Ebay, is there anywhere else?

eBay is the epitomy of a free market. Value finds its price level, and the result is not always a fair one. I once shopped in the open flea market in Rome (1970), where my wife and I adopted the technique of one of us actively interested in an item, while the other looked disgusted and kept walking away. It worked most times. I always keep that in mind when using eBay.

I also keep in mind that at that Roman flea market it was possible to buy back the automobile parts that were stolen from your car the week before.

Being new here, and seeing there is some truly comprehensive knowledge here, I would like to get an abstract of the whys and whereofs, in my latest and getting close to last E-bay dealings.

Now I am one of those who is enamored, even decades ago even when I had no love for Nikon, with a black F2 set-up.
I was bidding on a F2as with md2-with two battery set-ups, one AA, and one Ni-cad with charger, plus a few other doo-dads.

I only have x amount to spend before I am done camera buying, and the bids on tis sat in the three to four hundred range for days.
I reluctantlly raised my max to just over 500, as I was not going to get suckered in as I did with my Canon Olympics model.
In the last hour two gents went nutso and it sold for 667 dollars.

I had checked KEH and other stores, so I guess in a way this is still cheaper, but it seems in the past week selling prices have suddenly jumped.
Addendum:
I bid on a Ricoh XR-P because for what ever reason even during the years I was heavily dealing with photography matters, including devouring magazines, Ricoh was one that I paid zero attention to. Exackta, Chinon, Cosina were fairly familiar to me but Ricoh, it was just there and that is all.
ANYWAY, I bid 52 dollar for a XR-P and MD-3, plus 50mm F2 lens.
Now not having more than x amount of money to spend, I started thinking "you are stupid to have done that".
Well I started checking on Ricoh, and found out I could use my nearly unused Pentax screw-mount lenses, with adapter on it, and the opinions of Ricoh, were favourable without exception.
So I raised my max to 77.77 well it sold for 93 bucks.
I am sad to not get it but I was not going to pay 100+ bucks, or whatever it took to get it, on a whim.

Do any of you have knowledge on the Ricoh, especially last ones, camera and lenses?
They seem to be well liked.

In your opinions, is this the normal cycle?
I am trying to get a Canon F-1N with AE finder(even though my Olympics model was used by one who worked for Sports Illustrated, it is not heavily worn, so I do not want to make it look like my Topcon which shows HEAVY use), which were plentiful when I started bidding and were selling for not low, but reasonable prices, and--NOW--they are scarce, and I dread to see what happens to the one I am bidding on in the last moments. (Yes I am trying to get one for more than slightly less than the stores sell used ones for, which seemed easy not too long ago.)
Are these collectors, or people with more than average photo knowledge getting a good deal (?), or are there shill bidders out there no matter what E-bay says about shill bidding.
Bobby

PS--There is a Nikon F2 all black, including all trim on the motors, this is rare, for 600 dollars.
IF-IF one really wants one, is this as good a price as one will get?

spiralcity said:

I've won many items at a STEAL!

If your looking to purchase one of the BIG three ( Nikon, Canon, Minolta) you'll find plenty of competion. Sometimes you can get lucky and find a camera that was overlooked for whatever reason. I found a mint
FE2 in the buy now market.

I purchase Mamiya,Fujica, and Chinon 35mm cameras for 15.00 to 30.00 a pop. If you dont collect then these cameras may be useless to you. For me their GEMs. My Fujica ST801 is a beautiful camera and extremely overlooked by photo enthusiast.

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I know how you feel.
IF-IF I had the money and SPACE, I could start my own mini-museum buying some of the lesser known makes or parts.
It could be addicting.

Bobby

BobbyR said:

I only have x amount to spend before I am done camera buying, and the bids on tis sat in the three to four hundred range for days.
I reluctantlly raised my max to just over 500, as I was not going to get suckered in as I did with my Canon Olympics model.
In the last hour two gents went nutso and it sold for 667 dollars.

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If by this you mean that the bidding history showed a series of multiple bids in the final hour from two people, each attempting to outbid the other, then this is not at all uncommon. It's a seller's dream and a buyer's nightmare. It also means that neither of the individuals involved was bidding rationally; they were treating eBay like a live auction, which it isn't, and there's a good chance that one or both got caught up in the excitement and ended up paying too much (this isn't really 100% certain, but it's a strong possibility). Rather than look at this as a case of your losing the auction, I suggest you look at it as somebody else having been suckered. That might at least help ease your pain.

Do any of you have knowledge on the Ricoh, especially last ones, camera and lenses?

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I've got a Ricoh XR-X 3PF, which I bought new in 1995. It's my most-used camera at this point. It does everything I want it to do, and it's particularly good for night photography because its light meter is so sensitive. My main gripe with it is that the advanced features are difficult to use because they're accessed via an awkward series of icon-based menus using just a couple of top-panel buttons and a thumbwheel. It just takes too long to switch between auto exposure and manual, or to turn on exposure compensation or any of the other nifty features the camera supports.

I can't comment on Ricoh lenses since I don't own any; I've always used third-party lenses with mine. Since it takes K-mount lenses, these are easy to find. I've even got a couple of Pentax lenses that I use with my Ricoh.

Back to eBay, I presume....

In your opinions, is this the normal cycle?
...
Are these collectors, or people with more than average photo knowledge getting a good deal (?), or are there shill bidders out there no matter what E-bay says about shill bidding.

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Shill bidders do exist, but they can be hard to spot, and I don't know how common they are. Speaking as a buyer, the worst problem with eBay bidding is those who get into irrational bidding wars. The best way to combat this is to research eBay prices and remember that another one like what you're looking at will come along, so if the price goes too high, wait. If you can't wait, go to KEH or some other outlet.

To research prices, begin by doing a search for current auctions using the eBay search feature. When the list of current auctions appears, look down the left column for a check-box marked "completed auctions." Check it and click the "Show Items" button. This will bring up a list of recently completed auctions that match your criteria, including their final sale prices. If you expect to pay $400 for Item X but you see that Item X has been selling for $500-$800 recently, then your chances of getting it at your desired price are low. If, OTOH, you see it's been selling for $300-$500, then you'll very likely be able to pick one up for $400, but you might be outbid once or twice before you find one for your target price. Patience is a virtue with eBay.

You might also want to consider sniping -- bidding once at the very end of the auction (within the last few seconds). This has the advantage of keeping your interest in the item hidden from others; nobody will be able to enter those annoying incremental bids that creep the item price up slowly. If the person who enters such bids is legitimately interested, he or she can certainly enter a bid -- even a big one -- and could well win in the end, but bid-probing (and shill bidding) won't be as much of a problem, and you won't lose out to somebody who gets competitive and enters a higher bid than yours just to win. Of course, an incremental bidder could still play that game against another bidder, but I find that less annoying than when an incremental bidder is causing my own bid to go up directly. Note that you can snipe directly, via a sniping service, or via sniping software. Personally, I use JBidWatcher, which is a Java-based program that runs on most OSes.

I notice that your descriptions of your previous auctions had you losing auctions by a substantial amount. This means that at least two people were willing to pay more than you were -- in an eBay auction, the final price is set by the second highest bidder, with a few exceptions relating to very close auctions and unusual auction types. This could be a case of an irrational bidding war with two or more irrational parties, or it could be that you're simply undervaluing the item in question compared to its market value. I'm sure we'd all love to get pristine Nikons or Hasselblads for $5, but that won't happen on eBay any more than in a brick-and-mortar camera store.

srs5694 said:

To research prices, begin by doing a search for current auctions using the eBay search feature. When the list of current auctions appears, look down the left column for a check-box marked "completed auctions." Check it and click the "Show Items" button. This will bring up a list of recently completed auctions that match your criteria, including their final sale prices. If you expect to pay $400 for Item X but you see that Item X has been selling for $500-$800 recently, then your chances of getting it at your desired price are low. If, OTOH, you see it's been selling for $300-$500, then you'll very likely be able to pick one up for $400, but you might be outbid once or twice before you find one for your target price. Patience is a virtue with eBay.

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I took your advice and did a little checking; the result is I have not done too badly. Of course some rather extreme bid winners make the average better, but even with those odd-balls, I did OK.(The single winning bids on items hundreds of dollars over the average, leave you wondering just WHO buys these, plus I have seen some "buy it now" deals, with one bid or offer that were very good deals for the one bid or offer"

I noticed that it seems items go up for bids in, for lack of a better word-clusters. If one gets into the cluster early, that one will do better than a late arrival.

I see the Nikon F2 brigade still loves it dearly, with only an odd one or two, that go for genuinely low prices.
They probably were fortunate to catch a dead-zone with their bidding.

I noticed that among the Ricohphiles, most sell between a quarter and half a Franklin, but there are some items that hit fifty almost immediately, which means that the last hours the seller will do probably quite well.

Cross referencing between E-bay and the retail stores, helps give one a good idea when the retail stores has a genuinely better deal, and sometimes they do.
Ya Gotta love it, in the long run.

Bobby

BobbyR said:

I noticed that it seems items go up for bids in, for lack of a better word-clusters. If one gets into the cluster early, that one will do better than a late arrival.

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The clustering is a statistical artifact. Truly random distributions (say, of listings of Item X on eBay) tend to produce clusters. Most people will say the clusters look non-random, but they're wrong; people tend to underestimate the amount of clustering in a truly random distribution.

I used to do a lot of trading on eBay and there is no randomness.

Unless things have changed dramatically (I doubt it), in North America, wise sellers always time their auctions to end between 5PM and 8PM Pacific time on Sunday. This creates an open window on the East Coast of 8-11PM (i.e. not too late of an ending that folks "just go to bed") and fits the fact that on the West Coast, folks have begun winding down from the weekend.

Basically, Sunday evenings are "down time" for most folk and that is when they are most likely to go on line and be viewing eBay auctions.

Similarly, wise buyers look for unknowing sellers who put the auction ending times in mid-week. Particularly those who put their ending time in the middle of the day in midweek! There is a reason why eBay traders are often retired, semi-retired or, as I was back then, I was between jobs (i.e. unemployed).

The idea is that you look for your supply in mid-week auctions and then sell into the high-viewer Sunday night market. It's simply a form of arbitrage.

I've long ago given up on eBay trading - but if you are a buyer and want a deal - look for a mid-week closing date. Similarly, if you are a seller, always choose a Sunday evening as the closing time for your auction.

There is nothing "random" about eBay auctions.

BTW: I gave this up long before there were all these "sniping" programs and tools like using txt msging ways of staying on top of the bidding process. But it doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters is the final bid. If you want to win - be in there at the end and with 30 seconds or so to go - if you still want it at just above the going price, bid 25-50% over. Most times you'll win and win by an amount you can "live with".

Once again I turn to this fine bunch of photo recording gear-heads for opinions & information.
To those who are well experienced in Ebay affairs, I have noticed that one fellow has been out bidding me on certain Nikon items.
Is there a way to bid so as to not let another see a pattern.
My obvious bad pattern is I already put bids on the better item while the first is still in play.

I have beaten some last second bidders by simply using a high max. and some really go at it.(My brother found the nasty world of Ebay for real when I convinced him to put a max of 150 on a complete Speed Graphic Press case, two flashes etc. excellent cond., he is a thrifty person, when in the last minutes it shot up to 405 bucks. THAT opened his eyes)

Oddly I have been glad this fellow has done that as there have been better fruit on on later limbs, and I do not want to have to resell that which I do not need, nor really can afford.
Still it is annoying.

Snipe, Bobby, snipe. Doing that will make you invisible until the end of the auction.

I concur with Dan. If I'm understanding correctly, you suspect somebody of "stalking" you -- watching what you're bidding on to locate things worth bidding on. If you snipe, then this other party won't be able to follow you to the items in which you're interested.

I must point out, though, that it's also possible that this other person is finding these items in the same way you are (using similar search words, say). If that's the case, then sniping won't help to shut this other bidder out of the auction, although depending on this person's bidding style, sniping might improve your odds of winning the auction. (If this person is sniping already, your taking up sniping shouldn't have any impact; sniping will help only if another bidding is engaging in incremental bidding.)

I add items to my watch list, then click on number of bids from there about five minutes before the end of an auction. in my screen there is a place to put in bids directly from there, and the only one who can 'see' you is the seller, and they only know you have the item on your watch list. If the price is still in a range that I'll pay, I put the bid in with between 15 and 20 seconds to go. Of course I've bid on a lot more than cameras (books, magazines, vacuums, china, medals, radios, phone stuff, pictures, software, etc.), and my feedback rating is over 1000 now (yeah, I need to get a life, but the rug-rats are gone, now all the toys are mine!).
Mike

So, Mike, are you awake 24 hours? The sniping engines do the same, never sleep.

In some of eBay's recent TV ads, auctions are portrayed as competitions. This interpretation gives sniping another benefit: if your snipe is too low, it won't go off, and you won't be listed amongst the "losers".

Charley

Golly gee. When I'm outbid or when my snipe bid is so low that it isn't even entered, I don't think that I'm a loser. I think that someone else wanted the attainable, at a price, object of desire more than I did.

That attitude is, of course, the mature way of thinking about ebay auctions. Some of us sometimes slip from our maturity and "feel cheated" when outbid... especially when the winner is paying morethan something is believed to be worth.

I'm an eBay Sniper. On my various attempted EBay LF Lens Snipes I have encountered a couple of
APUG Master Snipers (Jim Galli and Sandy King). I lost each time but it was a good learning experience!

I seldom bother to even bid until the last minutes. Often times I can then look and just say "nevermind." If you click on the Bids link for completed auctions you find most of the action is in the last 5 minutes, sometimes 5 seconds. I did once bid early on an obscure item like an Omega B-8 negative carrier and won it as the only bidder. But if you're looking at the sort of stuff people generally lust over, the action doesn't even start until the hammer is poised over the closing bell.

Last week I bid $118 (all I was willing to go) on a folder at about the 20 second mark. By the time the screen refreshed, I was outbid, and it closed at $152.

DaveT

Hello,

My name is Steve. [All: Hello Steve]

... and I snipe on eBay

Now I put my reliance that I can either win by squeezing in a bid at the last minute or at least drive up the price ...


Steve

Sirius Glass said:

... or at least drive up the price ...

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What's the point of that?

BrianShaw said:

What's the point of that?

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Why, to help the seller and punish the higher bidder(s) for having the nerve to want the thing more than I do.

You are just too funny today, Dan!

Sirius Glass said:

Hello,

My name is Steve. [All: Hello Steve]

... and I snipe on eBay

Now I put my reliance that I can either win by squeezing in a bid at the last minute or at least drive up the price ...
Steve

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Hello Steve--you are a sick man Steve.

In reality, I try not to the latter as it does no one, except the seller, any good, especially those dedicated to film photography.

I GET THE URGE, but if I really don't want it that bad, the most I might-might add out of spite is another twenty or so dollars.
I have won with those twenty also.

At the same time IF I TRULY WANT IT, I get caught in the zone between bidding frenzy, and I simply want the damn thing--you can kill me but you WILL NOT defeat me.

It seems the Nikon brigade is full of such types.

I recently paid over a hundred dollars more for a Topcon Super DM , with two lenses than I had any intention of, but having checked the internet. I had seen they are not common, and some who do have the desirable items, for sale, charge lke a rabid bull.

Anyone have Topcon cordless motor drive for sale for less than an arm, and a leg?
Bobby

Bobby R,

The resultant effect of my snipping and failing to win the bid is that the price does get driven up. Thus the winner ends up paying more just because I bid for the item too. It is not a preposeful driving up the cost, it is the result.

If you have read my posts elsewhere in APUG, you will see irony and humor in them.

Good luck on finding the Topcon motor drive, they were not common when Topcon was at its height.

Steve

Sirius Glass said:

Bobby R,

The resultant effect of my snipping and failing to win the bid is that the price does get driven up. Thus the winner ends up paying more just because I bid for the item too. It is not a preposeful driving up the cost, it is the result.

If you have read my posts elsewhere in APUG, you will see irony and humor in them.

Good luck on finding the Topcon motor drive, they were not common when Topcon was at its height.

Steve

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Hello Steve--that was not serious Steve--but if you hum a few notes I'll fake it.

Sirius Glass said:

The resultant effect of my snipping and failing to win the bid is that the price does get driven up.

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Not necessarily. An important point to remember about eBay auctions is that, with a few exceptions, the price is set by the second-highest bidder. It doesn't matter if the auction has two bidders or two hundred, the high bidder pays what the second-highest bidder's maximum value was plus the increment (which varies depending on the bid value). Thus, if you bid (say) $100, another person bids $120, a third person bids $70, and a fourth person bids $150, the auction will sell for $121 (or $120 plus whatever the increment is at that level), and neither your $100 bid nor the third person's $70 bid will have any effect on the final price. Whether it's sniped or not makes no difference, except insofar as an early bid may affect other bidders' behavior. This last fact can of course be important, but not when a bid is entered as a snipe.

There are exceptions to this rule of the price being set by the second-highest bidder. These include one-bidder auctions (the item sells for the starting price, unless there's a reserve), cases in which the second-highest bid is lower than the high bid by less than the increment (in which case the high bidder pays his/her high bid), cases of identical high bids (in which case the earlier bidder wins and pays his/her high bid), "buy it now" purchases, and some of the more unusual auction types. Most of these cases are really more like minor tweaks to the usual rule rather than exceptions.