Chinese Pens On Ebay Price Variation

[Katzer]

Hi all

 

I noticed that for many Jinhao and other Chinese makes, for the same model, the price can be $1,$3 ... $10.

 

For those who sampled the offerings at various price points, does the price correlates with quality/defects/etc?

 

Cheers,

 

Erez

[Zookie]

I picked up several Jinhao X 450s for .99 USD each, shipping included. The thing is, they weren't listed as Jinhao pens. I just happen to know what they look like.

Anyway, the quality was just fine, the sellers I've dealt with before, and there was no problem.

[maus930]

I probably have a hundred or so Chinese pens purchased on Ebay --Nearly all have been workable ens with plusrs and minus -- I have nevr gotten a Jinhao or a Baoer that was not a good to excellent writer regardless pf cost

[Katzer]

Thank you for the feedback!

[dcwaites]

It's up to the vendor to put on whatever markup they want.

That will be made of the cost to them of the pen, the cost of shipping it to you (including processing your payment and packing the pen), and how much profit they want.

The larger vendors will be able to buy the pens at a lower cost, will have low-paid lackeys to do the grunt work, and because they sell so many, will accept a lower profit per unit.

Smaller vendors won't have those advantages, and so will have higher costs per unit.

Also, some people are greedy.

I tend to go with vendors that have sold many, many pens, that have an almost perfect feedback record. These are not usually the cheapest, but are usually the most reliable and most willing to fix any problems. (I once bought 3 inexpensive pens from a vendor, and one of the boxes was empty. The vendor replaced it immediately without question.)

I have doubts about the product from any vendor selling a pen at 1/3 or 1/5 of the most common price of a particular pen.