Friday, May 15, 2009

E-bay frustrations

I have had some frustrating experiences on E-bay recently. I guess the first one is not just recently, it seems to be becoming a trend. I have seen a bunch of lots offered with 1-2 items that I am interested in, along with a ton of common material that is of no interest to me. This is frustrating, since I either have to overpay for the item I want, and hope to make back enough when I sell the remainders, or just pass on the item. This probably even makes sense from the sellers standpoint. Having a few better (or more interesting) items in the lot will probably get more people bidding on it, therefore giving the seller a better price. But, from a buyer's standpoint, it is terrible. I would rather be able to bid on just the items I want, rather than the lot of duplicates.

The second frustrating thing is that I have been getting outbid on nearly every lot I bid on these past few weeks. There was a set of third coins tete-beche sheets up for sale (each sheet listed separately). While I already have almost 2 full sets, a few of the sheets had differences in the margin perforations (one or 2 edges imperf) then the ones I already own. Since I started collecting plate blocks with margin varieties, I thought I could pick up some of the ones I was missing in these auctions, without having to buy a complete set to just get one new variety. However, I think someone was after a complete set, because I was outbid at the last second on every single one I bid on, despite not bidding myself until ~10 seconds were left in the auction.

I am still watching ~15 items, but most of those are just plate blocks that I am interested in, but not willing to pay the buy it now price. These are all store inventory items, and they have been on my watch list for a few months now. I figure eventually the seller will drop his prices. We shall see.

On another note, looks like I will be going to Jerusalem for work in the middle of June. It doesn't look like I will have any free days in my schedule, but I hope to still meet some of the stamp dealers and collectors over there that I have been corresponding with for the past few years.

5 comments:

howard said...

Enjoy Israel.

I use a service, Auction stealer, that will allow me to Snipe with 3 sec. left rather than 10. Of course sniping doesn't help when someone has placed a bid in higher than your maximum.

Adam said...

I assume you need to pay for the service? What do they charge?

howard rotterdam said...

free for the first 3 or 4 bids a month and about $35 for the year with unlimitd snipping. I'm not exactly sure.

howard rotterdam said...

sorry.

I checked - 15 free per month up to 10 sec.

unlimited for $70 per year up to 3 sec.

C Gidding said...

Adam,

I use www.esnipe.com to place last minute bids. It at least saves the time and problems to be online when an item is closing. You either get it or you don't. I find activity on EBay very low and not much really good material listed.

Curtis