Lie-Nielsen and Ebay

[Dennis Droege]

I've been watching a 9" LN dovetail saw on Ebay. It retails for $125.00/freight. I just got an E-mail saying it sold for $142.50. I'm not sure what to say--any thoughts?

[David Bassett]

I assume bidding fever. (Unless it's an older collectable model, or owned by someone famous, or....)

[Julie Moriarty]

I shoulda used Ebay to sell that planer! I only got $425 for it. headsmack ;)

[Matt Day]

Happens all the time, especially with in person bidding. People don’t know what they’re buying.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

In some cases it's people offshore who save paying VAT (Value Added Tax) by purchasing used on eBay and possibly will lie about what they paid for it when they clear it through customs. Other times it's just a fool and their money.

[Frederick Skelly]

In some cases it's people offshore who save paying VAT (Value Added Tax) by purchasing used on eBay and possibly will lie about what they paid for it when they clear it through customs. Other times it's just a fool and their money.

+1. We see this regularly. There's different theories about it but I favor the one Malcolm says here.

[Wade Lippman]

I was at a real auction and saw a Makita router up for $20. I bid $21 and won, only to find it was an old piece of crap. I was going to throw it out, but put it on ebay instead. I gave the model number and good pictures. It went for $125. I felt a little guilty shipping it, but got over it.
People are stupid. What other explanation do you need?

[eugene thomas]

I bought few LN things from ebay. I learned my lesson on the first one though. ended up paying retail price on router plain. in end was a wash because the router plain was basically new.

[Bill Orbine]

I've been watching a 9" LN dovetail saw on Ebay. It retails for $125.00/freight. I just got an E-mail saying it sold for $142.50. I'm not sure what to say--any thoughts?

I just laugh......

[Jim Koepke]

Not much more than has already been said.

Some folks do not fully research what they are buying and get caught up in the moment. Bidding in an auction can be like that. Two bidders. each not wanting the other guy to "beat them" for the item.

Avoiding VAT is another big incentive for European and other foreign bidders.

The other side to look at is a lucky seller.

Another could be a seller with a shill bidder driving up the price.

Then there are the "got to have it" bidders. At one time ebay identified the bidders so you could clearly see who was bidding on a item. One one item that was of interest to me the high bid was from a person who always seemed to win with high prices. A friend was over and shown the information on the bidder and the item. My bid was what at the time was thought to be about a dollar under what his max bid would be. Sure enough, my bid was still below his bid, but in my opinion too much for the item. My friend suggested my bid should be raised again. My reply was, "no way, I don't want to be stuck with it that bad." No one else bid and after the auction closed the winner sent me an email asking me if I would be interested in it. My reply was, "thanks but no."

That may be how some of them go so high. After all, there have to be other stinkers like me trying to get the people with too much money to spend a bit more of it.

jtk

[Brian Henderson]

That's why, when I see something on eBay, I put in whatever maximum bid I am willing to pay and don't look at it again. I win or I lose. My max for a new saw would be less than retail, otherwise I'd just go buy it retail. People are idiots.

[Charlie Velasquez]

That's why, when I see something on eBay, I put in whatever maximum bid I am willing to pay and don't look at it again. I win or I lose. . . . .


Not much more than has already been said.

Some folks do not fully research what they are buying and get caught up in the moment. Bidding in an auction can be like that. Two bidders. each not wanting the other guy to "beat them" for the item. . . . .

Another could be a seller with a shill bidder driving up the price.

Then there are the "got to have it" bidders.....
jtk

Then there is sniping. Eliminates the people Jim is talking about, and although it doesn't affect bidders like Brian, it prevents them from changing their minds.
Many years ago on items I was very interested in I used to sit at the computer and snipe. Now there are applications that will do that for you.

[John McClanahan]

If a seller is using a shill bidder to run up the price and the shill bid wins, then what?

[Jim Koepke]

If a seller is using a shill bidder to run up the price and the shill bid wins, then what?

This depends on the setup. It may be a person with two different accounts or it may be done with a friend. It could be relisted using a different account, with different pictures if the person is smart. Though occasionally the same 'sold' item(s) show up again with the same image. The seller could also just wait a few months to list again or have the shill list it for sale.


Then there is sniping. Eliminates the people Jim is talking about, and although it doesn't affect bidders like Brian, it prevents them from changing their minds.
Many years ago on items I was very interested in I used to sit at the computer and snipe.

So many of my bids were lost to sniping it was adopted as my modus operandi. Though all too often my memory fails and no last second bid is placed. Sometimes a bid is placed at the beginning of an auction and a week later there is a surprise email telling me to pay for what was won.

The ones that tick me off the most when an early bid is placed are people who make a dozen bids at 50¢ or $1 increments to beat a starting bid. It makes me feel good to snipe one of these if the price isn't too high.

jtk

[Wade Lippman]

This depends on the setup. It may be a person with two different accounts or it may be done with a friend. It could be relisted using a different account, with different pictures if the person is smart. Though occasionally the same 'sold' item(s) show up again with the same image. The seller could also just wait a few months to list again or have the shill list it for sale.

Then the seller has to pay fees. Makes more sense to just cancel the purchase and either relist or make a 2nd chance offer to the next highest offer.

[Jim Koepke]

Then the seller has to pay fees. Makes more sense to just cancel the purchase and either relist or make a 2nd chance offer to the next highest offer.

Maybe the 2nd chance offer is another part of the scam:

"Hey the winning bidder didn't pay up, are you still interested at your maximum bid?"

Of course the maximum bid was driven up by the shill.

More than one way to run a scam. Just when you think you have seen it all, someone tries something different.

jtk

[Dave Zellers]

Maybe the 2nd chance offer is another part of the scam:

"Hey the winning bidder didn't pay up, are you still interested at your maximum bid?"

Of course the maximum bid was driven up by the shill.

More than one way to run a scam. Just when you think you have seen it all, someone tries something different.

jtk

It absolutely is. Happened to me 20 years ago.

[Doug Garson]

Not sure how you can snipe on Ebay unless I'm misunderstanding sniping. I assume sniping means placing a last second bid pennies over the current high bid. Last time I bid on Ebay you input your maximum bid and the system increased your bid by the minimum increment each time you were overbid until you reached your maximum bid that you input. The system would update your bid in fractions of a second so anyone trying to manually beat the clock would have to be very lucky to win. I can remember trying to snipe, hitting enter when the clock hit 1 second and seeing 4 or 5 bids placed after mine.

[Charlie Velasquez]

Not sure how you can snipe on Ebay unless I'm misunderstanding sniping. I assume sniping means placing a last second bid pennies over the current high bid. Last time I bid on Ebay you input your maximum bid and the system increased your bid by the minimum increment each time you were overbid until you reached your maximum bid that you input. The system would update your bid in fractions of a second so anyone trying to manually beat the clock would have to be very lucky to win. I can remember trying to snipe, hitting enter when the clock hit 1 second and seeing 4 or 5 bids placed after mine.

When you snipe you still enter your maximum bid, not just pennies above the posted high. If the posted high bidder's max is higher than yours (or other snipers' max bids), then you do not win the auction.
But as Jim and Brian explained, there are various types of bidders on ebay.

A bidder may do like Brian, then see that the later high bid is only a little higher than his/her bid, have a change of mind and say, "Ok, I'll try just one more bid and that's it."
Another may do as Jim mentioned in a later post and keep bidding just a little more till they beat your max.
There may be a shill bidder that wants to raise the price, but doesn't really want the item. That bidder wants to give the real bidders time to raise their bid, else why bid?

Sniping eliminates those bidders. It also eliminates your second guessing yourself. You win or lose on one bid.
Long ago when I sniped I put in a low bid to make sure I got updates, but then no more bids till 15-20 seconds before closing -took that long for my computer to upload my bid on a 56K modem. Now apps will auto bid for you milliseconds before closing.

edit: As Jim intimated, many experienced ebay bidders snipe in some way. That way they don't have to deal with the newbie factor.

[Bill Dufour]

I subscribe to a sniping program. they charge me a small percentage of any winning bid. I tell it my max bid and how much time before the end to bid. I normally use one second before the end which is their shortest allowed timing.
If someone has bid through ebay they can win the auction if their max is higher then mine. Ebay backdates their bid to when it was placed, so if they are higher they will win everytime. But my program prevents people from bidding a few cents over my bid since their is no time to change your bid.
You never know how much higher the winner had allowed so even if they beat you by only $1.00 they might have been set to go to $100 more.
Bill D.

[Bob Bouis]

Ebay runs promotions where you can get 15% off the price, plus 1% ebay store credit. Plus points on your credit card. And of course individual sellers don't collect sales tax.

It's _the_ place to buy just about anything from manufacturers that enforce the MSRPs.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Ebay runs promotions where you can get 15% off the price, plus 1% ebay store credit. Plus points on your credit card. And of course individual sellers don't collect sales tax.

It's _the_ place to buy just about anything from manufacturers that enforce the MSRPs.

This is why eBay is my first choice for online purchases, but I consider the discounts and store credit as a bonus- even without them it is usually easy to find the best price. The end-of-quarter payout is just a plus for me. The 10 and 15% discount days are awesome. I guess seller fees must be making eBay a mint if they can offer up to 15% discounts.

[Charlie Velasquez]

I subscribe to a sniping program. they charge me a small percentage of any winning bid. I tell it my max bid and how much time before the end to bid. I normally use one second before the end which is their shortest allowed timing.
If someone has bid through ebay they can win the auction if their max is higher then mine. Ebay backdates their bid to when it was placed,
Bill D.

You may want to reconsider your time component. All the sniping programs will get their bids in before the auction ends. If any of those maxs are higher than yours you don't win the auction. So you're really just trying to beat out those inexperienced bidders, etc.
But as you noted, ebay back dates bids to when it was placed. So, you lose to any sniper with a higher max, and you also lose to any sniper that had identical max but placed the bid a half second before yours. Many snipers use 3 seconds as their bid time. That still effectively shuts out those newbies. All those snipers would beat you if you had identical max bids.

Knowings this, some choose 4 or 5 second bid time. Still eliminates all but the most attentive and prepared newbies, and beats all of the 3 second snipers with identical bids. You could argue for a greater lag time and I would be hard pressed to disagree.

Another tactic is to choose a round number and add some cents so as to decrease your chance of identical bids. If so, check the auction and make sure to increase by the minimum increment: a $50.15 may not beat a $50 bid if the minimum increment is $0.50.

[Mike Cutler]

There is one possible, valid reason, that someone would pay retail, or more than retail, on eBay. I won't say that is the case with this particular product.
There is a very well known, highly regarded, maker of handsaws. The lead time on these saws can be awhile if you order through their website. When they do come up on eBay they often go for more than website retail, simply because the person does not want to wait.
There is also a knife maker of the same category. This particular person's knives have a very long lead time on them, and when they show up on an auction site. They go for big $$$$.

[Jim Koepke]

You makes your bid and you takes your chances.

There have been only a few times when more than one sniper, beside myself, were bidding on items of my interest.

If an item is that much in demand, maybe bidding a bit higher will win next time.

Most items on ebay are like busses, if you mis one, there will be another one coming along. Some may take longer to come around again.

jtk