I’m thinking of getting a classic Rickenbacker bass so I was looking at some on Ebay. I came across this auction for one. Brand new, 2006, mint condition.
The only thing is, the price is up past more than NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS.
And there is NO explanation at all for this ridiculous price.
And there are five bids on it!!!
And it’s located in China!
And the shady-ass seller has hidden his feedback from viewers!
AND THERE ARE FIVE BIDS ON IT!!!
I don’t get it at all. This bass can be had brand new from Musician’s Friend for less than 2,000. There is absolutely nothing about this one that justifies the ludicrous price. I can’t understand why there are five bids on it. Does anyone have any idea?
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Well, I don’t know nuffin 'bout nuffin, but if the facts are as you state them, then I believe this is simply a front for something else, probably illegal, and the five bidders are in the know. Since no sane person would pay more than four times the retail price, there is no risk of having someone not in the know win it.
It looks like an odd sort of scam. The high bidder has been involved in some other high-bidding for guitars, e.g. this one, where he was at GBP 5,000 against a person with negative feedback.
(You can do a search on what people have bid for in the past in eBay. Try this – and tick the “Include completed listings (last 30 days)” box. It can throw up some very odd patterns like this guy’s.)
Ok, if it’s something illegal like a brick of crack then why doesn’t the seller just call the handfull of guys up and say, “It’s in, gimmee your best price by Saturday night.” Why run the sale through E-bay and have to pay a commission while running the risk of exposure?
I don’t think that can happen. Once bidding starts, the “buy it now option” is supposed to go away. However, what you *will * see is “bidding starts at $99, BIN @ $100” which is rather silly, IMHO.
I’d like to know the answer to this, too. The guitar goes for well under $2000 new. The color, which appears to be Midnight Blue, is readily available. Online stores in the US have the model in stock; not sure about the UK, but I wouldn’t think there’s any kind of shortage, and even if there were, it wouldn’t drive the price up this high. Very fishy.
One thing I can add from personal experience is that the eBay guitar market is FULL of scams. Be EXTREMELY careful buying ANY instrument off eBay. The fake “second chance” offers are particularly bad; you should always confirm such offers with the original seller. I came very close to losing a lot of money to a fake second chance offer on a guitar I desperately wanted. When, thank Og, I wrote to the original seller, he wrote back not only to confirm that the offer was fake but noted that he’d lost $2K to such a scam himself!
This one…I don’t know. If there’s something illegal about it, the seller would obviously have to be very careful to avoid trouble. Perhaps there’s a pool of bidders “in the know” who, should they win, will receive something in addition to the guitar. Anyone else stupid or curious enough to bid and win will just get the guitar. If it’s drugs, then shipping from the UK to the USA would be a real crapshoot. However, the two bids over GBP 5K are from bidders in the UK; the first, lower bids are from bidders in the US and France.
Idiocy is always a possibility. This weekend past, an auction was held in my town to dispose of property purchased by a fellow who had swiped some $77 million from his employers. Seriously, this guy had bought some STUFF. Six airplanes, a helicopter, three pontoon boats, tractors, trucks, semis, untold ATVs and jetskis, sports memorabilia, guns and hunting equipment, TVs…
But people were so hot for this auction that the bidding was ridiculous. A Weber grill that retails for about $380 went for $1300. Shotguns that retail for $200 went for upwards of $900. Senseless. Sometimes, I think, it’s just the fever.
There’s all sorts of idiocy on EBay. It irks me somewhat when there are a slew of a certain item for sale and despite being able to pick up the same item for the same price or less than I bid, someone will still bid against me. I bid back to ensure they’ve done themselves out of a few quid and then choose another from the long list of low priced items :rolleyes:
Didn’t know there was a commission. Anyway, my answer is the same as to most questions in this world: People are stupid. At another message board I frequent, this one guy had found an MP3 player while walking home. What did he do? He started a thread on the message board about it, in case it was one of the 1000 people who hang out there (out of a population of 9 million) who had dropped it. Didn’t even mention what city he had found it in. He hung out at that message board, so that’s where he put up the notice.
At the same message board, we have an auction function for a limited range of specialised merchandise. Many, many, many, many of the users want to auction off nonrelated stuff there, rather than go to one of the big auction sites and get an audience larger by several orders of magnitude. Why? Because that’s where they hang out.
It could be the same deal here. This crackdealer or whatever he is is used to eBay, likes it, and isn’t too bright. I have no doubt this could happen. Criminals are only clever in the movies.
But let’s say it’s nothing shady. What’s the alternative explanation? Why are people bidding $9000 for a $2000 item?
In the case of the current high bidder, chinkblitz, it is a vendetta against Chinese knock-off sellers. Look at his bidding history: all of the sellers he bids on are Chinese sellers of guitars, and most of them are no longer registered with eBay, which is what will happen to this seller. Read the feedback of all the sellers he has bid on; this guitar is a knock-off, a fake Rickenbacker offered to unwitting buyers. Beware!
The simplest explanation, I think, is that the seller has several proxy accounts set up, and is bidding on it himself. The hope is that someone with more dollars than sense sees all the activity, and decides to get in on it. If it works, the seller makes a seven grand profit. If it doesn’t, he buys it from himself and is out the listing fee. Apparently, 7 grand is enough more than the listing fee, and enough people fall for the scam, that he can still turn a profit on it.