The nickname might stem from amateur sellers back in the day… I remember when eBay first began enforcing the use of Paypal exclusively. If you preferred an alternate form of payment, this was a problem.
People learned to get around that, if they wanted. Or they just got a Paypal account. I do think I’ve had a sale listing kick back because I did not designate Paypal for payment.
I used to do that by placing snipes. That way you don’t have to be there when the auction ends. I’ve heard complaints that snipes "aren’t fair’, but then a lot of buyers started using them, so I stopped bidding and stick to buy-it-now. And yes, a lot of the vendors i like online sell stuff on eBay, including OOP stuff they don’t list in their regular stores.
It’s always worth an eBay search before you buy elsewhere, just like I usually step outside and check prices online on my iPhone before I grab a kit at the LHS.
That ensures you are more likely to pay the most for a given item or you get outbid and lose. I agree that you should bid the maximum you’re willing to pay, but the way I do it, there’s no looking back. I generally bid with 10 to 6 seconds left unless I won’t be available at the end of an auction (like asleep, on the road, etc.).
For example, seller lists a $50 kit for $10 + $10 s/h. Let’s say your LHS sells it for $50 + 6% sales tax or $53 total out the door. The most you’d like to pay would be less than $53 delivered, because if the final bid was $43, you could get the kit at the store for the same amount and get it right now.
If you place a $40 bid, the opening bid shows $10. A newbie comes by and decides to bid as well. These newbies will up the bid by .50 to a dollar at a time until the price goes out of his range, he loses interest or he finally outbids you.
But if you let the newbie be the first bidder, he’s probably going to lowball the bid and maybe only bid $15. Sometimes they just bid the opening amount. Once the kiddies are done playing and upping the bid by nickle and dime amounts, it’s either at a high price and you move on to another great deal or they finished messing around and stopped, let’s say around $20.
A few minutes before the auction end, you long on and place your $40 bid. Most likely you’ll get the item for a minimal amount over the current bid of $20, probably around $21.
If I’m not getting the kit for 40-60% off of retail, I’m not bidding. That percentage includes shipping. I’m not going to try to bid on something that delivered would be marginally less than buying it locally.
If you still actively bid, look into snipes. Bidslammer is the one I used in the past. They cost $ 1 a successful bid, but snipes go on sale two-fer all the time.
That’s my logic as well.
I’m one of those that waits until the last few seconds (3-4) to bid. Doing it this way limits how far the price can “ping-pong” up to a higher price. You just have to gamble that your bid is the highest when time runs out and the other guys bid doesn’t have time to up the ante.
What will really make you want to throw something across the room is when you hit the final bid confirm button with 3 seconds left and are informed you need to “login”!!! aarrrrrrggggghhhh.
Also, there have been times when the powers that be decide thats its time for my connection or my system to have a “hiccup” right after I hit the confirm bid button and I get the little rotating arrow!
Some of the best deals I’ve gotten were those that end in the early AM’s as in 2:00 or 3:00.
Mispellings/Iistings can also be your friend. I recently scored a large lot of “Sci-Fi and Fantasy Modeller” magazines because of this mistake.
I believe the majority of the negative comments about ebay comes from sellers.
At one time many sellers were upset about all the different fees and fee increases. A fee for listing, a fee for a photo, a percentage of the sell price, a fee for the payment handler, etc.
If you aren’t careful you could actually be just giving away what you are selling after all the fees are deducted.
Here’s a hint, randomly chose something to add to your watch list a couple minutes before you need to bid. If you are at a point where you need to re-log in, you’ll get the log in message when you go to watch the other item and not when you go to bid. That way you’ll have a “fresh” log in when it’s time to bid.
Back in the old days, I remember snipers would bid some insane amount, like in the hundreds, just to better insure a win. I remember two guys doing the exact same thing on the same auction and the item selling for well over a hundred dollars more than it was worth. It may have been the old Ampersand Publishing’s Modeler’s Guide to the M4 Sherman. I seem to remember the final auction price ending over $200.
As far as fees go, unless you are a dedicated seller with items for sale 365 days a year, eBay offers free listings quite regularly for a finite amount of items. It often lasts an entire month, but sometimes only one day. I plan my auction sales during these time periods.
For example, today only (Nov. 8th) you may list up to 1,000 free auctions. There were identical days with smaller numbers (150, 250) in September and October and will probably be some in December. Like any money making venture, you just need to stay abreast of the market.
Here’s how snipes work for me. You see the item you want. It’s worth $ 25.00 to you. Subtract the $ 6 that the seller wants for shipping and you set a high limit of $ 19. And if there are multiple auctions over a period of time for the same thing, you can set a group.
When the first auction matures, and you are off at the track or whatever, the bid-slam site puts in a bid for you that’s $ 0.50 higher that the current high bid, with about 3-4 seconds left. Unless of course the bidding has already passed your maximum. I’ve seen all kinds of games sellers play, like hidden reserves and phantom bids, but as long as you set a maximum you can live with, you don’t get hurt.
And if you are unsuccessful, your sniper moves onto the next auction. As soon as it wins an item in your group, it stops.
Hmm…this snipe thing is relevant to my interests…
Anybody got another reco besides bidslammer? Their site is hating me.
Had me an interesting experience recently with ebay. I won a Verlinden update set for the 1/48 B-17 for $17, and I was pretty happy since retail is around $30. I waited a week and it didnt ship, but the guy said he usually ships the first weekend after the auction ends, so I figured it would ship that weekend. He emails and said he apologizes for being late and that he’ll ship it first thing monday morning. Before ya know it, saturday rolls around and it still hasn’t shipped so I contact him about it. He gets back to me saying he can’t find the set because he has a big stash and it must’ve gotten somewhere and he doesn’t feel like searching through everything. I was disappointed at this point, but then he said he gave me a full refund and then said asked what scale I was in to since he would be sending something out for free. So, now I’m waiting to see what he’s gonna send
I have used it for years and it has NEVER let me down. I think they still offer your first trial snipe for free too!
Aside from the “too easy to spend money there” reasoning, I’d say the “evilBay” thing comes from good, old-fashioned remembering the bad experiences more than good ones.
One of the things that might be too obvious is to check is the feedback on the seller. That can give a heads-up on potential problems from other people’s experiences. The few times a problem came up with something not arriving, the seller was willing to make up for it to my satisfaction.
As far as the prices aspect some have mentioned, the only times I’ve regretted paying a lot for a kit was when a re-release came out later on. The biggest example I can think of was the 1:200 scale HWR-00 from Macross that I won for an $80 bid. About 6 months later the kit was re-issued for the first time in 20+ years for $20. I figure that the other bargains I’ve found ( sometimes after waiting for months for a good deal on a particular kit ) have more than made up for that.
I think its called Evil Bay because of the evil we create. I go through the items and see all kinds of models I just have to have! It makes me evil! I have scored some great models on there with really low bids. I think one of my best scores was the Trumpeter 1/35 Leopold for $50! That was a couple years ago though cause now it seems like all the items are Buy it now which I don’t bother with.
In fact, so much so that I have come to the conclusion that if you see a sudden flood of old kits of a certain subject, there must be a re-release just around the corner.
Plastic models aren’t so bad, because they’re not easy to counterfeit and are cheap to begin with. Sure, there’s the occasional “empty box” story. But in other things like fashion, accessories and jewelry; watch out. Even by eBay’s own estimates, well over half of the stuff like Juicy Couture clothes or Hermes scarves or Fossil watches is possibly counterfeit. Usually it’s not too hard to tell, from the price which is about half what it should be. There’s a bunch of tips on the site worth reading through.
I agree with Bondo, if you see a flood of formerly hard-to-find kits that once went for big bucks, rest assured a re-release or even a new tooled, more up-to-date kit is coming soon.
Believe it or not, those of you who only visit this site are fairly well behind the power curve in terms of learning about the latest and greatest kits coming down the pipe. Many of the other sites have modelers who are involved in the research and development of models and discussion begins, test shots shown long before a kit even becomes available for pre-order or news worthy.
I’ve seen that a few times, especially with Star Trek kits. Since the incident with the Monster, I’ve started looking for any hints outside of eBay of re-pops of certain kits.
Heh… THAT’S when I get happy… I’m tickled that the bottom drops out of those kits, since I’m so far removed from the “Latest & Greatest” crowd that I’d need a Keyhole-Sat to see 'em… Just wish Revell would get new molds for their 1/32 Mitsubishi “Jack” so the bottom would drop on what is about the rarest kit in their entire 1/32 line-up… 'Course, the bids start at around 20.00 when the kit appears, but it only takes a couple days and the bids are up to 100.00 or more… Damn collectors ruin it for builders…
I’ve had issues trying to sell WW2 German stuff there, since any showing of a Hakenkruez is a no-no… I understand their point, but then again, “editing” the Hakenkruez out is PITA, and I often wonder how many buyers pased it up because of the “edit” (read: Censor)… I’ve had badges kicked back even though I’d censored the symbol… I think it’s a personal decison made by some various minimum wage clowns that have no knowlege of what’s going on, since sometimes they fly, and sometimes they don’t… Been trying to unload an Infantry Assault Badge for two years without success, and it’s browning me off… THAT one gets kicked back EVERY time…
However, I digress…
I’ve sold on bay for a long time, made a pretty fair bit of coin, but turn around an sink it back into models, lol… So, yah… “EvilBay”, for me anyway, comes from the fact that it sucks away my money quicker 'n one of my ex-wives…
Big ditto… I’m as cheap a bassige as they come, and I ain’t paying close to retail for anything on Ebay…
I hunt for Monogram, Hawk, Lindberg, Frog, Arii, Otaki, and the like, but I use Ebay’s Search Parameters to do it…
I just set the search for something like, “Monogram, 1/48, Airplanes, and set the search price at .99 to 19.99”… Then I click the Email Notification option, and Ebay sends me a list of sellers with kits everyday that match those parameters…
If it’s over 19.99, I ain’t interested in hearing about it… 'Course, there ARE exceptions, but generally, those emails are enough… But I managed to get three kits last month for that price, in one lot… 1/48 Frog kits, a Jack, Oscar, and Frank… With shipping, it came to about 28.00, but that kinda deal is what I’m talking about with Ebay…
All the Trumpeter, Tamiya, Dragon, and Hasegawa stuff I got is from good ol’ kit-huntin’ though… They cheaply-priced higher-end kits are in there, you just gotta look…
And don’t “poo-poo” kits that have been started… I nailed a number “started” kits over the years for 10-15% of what an unbuilt, sealed copy of it sells for, and most of them have only a couple parts glued, and some other sparts may be off the sprues, sure… Some have a bit more done but generally, ain’t much wrong with 'em… Decals might be missing (spares box or AM fixes that), or some paint might have to covered up or removed (Soak in Simple Green cleaner overnight), but most of us have had to do that with our OWN kits anyway, at some point…
Evilbay is Okay…
I just did a quick search for “Bf 109” and at least a third to half had clearly visible Hakenkruez on their tailfins, including models. boxart and book covers. .
Hi, Al, I think eBay relies on user complaints, to enforce the policy, that is, you have to flag the auction as offensive, and they’ll follow up. Kind of like the Stasi used to do.