Olympus-OM
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [OM] E-bay bargains

Subject: Re: [OM] E-bay bargains
From: Frank van Lindert <lindertv@xxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 04 Dec 1998 09:06:29 GMT
On Thu, 03 Dec 1998 19:30:14 -0800, "Rand E. Tomcala"
<rtomcala@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>I very much must agree with Gary R. on his post.  I do shows, Ebay, and
>the fleas frequently.  Here in Baltimore, to say that there isn't much
>in the line of used non-plastic Oly stuff is a gross understatement.  I
>have the fleas where knowledge and effort pays off, but seldom.  The
>shows I can get nice things sometimes, but the shows around here rarely
>have any good Oly stuff that priced too high.  An example of this is the
>norm for a decent (8.5 - 9.0) OM2n body is $170 to 200 USD.  On Ebay
>this is more like $140 USD for the same item.  Again Ebay takes work and
>planning to get items like this.   I daily scan Ebay for items of
>interest and bookmark them and track them.  If an item exceeds my idea
>of a good price I merely erase the bookmark and forget the item.
>  Yesterday after work I noticed a Tamron 2x Flat Field Converter on
>Ebay and the price was staying fairly low ($20) till very late in the
>auction.  I bookmarked it and checked periodically during the evening. 
>Near the end of the auction the bid moved to $21 with about 2 minutes to
>go.  I had been wanting this item for my Tamron 90mm f2.5 for quite a
>while so I decided to take it.  With one minute to go, I placed my one
>and only bid with a max of $44.  As I said, I wanted it and was willing
>to pay for it.  I won the bid at $30.88, this price is higher than a
>couple of these that I have seen go, but is lower than most of them.  To
>me, the bigest attraction of Ebay is selection and market.  Each
>depending on if I am buying or selling something.  There are many tricks
>that I have seen on Ebay that get higher prices for the same item.  It's
>called marketing and is not a dirty word, but it does take effort to be
>effective at it.
>Rand E.

This is almost exactly the way I proceed, Rand. But I sometimes start
with an early low bid, just to make sure that it appears in the 'My
Personal eBay' page (good idea to have that bookmarked by itself).

Last Wednesday I bought the rather rare (at least in Europe) TM-2
Program Timer which is an extension to the M Quartz Remote Control
Intervalometer. It cost me only $16.50 (plus shipping of course). I
guess this was a real nice eBay bargain....

One thing which I dislike a bit is bidding against fellow list
members. Not outbidding them (which of course is OK), but bidding to
your own limit, seeing that the other has a higher limit, and backing
out there. 
This way you unwillingly increase the price the other bidder has to
pay... Of course you could contact each other and try to agree to stay
out if your limit is low... but this porobably could be regarded as
forming a cartel ;-)

Frank van Lindert
Utrecht NL.

< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Sponsored by Tako
Impressum | Datenschutz