I just LOVE E-Bay LOL

[rtraincollector]

Just looking at some lionel HO saw a listing Burlington Northern well it was listed as "Lionel 0-4-0/HO BURLINGTON NOTHERN LOCOMOTIVE" It was a BN GP-7 or 9 not sure. but he had about 7 engines everything from F-7 to GP's and had them all listed as 0-4-0's I know I have sold stuff on Ebay that I didn't know a thing about but I would state Don't know if listing right or not please help if I'm not or would look to see if I could find an item simular and ask the person selling it if they could help me out. I just love things like this

[Anonymous]

Probably somethings that somebody picked up in a garage sale.

[dinwitty]

I try to look for those who have little knowledge of what they have and they actually have a jewel of a buy, but they don't know and the listing is rather obscure to detail what it is, their good deals until someone else as knowledgable comes along and competes for the item(s) ehhehe up goes the price...

[rtraincollector]

Well these were HO I'm not that familiar with HO as I'm with O/O27 in fack I know as much about HO probally as I do know about electral work and I don't know squat there lol In fack if your interested he had a total of 7 engines some tyco some athens ect ect here is the auction # for the one that caught my eye you can get the rest from this auction by going to his other auctions # 5973059638

[Anonymous]

How about sellers that don't even post a picture of their item, and list it as a new HO Santa Fe engine, when in fact it turns out to be a 25 year old O guage Southern Pacific PA-1...
I have a rule of never buying anything without a good picture of it, and I only buy from sellers that have sold a lot of items and have 99.+% positive feed back.

trainluver1

[sparkingbolt]

I had been looking for an MRC Tech II 2400 for a long time. I saw this eBay item "Train set with power pack." So what's it hurt to look? Bingo, it was a like new 2400, along with a nice Athearn F7 and 5 Athearn freight cars. I won the auction for around what my highest bids were on just the power pack on other listings, but where I always got outbid.[:D] Dan

[Anonymous]

I've noticed there seem to be a lot more people out there who are prepared to pay over the list price for an item. One amusing one recently was a new Bachmann OO scale loco (the Class 66, just out) - people were happily paying £90+ for these on ebay, while if they waited a few days the regular online suppliers had them for £58 - amazes me how much people will spend to be the first to have a new loco!

[oleirish]

[:(!]E-BAY is a joke! You find something you might want and bid a far price on it,then some one wants to play with your bid and bump it $1.00 at a time,I will not play there game!or if it is a ten day bid they wate tell the last hour,last min, last second to kill the bid,then put the same item up for sale on e-bay again and start all over,or the owner of the item will sit at his computer 24/7and bump the bid him self.I have better things to do than play on e-bay allday[V]I wi***here was a better place to look for things new and used.[:)]

JIM

[davekelly]

That's why they have proxy bidding.

[jfugate]

Proxy bidding only works so well if you know how to do it and still keep the price low, avoid price wars, etc.

If you bid early with proxy bidding, you risk giving away what you think the item might really be worth, and invite irrational bidders (yes, they're on ebay) to do incremental bidding and "bid fishing" where they try to see if they can better your bid by bidding repeatedly and drive the price up beyond what the item is really worth.

Late-as-possible proxy bidding avoids these situations because you can mask your interest in the item from everyone. The ideal time to place your proxy bid and keep the price down is less than 1 minute before close, preferrably at about 10 seconds to go.

Mathematicians have done computer model studies of eBay using different bid strategies and they find the best proxy bidding strategy to keep the price down and win the auction more often is to bid *as late as possible*. It's a strategy called "sniping" by ebay regulars.

If you'd prefer not to babysit the auction, you can use one of the automated sniping tools that are available. Here's a good one: http://www.auctionsniper.com/

I've used this method frequently and often win the item for a great price.

Other things to keep in mind when bidding on ebay that will help you beat out the other guy and still not pay too much:

- Never bid round amounts. On ebay, high bid wins, even if it's by a few cents. Instead of bidding $20.00, bid $21.73, $21.47, etc. You can tell non-savvy ebay bidders by looking at their bids. Those who are not in-the-know on ebay bid round amounts.

- Always bid just over a common price point. Don't bid $99.76, you'll probably lose to the guy who will bid $100.00. But if you bid $101.03, you'll beat the guy who bids $100.00 even.

- Never use incremental bidding, you'll only fuel a price war and have to baby sit the item. Bid your absolute maximum *one time* as late in the auction as possible. If you are willing to come back in later and up your bid, then you did not bid your absolute maximum. Bid an amount you would bid to beat everyone else, but if some guy out bid you, he can have it -- *that's* your absolute maximum.

- Make sure you know what the item is really worth. If the item is not a rare one-of-a-kind item, then you can often get it cheaper online outside of ebay. Do some google searching to find out what it's really worth before you get sucked into a bidding war on ebay.

[jfugate]

One other point on bidding your absolute maximum ...

Since ebay is what is known as a "second price auction" you generally don't have to pay your maximum if you win the bid. In a second price auction, you pay what the second highest bidder bid, plus one bid increment.

So if you bid $101.03 and the second highest bidder bid $80, then you pay $81 for the item, which is one bid increment over the second highest bid.

[jkeaton]

"I wi***here was a better place to look for things new and used."

Sure there are lots of other, often better places to look - local train shows and hobby shops are often/sometimes/perhaps good (I know there's a range of opinion, but I guess I'm blessed in having two reasonably LHSs, one of whom also deals in used trains). Personally, I like train shows, both to watch 'em run and to buy 'em.
Jim

[AntonioFP45]

QUOTE: Originally posted by oleirish

[:(!]E-BAY is a joke! You find something you might want and bid a far price on it,then some one wants to play with your bid and bump it $1.00 at a time,I will not play there game!or if it is a ten day bid they wate tell the last hour,last min, last second to kill the bid,then put the same item up for sale on e-bay again and start all over,or the owner of the item will sit at his computer 24/7and bump the bid him self.I have better things to do than play on e-bay allday[V]I wi***here was a better place to look for things new and used.[:)] JIM

Jim,

I agree with a lot of what you say, but Ebay a joke? One just has to watch and be careful. You can still get some really decent deals. You may have seen my past posts where I won brand new locomotives at less than half of LHS MSRP!

It depends a lot on what you are looking for. If the item, with shipping and handling, is within 25% of what it would cost me at an LHS, I won't even bother with it.

[rtraincollector]

Hey all you O/O27 collectors heres a set you don't want to let get buy you with such a great starting price of only $1500.00 Yes Ebay again lol

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5974565191&fromMakeTrack=true


I emailed the seller thinking that shee made have made a typo and the response I got back was "Thank you for your opinion."

[Anonymous]

Last year my railroad was funded by Ebay sales. It amazes me at what people will buy, and how much they will pay for it !

[Anonymous]

I love ebay, too! If there's something that you've never seen or haven't heard of, you'll see a couple of them on ebay, eventually. In my train collecting, I've gotten many rare items on ebay. I always look for the obscure descriptions. One of myfavorite places to look is the "Other Scales" category. This is where everyone who knows absolutely nothing about trains lists their items. I've gotten great deals on items with titles like "Lot of Trains, Transformers, Track, etc.", "Old Model Train Engine", "Complete Train Set" or "Lot of Model Train Pieces."

Sometimes it's funny to read people's descriptions. Here's a line I remember from an auction description: "This train set dates from the 1940's. I'm not sure if it works, but the person I bought it from said that it once did." On ebay, no words have their meanings abused more frequently than "rare" and "vintage". For some people, any train will qualify for being rare or vintage. Also, lots of people call trains Lionel that are made by other manufacturers.

As for just what people will actually bid on, check out this topic from the Classic Toy Trains forums:

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=36841

[Anonymous]

Auction sniper is THE way to go. they bid for you, in the last few seconds of the auction. That way, no one can run up the price just because they want to.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by rtraincollector

Hey all you O/O27 collectors heres a set you don't want to let get buy you with such a great starting price of only $1500.00 Yes Ebay again lol

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5974565191&fromMakeTrack=true


I emailed the seller thinking that shee made have made a typo and the response I got back was "Thank you for your opinion."

I checked it out and it is truly a big laugh. The item's description quotes:
"THIS TRAIN SET IN MIB."
However, the loco and caboose are out of the box and the box is worn and all taped up.

If I am not mistaken, MIB means "MINT IN BOX."