Beyond Belief

[bob winter]

I was following a Lee Valley scrub plane on Ebay. Just notice the auction closed and the winning bidder paid $ 167.50 for it. I had bid $ 50 and thought 167.50 was a bit over the top so I checked my catalogue. New the plane is either $ 119 or $ 135, depending on the blade.

Feel sorry for the winner but guess it must have been auction fever.

[Torna]

Complete non-sequitur, but when I saw the thread title I thought it might be our next Raw Faith or Architects & Engineers thread.
-leif

[bob winter]

Sorry, those threads were legends and I could never aspire to create one even close to them.

[rbgarr]

Yes indeed. Auction fever in action, and then he had to pay shipping on top of it, which was also likely too much.

[Old Dryfoot]

It really is amazing just how many people pay way more than retail on eBay, I think some of it is auction fever, but I think lots of people just assume that eBay equals a good deal.

[gazzer]

A while ago, there was a thread on one of the usenet forums about how an enterprising individual was buying Stanley plane reference books from Lee Valley and selling them on Ebay for over twice what he paid. There is huge collector fervor for planes in particular and apparently the seller was taking advantage of it.

It's been aggravating many times when I've been watching a good user tool only to see a few scholars take the bids over the top. I don't sell much on Ebay but I find that I can usually get much more there than selling locally. I am fair with shipping but could very easily tack on a "handling" fee for even more profit.

-G

[mike hanyi]

I feel sorry for the person who will pay 2200 for this barograph,

http://cgi.ebay.com/UNIQUE-ANTIQUE-RUSSIAN-BAKELITE-BAROGRAPH-MACHINE_W0QQitemZ270468632706QQcategoryZ14021QQcmd ZViewItemQQ_trksidZp5197.m7QQ_trkparmsZalgo%3DLVI% 26itu%3DUCI%26otn%3D1%26po%3DLVI%26ps%3D63%26clkid %3D7516311563400424029

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRYaVzWHzAtK5Y9jDJ48vrdYTu9_4O8W 8M6aWpffhjIh1fqXXgX



I have the exact same one I will sell for 200!

[Don Z.]

Just as an FYI... In many cases (and I cannot state that this is one) LV and LN planes go for more than new on eBay, because the bidder lives somewhere that the planes are not sold. Because of this, "more than retail" is still better than "unobtainium".

Not saying it makes sense... but it just is.

[knottyBuoyz]

I went 0 for 7 last week on e-Bay. Bidding on marine wire I saw all 7 items go for more than retail and when you figure in the cost of shipping e-Bay certainly wasn't a bargain that time. I'm sure it was auction fever or something.

[bob winter]

I have not purchased anything on Ebay for quite a while. I did bid $ 50 for the scrub plane, although I don't really need one, but why would I bid any higher when I can just hop in the car and be at the Lee Valley store in five minutes? You would think a prospective purchaser would educate themselves on what something is worth before bidding. Shipping is a big issue in Canada. When the father in law was alive, I would just have stuff sent to him in Florida and pick it up whenever we went down for a visit, but those days are long gone. On top of that, there seems to be a lot of junk being advertised as something other than what it really is.

[Bob Smalser]

Prices certainly have gone up in the past decade. But they've gone up proportionally with the increase in the popularity of hand-tool woodworking.

The editor of WK Fine Tools (below) says they are getting 70k visits a month. That's a lot of traffic.



There are approximately 4 - 5 K pages on the site. Every month the site records about 60 to 70 K visits and there is a solid group of continuing visitors who go to the site every day. There are preferred sections of course and yours is one of them. I checked statistics for your section this morning and it is visited on average 10,000 times every month.

And I just checked eBay completed listings for Stanley 40's, and they run between $50 and $100 with many in the 80-dollar range. That's twice what I paid for mine 10 years ago.

But now that I have it, I wouldn't be without it. There are times when the job calls for deep plowing through wet, sticky crap, and the design makes it easy to use and (more importantly) easy to clean afterwards.

http://pic20.picturetrail.com/VOL12/1104763/18169354/285438313.jpg