I have just received 3 pens from a seller Gotoschool who are based in China and are an eBay shop.

I paid $20 including shipping, the quality of the products is exceptional and service is better than I have had from any other retailer or manufacturer

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Gotoschool888

That is a price I was told would be fair for the matched PAIR of Golden Quills....

I recall the pair

d

Al Mayman sold a golden quill with the sticker on the end for ~700 if I remember correctly - and it was blue.

Just a reference point

George

Having experienced the desire for "a bargain" myself, I can certainly understand the non-sniper's hope that somehow no-one else will take notice of the item that you have bid early and low on. But they always notice. Thus my greatest chance of winning an item is to figure out what the maximum I am willing to pay for it is, and snipe it. I tend to make the decision early on in the auction, set the sniping software, and forget about it. I don't always win. In those cases I feel a momentary pang, remember that I bid the most I was willing to pay (always remember to figure shipping into that maximum,) and move on.

Like David I, I just don't understand the depiction of sniping as "cheating," or somehow unethical. eBay is pretty much a zero-sum game, it is by definition winner take all. Personally, I can't understand why anyone would make any bid before the last minute of an auction, but people are free to do what they want. I'm no social darwinist free-market zealot by any means, but implying that I am somehow cheating by placing a bid within the constraints of the rules established by eBay because you don't like losing seems to be asking the wrong question. I don't like losing either, but this is an arena where only one person wins. Or would you prefer that you get the section and I get the nib?

I am not a super pen collector. I buy pens to use. I look at the arguments in this thread about e-bay and sniping and there are too many words to read on a quiet Sunday morning. David, why are you spending so much time to respond to a poster who has only 8 or 9 posts on FPN? You have worked out business model on e-bay for you to successfully buy many pens and sell a few. I have had at least one pen that I was bidding one taken away by your higher bid, how dare you!
I buy on e-bay. I haven't always got what is promised and this has happened more often with pens than with other items. I will not bid on an item until I know how much it will cost to ship and if I email a question and do not get a response, I will not bid.
I do not like the nibblers. I do use sniping software, not all of the time, but often. I always pay with a Credit Card through PayPal. If a seller only wants the checking account option--I tend to back out.
I bid my limit in both real auctions and on e-bay. If someone has more money to spend, then I shop again.
If I saw I pen I wanted at a website(like David's or any of the many other pen sites out there) I buy the pen there. If I want to buy some old crusty pen that might never be more than parts, then I play at e-bay.
Mary

Well said.

I enjoy ebay and I enjoy the sniping. As a seller I prefer to have early bids, as a buyer I snipe.

Why collect pens? Why take walks in the park? Why court kind n' pretty ladies?

Because i enjoy doing so.

I don't dismiss or devalue someone based on his low number of posts on any website, just as i do not worship someone for his high number of posts on a website. I engaged in dialogue with someone about an issue raised. I addressed his issues. He "addressed" me suggesting "bleats and illogic" while addressing none of the points i raised to answer issues in a dialogue he'd initiated. He raised new issues. So i addressed them, too. Perhaps he learned something. Perhaps he did not. I certainly learned something of human nature watching his responses. Perhaps folks reading the exchanged learned something about ebay bidding and about views of it. So very many reasons to spend time responding, no?



Tough crowd. Sell 1000 vintage in a year or so and folks cite a "few" Although most of them are sold not on ebay, thank heavens.




No offense I assure you. I lose far more than i win. I mean... i know "it takes a village" and all, but really i do like adding nice pens to my collection. Evil Selfish David, i know, i know






Sounds like we have some good things in common

regards

david

Glory, hallelujah!!! That's it in a nutshell. Thank you.



Yup, and nibblers are the main reason for using a snipe service. The idea of two (or more) bidders standing toe-to-toe and slugging it out in a manly (sorry, aggressive ladies!) bid-over-bid exhaustion contest just doesn't have any reasonable validity in the primarily time-limited Fleabay auction format. By the way, I also bid early. Usually days before the auction closing time, I set my snipe limit. I then check it after the close. Nine times out of ten, I "lose". Note that I place my snipe bid at approximately ten percent over the maximum of what I really wish to pay (though still usually well under "brick and mortar 'market'"). If I'm forced to pay up to near my max bid, then actually I "lose". But I do this so that I don't have to lose sleep over the "what if I'd bid just a few pennies more" syndrome (after the fact manifestation of the same motivation that inspires nibblers in real time). And I realize that, over the course of many, many auctions, I'll pay a bit less than my max in the ones I do "win", and so over the long term the "ten percent over" will get whittled away to near zero. Well, just my take, your mileage may vary.

If you were to read my feedback you'd see that I've had about 130 great experiences and 3 bad ones. Being tarred with false negative feedback is the one thing I don't like about Ebay. Two of these were dishonest sellers who retaliated against me for my feedback. (For example, one was the seller of a "like new" Oxford English Dictionary for $150 that was yellowed, battered and scuffed cover, filthy edges, and strongly smelling of mildew -- I ended up getting a refund only after Ebay ordered her to give it, and now I'm marked forever as "dishonest" for my trouble. The happy ending was a new copy from Amazon for $30 more than Miss Stinkybook's.)
The third was a buyer of a hygrometer. I didn't know whether it would work, so I put "no warranties offered or returns allowed" in the very short auction listing. Because I made the mistake of leaving the buyer good feedback right after he paid, however, he was able to try to coerce me to accept a return (and pay for all the shipping) when (he claimed) it didn't work, by threatening me with bad feedback. I just took the bad feedback rather than let him get away with that sort of thing, and told him in Anglo Saxon terms what I thought of him.
Except for these feedback system traps you have to watch for, Ebay is amazing. I've bought lots of weird things I would not have found in stores, mostly from civilized and honest people. I can take a pen I restored but don't want and turn it into a $50 contribution to charity at no cost to me but the pen, using their charity auction system. The winner gets a pen he likes and bids more than he would have in a commercial auction (or so I theorize). This way of capturing the value of the pen and triggering the donation (the amount over market value the winner pays) from someone to a charity he'd never heard of is unique to Ebay. I can still sell a few for profit and make enough to cover another old pen or some sacs.
A lady in Virginia bought a century-old Panama hat from me -- it was an annoying closet-eater to be forever moved out of the way to me, but to her it was the Panama hat with a purple band told of in a song she loved as a child and would have played at her wedding, where her groom was to wear the hat. Without Ebay there would never have been any transaction of any kind between me and this remote stranger. That sort of thing makes Ebay an unprecedented and wonderful economic phenomenon.
Use Ebay for a while and you'll confirm what my grammar school English teachers told us: how someone writes tells you a lot about him or her. If the auction listing insults your intelligence by being long on subjective praise ("GOREGUS!!! BAUTIFUL!!! LIKE NEW!!!! AMAZING!!!!!!") and short on facts, with a blurry photo that doesn't show the clip, well.... caveat Ebayer. Even if they don't have evil hearts, really stupid people don't know HOW to be honest. I've come to regard bad Ebay English as the equivalent of walking into a store that smells like garbage and has dirty, messy shelves.
Thanks for asking -- I've been wanting to get that bad feedback heartburn out of my chest. It's amazing how annoying a slur by some no-business, rat-soup-eating nobody can be. They don't give you enough room to respond with the facts.... Grrrrr!

I don't know about others ...

But one of the things I don't like about some sellers (notice I did not say all sellers - don't mean to offend anyone) is that they post pics of the pen

under a bright light

Now this is great - because the pens look bright, nice, and shiny

But the problem is - there are possibilities of scuff marks, minor dings on the pen that are masked away by the bright light on the photos

Anyway, other than this - I guess if you take a good look at the seller's feedback, and you get immediate responses to questions from the seller - that it is worth it

Lighting is VERY important matrixseg...

When dealing online, some of the eBay sellers are inexperienced when trying to place the best face on a pen. But it's different when you are in a venue, in person surrounded by inventory, expertise, and knowledge. This weekend at the Chicago Pen Show, the lighting of the grand ballroom was absolutely terrible. Low light, fuzzy walls and the like made the unexperienced very unaware. Mistakes in buying certain items, discoveries in flaws, scratches, and so on, were a common complaint from many customers I've spoken with. Those veterans who actually knew what to use brought their own jewelers magnifying glasses, high intensity LED lights, and some of them took careful time when checking out merchandise.

Everything has a risk involved of course and eBay is not a place where you have the opportunity as at a pen show. But the majority of good sellers online have made considerable effort to perfect the lighting, focus the lens, capture the shot, summarize the whole of the item, and bring a presentation which leaves no possible doubt what you're bidding on.

I guess this might be preaching to the choir so to speak, it's the variables that determines the person. Seller's feedback and fast responses to questions help. It's hard to satisfy everyone once you reach a certain plateau in your eBay experience. Some sellers though well established, have to provide a higher than quality service for customers online because of the risks. We have an honor code system here. Not everyone abides to it. It makes good folks like us look bad for sure. The guarantee you have as a seller must be at the highest possible priority to the buyer, the detail and work you put into each item must reflect who you are, and that will command the respect in a business relationship.

Hope that helps.

Shamouti

Another use of sniping is for those of us who work where we don't have access to a computer that allows eBay, so we can't enter a manual bid. If I'm out in the field, then I can still be (virtually) bidding. Also it helps prevent over-bidding at the last minute. I have to think what I really want to pay and then leave it alone. That one click bidding makes me perseverative!

I've recently won four auctions and have bid on approximately thirty. One of the pens was advertised misleadingly. The seller profusely apologized and offered to refund me, but for the amount I paid and the trouble it would have been, I thanked him for being willing to refund and let it go. I've received two pens from England, and those two sellers were awesome. But I know that I was the highest bidder up until under a minute on a bunch of auctions. You just have to decide your max and let it go. The worst thing that has happened since doing business on the bay was receiving a phishing email allegedly from paypal. I just got a Wearever today for $2.25 and $2 shipping in decent shape, so every once and a while, you can catch something the professional ebay buyers miss. Some of the people I bid against literally had placed hundreds of bids in the past thirty days. Competition is stiff. Whatever will be will be. I have more important things to worry about...

Okay,

So it depends on how well you 've asked the seller about the item. Is that what you think?

Shamouti

I have used Ebay for a long time and have over 480 transactions with 100 % positive rating. Of all the things i have bought and sold i find vintage pens the most troubling. In a nutshell: 1) Photographs are usually too poor to judge pen condition well. 2) Condition is more often than not not inaccurately described, even by those who know true condition but purposefully dont tell you the whole story. I have so far found much better pen deals on here or from well known pen dealers 3) You have no idea what you are getting until you get the pen in your hand. From a financial standpoint pens you by on Ebay are a risky investment. Several times i have received a pen or group of pens on Ebay, opened the mailing container and thought, ` Oh great ! Ive been ripped off.`