $4.00 shipping = $21.50. That’s how it is done. Step 1) Determine what the price is by asking or estimating. If you wanna buy used sheep shears or used chewing gum you send the seller an e-mail asking specific sheep shear questions about the adjusting bolt, flavor etc. Step 2) Subtract the shipping and the hassle fees. Bid that amount. In my specific example, I could have gotten the DVD for around $30. Subtracting $4 shipping and $6 hassle fee gives me a nice round $20. If someone bids over that, I guess they don’t mind the hassle so much or they want it more or there’s not a local Border’s and UPS won’t deliver to their home/office or they’re just stupid.
That being said, there’s something to not blowing your whole wad right out of the gate. There are auctions where you just know that whatever you bid, someone else is going to want to WIN WIN WIN at whatever the cost. These, I think, are situations where there really WON’T be a second opportunity at whatever it is. In these situations it might be a good idea to snipe as it forces EVERYONE to decide on a final dollar value and bid that amount in the final seconds of the auction.
Okay, I’ll try to give another perspective on this.
There’s an item that you really want. You only want to pay $100 for it, so you put your proxy amount in as “$100”.
At the last second, a sniper comes in and bids $100.01 - winning the auction. Are you honestly telling me that you wouldn’t have paid $100.02?
Maximum amounts are good, but they cannot be 100% accurate - there will never really be a way to determine if you’d be willing to pay 15 more cents, or maybe just 1 more dollar, unless you were physically active in a live auction, and could say, in the moment, “that’s enough, I won’t pay that much.” Unless your bank account had exactly $100.00 in it, I’m willing to bet you’d pay those extra 2 pennies.
I bid so that I recieve the item at a bargain price. I start low so I can increase my bid{ if I want to.}
Say I know an item is worth $100.00 I watch the bidding for a while to get the feel of the other bidders. If they aren’t that serious the bidding will be low.If someone stays frontrunner on the item,that doesn’t happen often,I’ll watch until the last day and decide if I’m going to bid. During the last 5 hours when the item is listed in going , going, gone, the serious bidders show up.
It just depends on how much someone wants it.
And how much I want it.