Ebay Tips

[OcalaFlGuy]

I sometimes feel that bidding up a pen can discourage other possible buyers. Sometime if I see a pen that has zero bids I'll go ahead and throw out my highest bid in hope of making other potential buyers think this pen will be over their budget.

 

I'm not meaning to diss you Brian but that wouldn't dissuade me for a second unless your bid is higher than what I'm willing to pay and then you've only Saved me the effort of setting up the snipe or checking my schedule to see if I can hand fire it.

 

Again, not meant towards you but I just laugh at those who bid early. They are only showing some of their cards early and gaining exactly NOTHING for having done so. As long as their posted bids are below what I've Already Decided I want to pay, that head shot is still on the fly in those last seconds.

 

 

Can be tedious, but one thing I like to do is just search "fountain pen" and sort by "time: ending soonest", at random (read: not peak) hours. Have turned up some fun stuff, but you gotta sort through a lot of crud to get there.

 

There were 1300 auction listings closing from 9 AM today until midnight tonight. That yielded 86 items on today's Sunday Fleabay Pick List. [EDIT] Items from a search of "Fountain pen".

 

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

Edited June 1, 2014 by OcalaFlGuy

[Brian C]

 

I'm not meaning to diss you Brian but that wouldn't dissuade me for a second unless your bid is higher than what I'm willing to pay and then you've only Saved me the effort of setting up the snipe or checking my schedule to see if I can hand fire it.

 

Again, not meant towards you but I just laugh at those who bid early. They are only showing some of their cards early and gaining exactly NOTHING for having done so. As long as their posted bids are below what I've Already Decided I want to pay, that head shot is still on the fly in those last seconds.

 

 

 

There were 1300 auction listings closing from 9 AM today until midnight tonight. That yielded 86 items on today's Sunday Fleabay Pick List. [EDIT] Items from a search of "Fountain pen".

 

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

No offense taken. That's why I threw it out there. To see what others thought.

[amk]

I occasionally type in "vintage fountain pen" or "old fountain pen" and look at everything from the cheapest up - just sometimes a murky shot and poorly described pen will find you a sumgai (waterman lady patricia for 10 euros).

 

I also use the 'located in EU' option to exclude US located pens (too expensive in postage for those of us over here) in general browsing. (For a few very special pens I don't care.)

 

On pens that are starting at a reasonable price I often bid early at the asking price or two notches up (eg EUR 4.20 on a EUR 4 start price) and sometimes find I'm the only bidder. I have got some rather nice pens this way.

[Gump]

You can use the minus sign to exclude specific keywords from an otherwise broad search.

I like to do this to pare down the number of results.

For example

 

PFM -legacy

 

poseidon -noodlers -noodler's

 

I'm certain more sophisticated syntax is available, but I've never dug in.

 

Regards, greg

 

How did I never know this? I always excluded pens outside the US to avoid all the Chinese stuff. Excluding baoer, jinhao, hero, picasso cut 3,000 listings out of my general "fountain pen" auction search.

[white_lotus]

I think it's important to know all the variables:

 

How much something *may* or typically goes for on ebay.

Whether you're willing to pay that much.

Whether you want that pen.

 

I presume that someone that bids wants the pen.

 

But if you don't know the approximate ebay value you won't know whether it's worthwhile to bid or your chances of winning whether you bid early or late. I think there's lots of people who bid who only want something really cheap. So, Brian knowing the value of a pen can bid early and maybe often win. Others who also know the value may be willing to pay more, or someone who has no idea of value but says "I must have that pen", may well bid more.

 

But if all you're willing to pay is $35 for an unrestored Vacumatic, you won't be winning many auctions.

 

Also, bid on black pens obviously.

[william2001]

Second-hand markets such as eBay sell counterfeit pens, so you should always be careful when you purchase a pen.

There is an article on counterfeit pens, but I don't know where it is...

Parker Sonnet is one of the most counterfeited pens, so you should be especially be careful when you are shopping for a Sonnet.

Or just buy it directly from a Parker online website store.

-William Park

[Tylerjordan]

I sometimes feel that bidding up a pen can discourage other possible buyers. Sometime if I see a pen that has zero bids I'll go ahead and throw out my highest bid in hope of making other potential buyers think this pen will be over their budget.

Interesting tactic although from my experience eBay only lets you bid the lowest amount (say $0.99 at the beginning of an auction) and uses anything above the minimum bid as a auto-bid number (so if I bid $50 on the currently $0.99 pen it would only place a $0.99 bid and keep the $50 as my highest auto-bid). Is there some workaround that you use for this tactic?

 

My general tactic is simply to search 'vintage / antique fountain pen' and search auctions ending soonest and then switch over to BIN price+shipping lowest and see if anything neat shows up for a low amount.

 

Every now and then, as other people have mentioned, I'll search for a specific brand and omit a letter or metathesise some letters. Sheaffer --> Shaeffer

[ajha1970]

what is the authenticity of MB pens in e bay?, how to cross check once you receive item?, what I heard that replica from China are quiet good and with Original Nib unit, so difficult to distinguish,

Please help and provide info of some good seller.

Regards,

[Brian C]

Just made an offer on a buy it now for a Kullock piece from penpartsstore. My offer was for half the asking price. They accepted it. It might have just been that item or they might might take low offers. Cheaper way to get Kullock parts and pens. Shipping is cheaper and faster as well.

[vikramguliya]

How to identify fake product in ebay/

[Gloucesterman]

 

How did I never know this? I always excluded pens outside the US to avoid all the Chinese stuff. Excluding baoer, jinhao, hero, picasso cut 3,000 listings out of my general "fountain pen" auction search.

 

I think it's referred to as Boolean logic. it allows one to include or exclude specific qualifying terms and narrow a search. Google and other search engines use it. You can probably find out more about it in the "Advanced" tab for search engines.

[bsenn]

Last month I was Sumgai for this one:

A $0.99 (+$2.32 shipping) Parker VS in need of some TLC. A new pressure bar, sac, and a polish and Bob's your uncle. Writes smooth, wet, and reasonably fine. Listed under Collectibles, Advertising, Other. Title "Vintage Parker Pen, Silver Lid". Nowhere in the title or listing did it say fountain.

 

If you want to work at it you can find pens in listings that don't say fountain and/or don't have a brand listed. Instead of fountain some say plunger pen, lever pen, vacuum pen, piston pen, etc. It takes time to go through thoroughly, I don't do it too often (although glad I did two weeks ago, got a very, very clean golden vac "plunger fill" for under $30 shipped).

 

Another thing to watch is Newly Listed in Buy it Now. Sometimes good pens pop up way under their normal auction price (like the Cisele Bruce pointed out recently for something like $75).

 

I was buying more pens than is good for me anyway, now that you know my secrets its someone else's turn.

 

Brian

[Cryptos]

I saw a Sheaffer Skyline advertised the other day! I think it went for about $26 but it was in dire need of restoration by look of the posted images. The box was Sheaffer, and included all the inserts and paperwork, and the pen was unmistakably a lever filling Skyline with a big gold cap. I actually enquired about shipping on it (very reasonable seller as it turned out) before I realised that I know less than nothing about restoration. I would be interested to to see what happened to it.

[Gloucesterman]

As for tips, exam every photo carefully. Especially the ones of the nib. As far as I'm concerned I can handle a new sac on some/most pens but if the nib is bad, questionable or not shown I will write and request a picture or simply drop it.

 

AFAIAC - if the seller isn't smart enough, or worse purposely does not post a picture of the nib, it's not for me. Not worth the risk.

[elysee]

Sometimes the best searches are those that are general but eliminate the types for which you are not looking. For example, "waterman -edison -liaison -liason -exception -charleston -laureat -etalon -demonstrator -phileas -hemisphere -edson -ici -harley -perspective -carene -expert -harmonie -preface" is one of the Waterman pen searches that I use when I am trying to find Gentleman-series pens and those not listed after the dash. I try not to do searches that include "fp", "fountain" or "fountainpen" since there are sellers who do not include such information in the title and those who incorrectly (on purpose?) state the pen type.

 

It is helpful to include misspellings as well. Of course, those are difficult to anticipate.

Edited June 6, 2014 by elysee

[Gloucesterman]

14% - YIKES!

:yikes:

I don't think Bonhams or Sotherbys Charges that much, do they?

Edited June 6, 2014 by brgmarketing

[Brian C]

Okay, I was (very) tempted to leave this one off. This is very specific to one seller. Penpartsstore, which sells a lot of Kullock items, has, a couple of times now for me, taken my best offer of less than half of the original asking price on Kullock items.

[beak]

Two things to add:

 

Be patient.

Everything turns up on eBay eventually, and you don't have to buy something that is not quite right because you think you will never find a more suitable one. Often, a better example will be listed the next day! If it's a bit too expensive, and you are hesitating, just wait for another to show up.

 

Talk to the seller.

You can often get quite a good impression of who you are dealing with; just ask a relevant question and see if you are answered properly, politely and reasonably quickly. No answer or vague answer means no sale for me.

Edited June 9, 2014 by beak

[OcalaFlGuy]

There are sites like goofbid.com that have smarter search tools than Ebay. I also usually filter out pens I know I am definitely not interested in so I will put things in the search like "fountain pen -jinhao -baeor -hero"

 

 

You can use the minus sign to exclude specific keywords from an otherwise broad search.

I like to do this to pare down the number of results.

For example

 

PFM -legacy

 

poseidon -noodlers -noodler's

 

I'm certain more sophisticated syntax is available, but I've never dug in.

 

Regards, greg

 

 

^ indeed. i have a search term (a loooong one) that excludes all chinese pens. nothing against the chinese or chinese pens (i do have a few in my collection, very solid performers) but there's just too many of them that clutter up the page when i'm looking for things like "vintage" of "oversize" pens.

 

 

Completely agreed. That has always been an annoyance. Now I know what to do about it.

 

Damn straight.

 

Thank You all!

 

I just did a quickie test on a 24 hr listing spread period. I started out with 3,259 hits. I added several - mainly to ixnay ALL the Chinese pens. The final

score was 2, 131 hits remaining or a 35.5% Reduction in hits.

 

This is a Significant reduction in the garbage I'll have to wade through going through the Sunday listings and will save me a good bit of time.

 

I appreciate this, Thanks!, it was Very Helpful.

 

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

[wastelanded]

Can be tedious, but one thing I like to do is just search "fountain pen" and sort by "time: ending soonest", at random (read: not peak) hours. Have turned up some fun stuff, but you gotta sort through a lot of crud to get there.

 

Sorting through the crud can be half the fun, if one has the time.