Well excuuuse me for not being a rocket scientist, and having the nerve to want to look at a microcar even though I wasn't born in jolly old England.
All I was doing was politely pointing out an error in the post that prevented the readers from being able to realize the benefit of the intended communication.
May I be allowed to humbly point put that several of the ensuing rants make the illogical, unsupportable and prejudicial assumption that anyone that lives off shore from your continent that is expressing an interest in viewing cars on EBay cannot be a true enthusiast, and is only in it for the money? Can they not want it for themselves?
I am a true enthusiast of only average means, who is guilty of the cardinal sin of not being born on your shores. I have never sold a single microcar, but value my interest highly enough to have taken 4 days out of my life and travelled 3000 miles last week to be part of Microcar history in the making. Where were your country's true blue, dyed in the wool, holier than thou, and more deserving enthusiasts then?
Now I see myself referred to as a "chum" after pre paying more than $1000 for services in good faith, providing instant live photos, pictures, telephone calls, and even follow up detective work on who the buyers were for 3 of your non US members when micros that they had a previous interest in crossed the block. All done out of pure enthusiasm, whilst not being enabled to buy anything due to the high prices at Bruce's auction.
If you must have a scapegoat that badly- why not make it Bruce, who has introduced interest in microcars to more people, and saved more of them than anyone else on the planet, or Jim who spent the whole time devoted to getting the live feed working. After all, they are foreigners that have bought microcars that originated from outside of their country also.
With the relatively high value of the GBP to USD, you have less to complain about than we do in the states, yet we don't crucify the English investors that are so enabled to "steal" our rust free California cars to resell at a profit back on your shores. Ditto the French for your fellow citizens taking of similar advantage in their country.
Fundamentally my argument. This is a world interest now. Once the cars escape from Dorksville, Carrotshire. they are open to a world market. That market creates a price exclusive of national clubs etc and a value gradient based on shipping costs. You do not want to pay the access price then your not in the game unless you go to Dorksville to find further unknown cars that might be under-priced.
I am not sure I can quite go for Bruce 'rescuing' any cars, but what do I know. Perhaps it depends what you mean by rescue. I mean stuff that was due to be scrapped unless someone acted. He certainly made some machines accessible. What he has done is concentrated a world wide resource into one place. He looks to have reaped a reward for his ability to do that allied to his clear abilities to cut the crap in business and successfully publicize an event. Quite a few folk made good dosh from acting between Dorksville and Bruce's need to go there in the build up of this collection. Many of them used to have a hobby but decided to realign themselves to be more conscious of the values than be true to minimalist pursuits. Is that Bruce's fault? His auction was a natural product of predators trading on cash value as someone has to be top dog. Bruce invested more money than anyone else, I think, irrespective of his motives for doing so. So presumably part of the Auction was to establish who is the new top dog, with the same proviso? Indeed if the new main buyers are indeed enthusiasts then Carrotshire's enthusiasts just got priced out of the game, which is why eBay is not working for them. You have to get out and physically search for the stuff again. Incredibly it still seems to be out there.
I believe the Messerschmitt Owners Club dropped the no export ban rule some decade ago. It was unenforceable not least since some of the worst offenders were the Clubs own officials! This was even printed as a quote and investment tip in one serious National paper's investments section! But of course the MOC has been a Limited liability corporation rather than a club for about the same period. Innocence was sold in the deal, as it very often is.