Ebay Tips

[wastelanded]

Learn to spell bad. Search for "sheaffer" and "sheafer" and "shafer" etc...

 

And Scheaffer, don't forget Scheaffer.

[OcalaFlGuy]

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.

 

Fountain pen is all I search on for the Sunday picks.

 

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

[pajaro]

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.

 

How will they know what your bid is unless they bid it up? I have found by repeated experience that wading in and bidding pushes up the final price, even if you win. If you make a bid, then reconsider and add a higher bid, this seems to start hissing contests. I think the best policy is to not bid, but to set a sniping program with a last second bid that you think will take the item. You won't always be right, but you will often keep the price down.

[OcalaFlGuy]

I am constantly befuddled when I see SERIOUS Ebayers with over a thousand feedbacks Actually making Live bids.

 

What the hell are they thinking is Always my first thought. (And No, they Don't know something I don't know. The detrimental effects of live bidding are irrefutable.)

 

I've come close to making a thread here asking some of them Just That but then I figured, A) none of the Ebay vets that Do it, will Admit it, and B I see a high potential of the thread getting too Hot.

 

I can see a Fleabay nOOb doing it, but I've got to figure that someone with 500-1000 feedbacks surely would have "gotten the memo" sometwhere along the way.

 

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

 

 

[Cryptos]

I'm sorry Bruce, but what do you mean by a 'Live' bid. Not using an automated system? The only auction I have ever won, the Eversharp, I got by putting a bid on in the last 15 seconds by hand. Technically a snipe I suppose but with less tight margins than a piece of software can manage. Is that what you call a 'Live' bid? Sorry for the naif question. Some of the terminology is not common to me.

 

Palm to palm.

Edited June 9, 2014 by Cryptos

[white_lotus]

On the topic of bidding early, and maybe bidding again when outbid, I see a lot of that with the tbickiii and other sellers of restored pens. People bidding long before the auction is over, days ahead of time. Even though the bids are well below where the item will usually sell for.

 

I'm seeing now a burgundy golden arrow junior vacumatic where two bidders have sent the price up to $71 with 4 hours to go. They're both Red Stars over 1000. They obviously aren't concerned that their bids are "too high". It'll be interesting to see where it ends up. btw, I'm not bidding, as I'm not looking to get more pens right now.

 

All my sniping has been done live. If I win I win, if I don't oh well.

[pajaro]

There is always the hissing contest, where one doesn't to yield to the other.

[OcalaFlGuy]

Cryptos, sorry, my error for being unclear.

 

By live bidding I meant during the whole time the listing is up, ie; Not a snipe bid in the closing seconds.

 

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

[Snargle]

"Live" bids can sometimes be useful for revealing a seller's hidden reserve price. But I rarely, if ever, bid on items with reserve prices. Most sellers with reserves have inflated expectations of the actual value of an item. They'd be better off just setting a "buy it now" fixed price.

Edited June 9, 2014 by Snargle

[pen2paper]

old school ebay buyer. when I was seeking a specific object, I carefully avoided calling any attention to my interest, then opened three screens with that escalated my bid to my max, high speed Internet. With current snipe tools, and beacon/analytics/You were/are There identifiers, this would be less effective.

 

In the "it never hurts to inquire" lesson.. One time I missed out on an object that was one piece of a pair. In a seller inquiry I explained my interest in the history based object. The seller did have the second object, a family piece, and due to my planned usage, the piece came to me, along with family history, and a photo of its original owner. "We've" traveled many a mile sharing its interesting history.

[penmanila]

remember, too, that aside from all the negatives, it's good to put in one or two "positive" terms in the search string. so aside from excluding all chinese pens (or whatever doesn't strike your fancy), i then put in "vintage" or "oversize" or "woodgrain" (whatever i'm looking for at the moment) at the head of the string, with everything else being a negative (-jinhao -duke -handmade -wearever etc.). on ebay, you can actually reach a limit on the number of terms you put into the string--i forget how many but i've actually reached it, it won't let me add any more--so i save the first slot for that one positive. works well

 

just tested it right now and the "fountain pens" category yields about 45,000 items; using "vintage -x -x", i ended up with 3,600.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

[OcalaFlGuy]

I really don't Want to restrict it any more than the usual Chinese. I will probably Not even exclude Hero. I don't see that many of those anyway and not long ago

Teri M found a way cool vintage Hero. A 14k nib Hero 100 is a perfectly good pen even before you say for the money.

 

You have to cast a pretty wide net to catch a Parker Employee Safety Team T-shirt.

 

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

[penmanila]

ha ha, ok, bruce, next time a 14K hero turns up in my net, i'll shoot it your way

[OcalaFlGuy]

I beat you too it. I looked right after I posted earlier.

 

There's a new H100 Flighter,14k nib for $36 shipped. Not a thing wrong in the world with that deal.

 

I worked on a Flighter H100 once with a cracked hood. It wrote nicely the week I tested it out. And, the crack was damage not any kind

of shrinkage.

 

Bruce in Ocala, Fl

[Planeta]

ask a picture from the box.

[Luckyorleans]

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"

 

Do these sites allow wildcards? I had great preset searches set up with wildcards, then Ebay eliminated that function. eg. Water* pen