As a natural born collector (of things both cheap and expensive), I really do lament the loss of collector expertise - it used to be that if you were willing to put the time in scouring flea markets, thrift stores, pawn shops, garage sales, etc. you’d be rewarded for your time and expertise by running into a great “they didn’t know what they had!” find. These days, every numbnuts hops on ebay with everything down to the ephemera level and that quite simply doesn’t happen anymore.
The one thing it’s good for now is trading “prebay” war stories…“oh man, in the summer of '83 I was heading through Tucson on business and decided to kill some time by stopping at this out-of-the way flea market. And there, tucked among the dimestore novels and pez dispensers…oh man, you’re not going to believe this…they had a…”
Only a small part of eBay is for collectors of stuff. In the past 6 months, I have purchased ink cartridges, coffee beans, drill and router bits, a vacuum cleaner filter and stencil cutting machine. In all cases of the above, I paid a lot less including the shipping charges than I could have found any of the items locally or through regular internet retailers.
I’m glad you’ve had luck, but once I factor in shipping and dubious return possibilities, it always seems like I can only get something on e-Bay for a little bit less than the new cost. Those people who used to be caught with a bunch of ink cartridges, or a machine they don’t need or whatever know that they can get a market price on e-Bay. So the great deals on used things don’t seem to be there for me. I do think it’s bringing down costs, I just haven’t been able to make it work for me much.
My grandpa spent 30 or 40 years slowly building a clock and pocketwatch collection, one weekend at a time at the Los Angeles area flea markets. He would buy broken, run-down (but originally well-made) pieces and clean and fix them. He had a whole room dedicated to them in his house, his Clock Room, that he kept locked up away from us kids, until we got older. He sold a few pieces on eBay in his last couple years, but to my knowledge never bought or even looked for anything to buy on there. I think that’s telling.
Exactly. I don’t use eBay for collecting, but most often for business purchases. I’ve bought plenty of photo-related gear on eBay at much cheaper prices than I would get at camera stores. In 1999, I bought a used Nikon F5 (which was retailing for about $3000-$3300 at the time) for $2000 from Hong Kong. It came in absolutely pristine shape (didn’t look like any frames were put through it) and was my workhorse during my film shooting years. I’ve since purchased film scanners, lenses, lens filters, etc., all arriving in the condition specified. It’s a great resource.
Craigslist is fine for purchases that are too expensive or inconvenient to ship. However, I find Craigslist sellers to be a bit optimistic on the value of their products. Most items I’m looing forward are priced significantly higher on Craigslist. eBay (and searching completed auctions for successful bids) gives the buyer a great pricing and negotiating resource for all types of sales – not just ones completed on eBay.
I quit using it about 5 years ago. I had already experienced some transactions as a buyer and as a seller that weren’t to my satisfaction, but this one broke the camel’s back. I found some ROM: Spaceknight comics (I know, I know) on there that claimed to be MINT. I emailed the guy and asked him if they really were mint, and if he understood what that meant, because I actually already had crappy copies of them and just wanted the new/mint-looking copies for the childhood nostalgia. I even included the description of what a “mint” comic is from comicspriceguide.com. He wrote back and assured me that they were indeed mind, and that they were bagged and boarded the day they were bought-- when they were brand new-- and haven’t been touched since.
I got them and they were in even worse shape than the ones I already had. First of all they weren’t even bagged and boarded when I got them, so there’s lie #1. They were all faded and wrinkled and a few of them even had some water damage. One of them had coupons clipped out of it. I wrote the guy basically just asking what the deal was, and his entire response was, “if you give me negative feedback I give you negative feedback.”
Right then and there I said fuck eBay and I’ve scarcely so much as browsed it since then.
I guess pawn shops will disappear. Why pawn off your boombox when you can sell it (or something else) on E-bay?
We now have stores specializing in Ebay sells. You drop off a cardboard box full of junk, and they will list and sell it for you. That is a new phenomenon.
Some people now have less junk in their homes. They know that it is no use saving all that old furniture, that baby crib, those toys, for when their kids will have their own homes. The kids, when they start out, will buy something off Craigslist or Ebay instead.
Some people have MORE junk in their homes, because they “might sell it all for a profit on Ebay, if they get 'round to it”. Those hoarders never take the trouble of checking what their stuff will be worth. Do you really want to hang on to that set of glassware, and let it take up precious living space for years, to sell it someday, if you saw that an identical set went for 12 bucks?
Sales through the Dutch version of Ebay (Marktplaats.nl) were worth about 2 billion in 2007. Some of that was new stuff, but most of it will be second hand. I guess all that stuff from attics now doesn’t go to a landfill, but adds value to the economy, even if it replaces newly bought stuff (which is great for the environment, anyway).
eBay really, really screwed up when they changed the feedback system. Yeah, it was broken, but they should have changed it so that both feedbacks became public at the same time. Many sellers didn’t bother leaving feedback for buyers, and many others held feedback hostage.
It’s hard to remember since it was a few years ago, but I’m pretty sure it was over 95%, but he had thousands of feedbacks, compared to my ~40, which was one of the things that pissed me off to no end; giving him a negative would’ve been a drop in the ocean, but him giving me one would’ve been a scarlett letter.
Oh I don’t know. I’ve had many hundreds of transactions involving PayPal on and off eBay and nary a problem has occurred. PayPal has even helped recover money for me a few times. I much prefer paying through PayPal than giving out my credit card number to anonymous sellers on the net.
As to eBay, it’s really the only true pure play involving the internet. Other businesses have certainly leveraged the internet, such as Amazon and other e-tailers, but eBay connects all buyers to all sellers of virtually anything all around the world. That is truly amazing if you think about it. Anyone could’ve done it, but eBay was first and they totally dominate their space because of that. I’ve certainly used eBay to complete collections that I have, but eBay (along with Amazon) also provides me with price-points whenever I’m looking to buy something. I may not end up buying on eBay but it’s a reference source for me. Since you can also look at the sales prices in closed transactions you can get a rough idea of the market prices of stuff, collectible or otherwise.
A guy told me that you should only buy from people with a lot of sales and high ratings. If that is true how can someone start out selling? I suppose some people will buy even if you are new.
A lot of people build up their feedback by buying, and then start selling.
I know there are people with paypal horrorstories… but its like anything else. Some people could use it for 10 years without any incidents, some one else can have something go wrong on their second transaction and be done with it.
Yeah, that’s been a real problem. I used to use eBay more than I do now, but I had a couple of nightmare feedback situations which really turned me off of it. One was I bought a huge set of Melmac, settings for eight plus platters, gravy boats, serving bowls, the works. Paid a lot of money for it, including, I thought, insurance: their price quote said “Including shipping and insurance…” Then the seller must’ve figured that since it was “plastic,” it didn’t need any packing material, and stacked it all up, bare, in a box. One sheet of newspaper on the bottom of the box, one sheet laid over the top of the stack. It made the trip remarkably well, though: only the two platters on the bottom of the stack were shattered. I contacted them, they said I should’ve bought insurance. I said, but you’d said it was included. They said, you still have to check the box. I said, how is that “included”? They said they’d refund me for the platters. Since I paid a little over a hundred for a set that included 120 pieces, they said that proportionally they’d refund me a dollar for each of the platters. I said how do you figure a platter is worth as much as a saucer? They said, 120 pieces, around a $120, a dollar apiece. At this point I said, you know what, I’m shipping it all back, give me a full refund or I’ll take it up with eBay. They refused to offer a full refund. So eventually I left them bad feedback. (Wouldn’t you?) They then left retaliatory feedback saying that I was a liar and a thief and a scam artist and that no one should sell to me. :eek: !!!
How do you respond to that in a feedback format? I just dropped eBay almost entirely for over a year. Then I bought some bamboo rhizomes–I was helping a friend plant a new garden. Within less than 48 hours, the seller lodged a non-paying-bidder complaint. I emailed back that I hadn’t had a chance to pay yet, it had only been a couple days. I suggested that it wasn’t proper eBay etiquette to lodge such a complaint so soon after an auction ended, certainly not without contacting by email first. Her response? She sent me three bamboo rhizomes: all of them very clearly very, very dead. Three dead little sticks, for which I’d paid almost $20 including shipping.
I used to be like this with used CD stores. My co-worker would go in with me and she’d be like “Mark can’t you just ask the guy (the store clerk) for what you want and he can look it up and see if they got it?”
Well you COULD do that, but I liked to spend 30 minutes or so looking anyway. Besides I wouldn’t know if I wanted it, unless I saw it.
As long as you ONLY buy with a credit card or paypal that is FUNDED through a credit card you are safe. If the transaction goes south just dispute it. You’ll be fine.
Just make sure if you pay by Paypal you paying from a credit card and NOT your bank account or paypal balance, 'cause then you don’t get the same protection.
I search Ebay (USA, UK, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands) daily/regularly for antique motorcycle parts, old pocket watches (high jewel count, American-made only!) and a few other things, yesterday I spent over $200.00 on Stainless steel Norton Commando parts (SS Commando parts are made in small batches and can be hard to find).
I only use Ebay for oddball stuff, I get the more “normal” stuff through the usual sources. When I look at something I factor in the shipping and count that as part of the price, alot of folks don’t and they overpay.
Yeah, he had a lot more power than you did, in this situation. I figure that if someone has thousands of feedbacks, he’s bound to get some negatives, and I don’t really hold that against him. You just got burned by this guy, plain and simple.
eBay used to have feedback for both buyers and sellers. Due to people (especially sellers) not leaving feedback, or abusing feedback, eBay decided to quit allowing sellers to leave feedback to buyers. See Cisco’s problem with the seller for just why this was sometimes a problem.
Paypal, in my experience, actually offers pretty good customer protection. I bought something a few months back that was essentially broken, and the seller refused to refund the money. The Paypal dispute was resolved within a couple days (at the very most, it may have even been within 24 hours), and I got a refund within a week.
Compare this to the time I had my debit card compromised several years ago. I didn’t actually get the money back for MONTHS afterward, to the point where I was confused when my bank account was a few hundred dollars higher than I’d expected.
Nope, you aren’t the only one. I’ve never found anything I wanted on Ebay that was available locally that I couldn’t buy new locally for cheaper. I was never part of any auction that didn’t sell for only a couple of percent less than the ‘purchase now’ price. It wasn’t worth my time for the difference.
The only time I use it is for items that aren’t sold locally. I go directly to the person’s online store and pay whatever the price they are offering it for. I hate the fact that for the small items that I’m buying I’m essentially paying double because of shipping. I’d hate to buy anything big!
And of course now that I’ve spouted off, I go and check Ebay for a turbo upgrade I’ve been looking at locally for my car and find it for less than half the price including shipping! D’oh!:smack:
