EBay

[Big Al]

I have been clearing some more tosh through eBay. Perhaps it is the times we live in but the eBay experience gets worse. The predictability of bidding is as strange as ever but the average of void sales is increasing. I would think I am on 20% who fail to pay for an item bought now. Certainly I do not think it is now worth offering a good car on eBay. You are better using the free classified advert sites and getting genuine buyers without a sales fee. Indeed Ebay really seems to work best for shifting junk these days as you can afford to stick it on at a low starting price. I am seriously looking at my larger stocks of parts Fiat, Subaru, Goggo, Heinkel, Saab etc. and thinking eBay is not the place to sell them. Ebay seems to have descended to a sort of Diamond Free ads option of Amazon's glossy Argos catalogue with a client base of pikey's to match. Still it has its uses but it is not as usefull as it used to be. I have virtually given up looking for stuff to buy on it as much is overpriced buy now stuff and minimal interesting genuine on topic items appear for sale and what does is masked by rubbish marketed with a tenuous link to the area on search. On the stuff I am interested in it would seem that sellers have voted with their feet as there is little of interest for sale. A shame as 7 years ago it was great.

[P50]

Ebay's good for getting perhaps a £1 watch battery or suchlike.

Also good for rare stuff.  Like a Trident brochure. They are as rare as the cars.   I've been to several shows and have spoken to several brochure dealers. Most don't have micro stuff.   One was extremely snooty and said he has "prefered clients" who are first in line for the uber rare stuff.  In short don't bother...

So Ebay seems to be the only place where you have a fighting chance to find the mega rare stuff.  One came up in America and by fluke I won it.  But it could have gone through the roof.  I think the last one went past £200.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270604273755

Sell ordinary stuff to ordinary punters and expect to be messed around.   But rare enthusiats stuff should prove productive and work out OK ..

[Rusty Chrome (Malcolm Parker)]

Having been a member of EBay almost since it first began, I can certainly vouch for the fact that it's not what it was. It's now very much more complicated to search for things on a genuinely international basis from the UK or to search for things from within the UK without getting spurious listings from China and Hong Kong! The diversity of what's on offer also seems to be much narrower, probably because it's now much more hard work to go on and to make a listing.

P50 is right though about the mega rare stuff. Ebay's greatest strength has always been making it much easier to find obscure or mega rare stuff, usually where the interest and the market is very parochial. I used to buy stuff mainly from the USA, New Zealand and Australia where at the time there was literally no market for it.  Perhaps I've been lucky, but in the 13 years or so that I've been using EBay, I've only ever had one serious problem with a purchase, as the vendor wouldn't admit to being at fault I took that to arbitration (Ebay's resolution centre) and eventually got a full refund and an apology. However I've also had rare, fragile items sent to me from abroad wrapped only in brown paper where I've still had no idea how they've made it through the postal system in one piece! Most vendors seem a little bit more professional these days or perhaps bubble wrap is easier to get hold of.