Hello! I’m a longtime modeler & kit collector, & often buy & sell on Ebay. I’m always trying to learn new & better ways to Ebay, and I would like to pose a question to modelers out there-when do you shop for your models on Ebay-mornings, late evenings, weekdays, Saturdays, Sundays, etc? If there is a kit on Ebay that you’ve really been searching for (we all have that “holy grail” of desired kits!), and know you want to bid on it & be watching it when it ends, when (day & time) would you prefer the auction to end? I’d really appreciate some feedback on this.
I buy lots of stuff on there, and it is most convenient for me if the auction ends after 7pm (eastern time) any day of the week. You have to think of a global audience but honestly, most of the audience will be in the USA, so you have to cater to them. If you have it end too early in the afternoon, say 4pm (eastern time), then a lot of people won’t be out of work, especially west coast people who are at 1pm.
I have been buying kits on there quite regularly lately and i’ve noticed a few bad habits from a few of the sellers. I won’t mention any sellers names though, but I will say what they’ve been doing. I was bidding up a particular model that had 3 days left on it. It bid up to a stupid price like $83.00 or something. My bid was $82.00. I only bid it that high because every time I bid, a few hours later I was outbid. I finally threw in the towel and let it go, and wouldn’t ya know, it sold for $83.00 …or did it? The very next day the model is back up for bid from the same person. What this “seller” was doing, was having another account that he/she owns or a friends account bid the price up to try to get people to bite. Then when it sells to themself they claim that the high bidder retracted or whatever to avoid ebay fees and they can re-list it.
Hi. I answered the similar question posted to the Armor Forum. Check there.
Since I work in the last time zone in the states Hawaii time zone but I work in the Aleutians. Time is not a factor. If I want a kit I place my max. If I really want a kit and have the money I do my best to snipe. Win some loose some.
I rarely buy on Ebay & never get into a bidding war. I’ll bid the max I’m willing to pay & it either wins or not. As far as time, mid-evening EST works best for me.
Regards, Rick
Evenings are preferable, but as joelster commented, the unscrupulous tactics by so many i’ve seen on Ebay have jaded me a little bit. I used to buy the majority of my modeling purchases on Ebay, until I saw I started experiencing the shamming and inflated shipping costs. I used to make about 30 purchases a year, but only two the past six months. I do more selling on Ebay when I want to thin stash. Speaking of that, anyone want a good price on a 1/35 Leopold? What was i thinking when i bought that beast? Where was i going to put it? Oh well, I digress.
I buy & sell on Ebay quite often… I don’t care about end-times as a buyer though, since I put in the max amount I’m willing to pay and let it go at that, although I’m a fairly good sniper as well for items I REALLY want… Those “Rare” kits aren’t all that rare, either ( A rare kit is one who’s molds have been destroyed or lost and there’s no chance of a re-release)… I recall seeing an Aurora 1/48th P-61 Black Widow about a month ago, and that was priced at 43.00 at the time… Now given that this is definately one that falls into “rare” category, it’s not worth 10.00, much less 43.00… The kit itself is so bad, so out of scale, and so poorly-shaped that it’s worth little more than gettinga firecracker after it’s built… It might be worth something to a collector, but kit is useless for a modeler… However, I digress…
I know there’s enough shills (Someone who runs up the bids for the seller) out there to go around as well, though they get obvious after a while… As for shipping costs, I find out where it’s coming from and caculte my own shipping… If it’s outside of a couple of bucks difference, I let the seller know about it and then bail…
I buy quite a few kits and other modeling “stuff” on ebay. I put in modest bids on things I would sort of like to have and occasionally win it. If the item ends when I am unavailable to bid, I bid the max amount I am willing to pay and hope for the best. If I am at home at the auction end, I do the snipe bit and put in my max bid at the last moment. I work a variable, unpredictable schedule, so any one ending time is as good as the next for me. I do HATE the schill bidding and the inflated shipping costs.
Darwin, O.F. [aln]
I don’t really care about end times either, I will just bid what I’m willing to pay. If it goes higher than that it is rare for me to go back and re-bid.
I’ve found 2 benefits to that. One I don’t end up spending more than I wanted after getting all worked up in a bidding war. The other it seems like after a few attempts to out bid me people give up when I still have the high bid, I guess they don’t know if I am insane and put down $1000 so move onto a similar item.
Something that tends to turn me off of an item are excessively long auctions, anything more than 5 days and I will usually look for the same item due to end sooner. It’s not like I’m going to pop that thing open the minute it arrives but things change, and I don’t want to wait and see what surprise life will have in store to make me regret commiting to buy something next week.
I buy and sell on eBay as well. I don’t care what time they end and I’ll only bid a max bid after doing some research on historical prices and the seller’s rating. Shipping is expensive and as a seller I quickly realized that shipping is not cheap. It’s not the simple $4.95 that USPS offers when you consider a box large enough for the kit, packing materials to ensure it gets there safe, fees to print an online label, and then the time to get to the post office. I sold a kit last year that met the weight limit for $4.95 but after the box, et al, it was going to cost me another $10 to ship it…I didn’t put it in the ad so ate the cost. Net was a $4 loss to clean out my stash. I’m not looking make a living at it but I did sell enough of my stash to get that expensive resin kit for Christmas…
Shipping overseas, even Canada can be a hassle with the Customs form and added costs for International shipping.
All in all I still like shopping on eBay. I got a box of Hasegawa Hurricanes - 8 kits - for the price of 1.
Tim
I always bid within 30 seconds of the auction closing and bid fairly high. That way you have the best chance of not getting into a bidding war and, actually winning the auction. Kinda gets your heart pumping too !!
Chris
i shy away from ebay these days because i am not a kit collector, and i feel like ebay is swamped by folks charging too much for ‘mint in box,’ ‘rare,’ etc. also the shipping is a bit much. i like to build them, and would buy kits in plastic bags if they were offered more. my boxes get stripped down and used for something else, usually something to paint the same kit on, or for paint and tool caddys. ebay prices and how it all works is not how i prefer to shop, though i don’t deny there are deals to be found. i’m also trying to support local shops, but man they make it tough sometimes. :o)
Sooooo! That was you, eh? [:)]
Now, to the topic–I buy fairly frequently on eBay, I have searches defined for a number of different kit manufacturers, and check them almost every day for new items.
I try to avoid bidding wars, too, as some of you have noted. I think the best thing to remember is to educate yourself about what you want to buy. That was a rule I learned in the pre-Internet days, when I scoured flea markets, yard sales, and shows for things that I collect (eg, beer steins and toy soldiers). So for example, when I see someone bidding up a Monogram P-40B kit to over $20, I know that I won’t bid on it, because you can still get the kit, new, from Revell through your LHS. And there are usually several auctions for that kit at any given time on eBay, so I actually wouldn’t pay more than $10 for it ($10 plus shipping will just about match the cost of the new kit).
It was true to the Romans, who coined the phrase, and it’s still true today–caveat emptor! Let the buyer beware, that is, let him know what he’s doing. Otherwise, as Harry Anderson said, “A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place.”
Regards,
Brad
I use ebay weekly. I like things that close on the weekends, that way I can keep a close eye on things I really want to win. The evening ending bids are the best for me.
the Baron is right about educating yourself on the price that kits go for. I mentioned it before but open 2 extra windows as you surf ebay. In these 2 windows go to (sponsors on here) spruebrothers.com and internethobbies.com. Look at the price of these kits on those 2 sites and figure an extra $8-$10 for shipping. Then check out what the ebay sellers have them going at AND DON’T FORGET TO FACTOR IN THEIR SHIPPING! Some of them are total scammers when it comes to that.
Just didn’t want to start a new thread for this…but this is crazy…
and you can see in the picture that the original price was $14.99.
One heck of a return on investment.
[t$t], Dave
The USPS boxes are free & delivered to your home, newspaper packing is also free, and why bother printing labels when you can figure out the postage yourself and use a Sharpie to write directly on the box?
I think that kit builders & kit collectors are two vastly different things. I’m a bit of both, and when I’m looking for a kit to build, I will try to find the best deal possible. I do support my LHS (Colpar in Denver is awesome, & their employees are great), but will take a good internet deal if i can find one. When I am looking as a collector, I want the best possible example of that kit-mint in the factory shrinkwrap, bright colors, no box warping or distortion, & preferably an original price tag, and I am willing to pay more for this. (A lot more, in some cases…), but it is my choice to do so. Some of you may not understand this, but I take great personal satisfaction in my vintage collector kits. I have a portion of my hobby room set up to display the vintage kits just as they appeared to a wide eyed kid in the mid '60s to mid '70s- shelves full of mint sealed Aurora aircraft, the blue box & white box era Monogram kits, & the beautiful box art of the Revell 1/32nd scale aircraft kits, among many others. It is to a me a place to reflect on better days gone by, of good times with my father, & it gives me a sense of peace & promise for the future-so much potential still lays in those boxes-inside that shrinkwrap there is still air from 1962 (or so I manage to convince myself), and parts that last saw the light of day when our president was John F. Kennedy, we knew exactly who & where the bad guys were, & everything in our houses & the cars in our driveways were made in …I know, it’s a bit sappy, but so be it!
The boxes are free? How do you get them? Why do they charge you at the post office to get them, but will deliver them free to you?