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HUUuuu ... uuuGe ebay estate sale

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  • Member since
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  • From: Bettendorf Iowa
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Posted by Driline on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 5:16 PM
 alco_fan wrote:

Yep, you caught us. Me and MABruce and Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa and Dick Cheney. We're all manipulating this auction as part of the Trilateral Commission's plan for world domination through bogus eBay auctions.

Elvis lives down my street. HA caught you in another lie! YES!

Mr. Evil is the only one I know working towards world domination. HA! Yet another lie!

                                     Smile [:)]  Smile [:)]  Smile [:)]  Smile [:)]  Smile [:)]  Smile [:)]

Modeling the Davenport Rock Island & Northwestern 1995 in HO
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Posted by danmerkel on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 6:02 PM

 I am one of those ''bad and mean'' snipers......if I can, I will wait till the last few seconds and try to slide in a bid for a few cents or a few dollars more than the high bid.....is this wrong?  of course not!! thats how auctions work, same thing happens with real auctions....you know, going once, going twice....goin....oh wait I have another bid.....I know some people get mad when that happens, but thats the world of auctions.

The only problem with what you are saying is this... at a live auction, the bidding isn't closed IF there is a last-second bid.  If after "going twice..." you enter a higher bid, the auctioneer will start the final process again.

It does appear that there is something unusual about this auction... I can't see that kind of value in the collection especially since so much of it appears to be just stacked in boxes.  As someone pointed out, there will no doubt be a lot of broken stirrups, missing wheels, etc.

Having said that, I wonder how many AHM iron ore cars there are in there??!?  : )

 dlm

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Posted by Cederstrand on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 6:14 PM

[I am one of those ''bad and mean'' snipers......if I can, I will wait till the last few seconds and try to slide in a bid for a few cents or a few dollars more than the high bid....]

***I call that "smart bidding". Sometimes I pray for someone to come along at the last second and outbid me because of "pre-buyers remorse".

Cowboy [C):-)] Rob

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Posted by Anonymous on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 6:14 PM
It really does not matter how many of whats in those boxes. By the time you get it all matched up, wheels, couplers etc etc and running without derailments on your railroad... $$$$
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Posted by IRONROOSTER on Wednesday, July 18, 2007 6:22 PM
 MAbruce wrote:
 alco_fan wrote:
 IRONROOSTER wrote:

Ahhhhh, so that's what all the secret meetings in the VP's office were all about. 

Yeah, it's cool when we meet there, but Elvis always hogs all the snack cakes ... and then his fingers are all sticky when he uses the Veep's secure computer to enter the shill bids.

Yeah, and Elvis always took all the good ones! Censored [censored] I liked it better when we used to meet at the Enron CEO offices.  The appetizers were better and we ended up with more because Elvis didn't like them much.

Great, now that we're exposed I'll have to be on the look out for Michael Moore and his camera crew! Banged Head [banghead]

Yep, the movie will be called Con Rail. Pirate [oX)]

If you're having fun, you're doing it the right way.
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Posted by vsmith on Thursday, July 19, 2007 5:12 PM

I've been sniped several times on ebay, do I mind? Yes and no.

Yes in that I would have liked to have won.

and No, when I put in my max bid, thats my MAX bid, and I wont bid a penny higher. Ive seen new items, that I could go online and purchase NIB, go for 20% 30% even 50% higher than retail! Why? because 2 idiots got into a bidding war. A fool and his money...Wink [;)]

I alway price based on experience and a good understanding of what its real value is. i miss it, another will be offered soon enough, sometimes its the very same item!Clown [:o)]

   Have fun with your trains

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Posted by loathar on Thursday, July 19, 2007 5:25 PM
 vsmith wrote:
  Ive seen new items, that I could go online and purchase NIB, go for 20% 30% even 50% higher than retail! Why? because 2 idiots got into a bidding war. A fool and his money...Wink [;)]

I alway price based on experience and a good understanding of what its real value is. i miss it, another will be offered soon enough, sometimes its the very same item!Clown [:o)]

Sign - Ditto [#ditto] That, and I've got better things to do. I put in the bid. If I get it, Great! If not, Oh well!

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Posted by Darth Santa Fe on Thursday, July 19, 2007 10:05 PM
35 minutes left at nearly $3,800... I wonder if it will make it to the $18,000 or whatever it is it was insured for...

_________________________________________________________________

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Posted by steemtrayn on Thursday, July 19, 2007 10:27 PM
Let the snipin' begin...
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Posted by SteamFreak on Thursday, July 19, 2007 10:35 PM

The Lionel collectors paid $5100 dollars for a single cardboard box, so that makes this auction a bargain. Smile,Wink, & Grin [swg]

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Posted by Darth Santa Fe on Thursday, July 19, 2007 10:57 PM
Wow, $4,000. Somehow, I thought it would go for more. But I guess most of the stuff in there was the cheapest thing next to paper freight cars.

_________________________________________________________________

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Posted by tatans on Friday, July 20, 2007 11:17 AM

Sniping, isn't this how auctions work??? I'm surprised that most people who want something bad enough on ebay can't figure out how it works, if you see something you want, and it costs $100 new, don't bid 35 cents, you will not win, bid $50.00 and I guarantee you will get it, probably for $25.00 or less, meanwhile all the other cheapskate, skinflint buyers are still bidding another 10 cents, do they think they can really get a $500 or $1000 item for $2.00??? what are they smoking???????  I love the guy who bids $5.00 on a $1500.00 brass locomotive and is surprised he didn't win.

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Posted by Mark R. on Friday, July 20, 2007 11:28 AM
 tatans wrote:

 .... bid $50.00 and I guarantee you will get it ....

Finally, some kind of guarantee !!! So, the next time I bid $50 on that $100 engine and DON'T get it, I should contact you for your guarantee ??? Would you please forward me a hard-copy of that in advance ??? Wink [;)] 

Do you also cover shipping ??? Big Smile [:D]

Mark.

¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ

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Posted by stokesda on Friday, July 20, 2007 2:16 PM
 Mark R. wrote:
 tatans wrote:

 .... bid $50.00 and I guarantee you will get it ....

Finally, some kind of guarantee !!! So, the next time I bid $50 on that $100 engine and DON'T get it, I should contact you for your guarantee ??? Would you please forward me a hard-copy of that in advance ??? Wink [;)] 

Do you also cover shipping ??? Big Smile [:D]

Mark.

Sign - Ditto [#ditto]

Yes, sniping is perfectly legal, and is how auctions work. My point earlier was that I never saw a benefit to sniping until I read the article about shill bidding. Now I see that if you bid your max early, it gives someone time to slowly chip away at your max. If you wait as late as possible, they don't have time to do that, so you are more likely to win it for less than your max bid - not guaranteed to get it for less. Not even guaranteed to get it in the first place. Other people could be sniping the same auction and you can still lose because they bid more than you. But bidding later it increases your chances of getting a better price, because people don't have a chance to chip away at your max over time.

Just to get back on topic, I do find it interesting that there were something like 60 bids up to the point where it was just under the reserve price. Then nothing happened for a long time. Somebody finally broke the reserve a couple of hours before closing, but there were only 61 total bids at that point, IIRC. The winning bid is only #62. So I do suspect there may have been some shilling going on. Can't prove it, of course, but it just looks suspicious.

Dan Stokes

My other car is a tunnel motor

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Posted by snagletooth on Friday, July 20, 2007 2:28 PM

 Just wait a week or two, you'll be able to bid on it again with a starting bid of $4000.Pirate [oX)]

Or maybe you'll see them in 20-car sets, shipped in empty lionel boxes.Laugh [(-D]

Snagletooth
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Posted by MAbruce on Friday, July 20, 2007 2:55 PM

You HO guys are either going to see an endless parade of Tyco items up for auction on eBay, or someone's going to show up at a train show with several tables of stuff to try to sell. 

And no, we at the 'Trilateral Commission Gang' didn't win this auction.  Stupid Elvis was too busy looking for more snacks to attempt a snipe! Banged Head [banghead]

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Posted by alco_fan on Friday, July 20, 2007 3:47 PM
 stokesda wrote:

Just to get back on topic, I do find it interesting that there were something like 60 bids up to the point where it was just under the reserve price. Then nothing happened for a long time. Somebody finally broke the reserve a couple of hours before closing, but there were only 61 total bids at that point, IIRC. The winning bid is only #62. So I do suspect there may have been some shilling going on. Can't prove it, of course, but it just looks suspicious.

You don't recall correctly. The conspiracy theorists never give up. The reserve was broken 2 days before the closing (Jul-17-07 18:03:43 PDT, closing Jul-19-07 20:42:37 PDT). This happened after the seller announced what the reserve amount was, probably becasue bidding had cooled off after people had nibbled away for a while trying to determine where the reserve was set.

What nobody will know is that Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa were arguing over who was supposed to put in the last shill bid five minutes before closing, and while Dick Cheney was yelling at them to pipe down, Bigfoot tripped over and unplugged the Ethernet cable and we missed it. (They don't call him "Bigfoot" for nothing!) This will not look good when we have to make our report to the Trilateral Commission in the secret bunker under the UN.

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Posted by Cederstrand on Friday, July 20, 2007 5:13 PM

Bigfoot tripped over and unplugged the Ethernet cable and we missed it. (They don't call him "Bigfoot" for nothing!) This will not look good when we have to make our report to the Trilateral Commission in the secret bunker under the UN.

***Bigfoot really isn't clumsy, he only caught that cord because a Chupacabra bit his ankle at the exact moment he was stepping over it. Oh, gotta go answer the wall, the Shadow People have arrived. Alien [alien] Rob

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Posted by dinwitty on Friday, July 20, 2007 8:32 PM
 Safety Valve wrote:
 secondhandmodeler wrote:
 csmith9474 wrote:

 secondhandmodeler wrote:
My only experiences with ebay were frustrating to say the least.  The two times I found items I liked I put in a bid.  Immediately after my bid there was another bid. I'm talking seconds later.   I know that somebody could have been watching this item, but there were zero bids before my first bid.  It happened with one item, then a second item.  After that, I havn't bid again.  Is there a way for people set their account up to automatically counter-bid? 

The eBay software automatically outbid you with the proxy system. The bidder previous to you just had a higher max bid than the bid you put in.

Thanks for the point of clarification.  I was wondering why that was happening.  Maybe I'll try again some time.

Any time I buy something I open a seperate browser window with the my absolute max bid price (Around MSRP or so minus shipping) and hit the submit button when the system clock reaches 1-2 seconds before end of auction. Sniping in this manner with a fast DSL I know that dailups cannot continue within 20 second from auction end and slower DSL's about 6-12 seconds. Sniping auto programs need 3 to reload data and resend the new bid.

IF I win great! If I dont, some one spent too much money. That fat lady is going to sing at the exact time the end of the auction and that is all it matters... the last few seconds. Everything else is just a run-up (Or foreplay if you please) to the main event.

What gets me is that both of my Hobby Shops have supplied me very well indeed these last few years.

 

I recall I won an item  and I couldnt be present at bidding end to snipe. Some DID try to snipe off at the last second but my bid was still higher. The snipe might not always work. I think the sniper's efforts are to try to get the best price and still beat the other bidder (maybe another sniper) at bid end.  

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