Thou shalt not disparage eBay

Some people make a hobby of bashing EBay in rec.models.railroad

I figure it this way...they are people who:

1. Got burned by a seller (NOT by EBay)
2. They didn't win an auction, because they didn't bid high enough.
3. What they sold went for a lot lower than they expected to get.

The latter.

For the speculator, a hobby in its own right. For everyone else, an adjunct.

Jay CNS&M North Shore Line - "First and fastest"

Just a means to an end.

Jim

Mark Newton wrote: > Is buying models on eBay an adjunct to the hobby, or a hobby in it's own > right?

The former in my case - it's the means to an end. I'm changing scales and prototype, so eBay is a convenient way to dispose of my old models to fund new ones. I have long believed that eBay is a seller's market and having sold about 40 items in the last 2 months, many close to or above the new price, this view is now firmly entrenched.

Cheers David

I hate Ebay but sometimes is the only way to find somthing. Bruce

EBay is just the replacement for the old buy/sell boards and magazines for me. Excellent marketplace--capitalism at its finest!

Kent in SD

Then there's:

1. People who have neither bought nor sold on eBay, and really couldn't give a toss about it either way.

Yes, but a lot faster! With many buyers using PayPal, you can post an auction and let it run for the seven days, get the payment when the auction ends, and mail out the item the next day. Total time - eight days! With the magazine ads, it took at least three months to get them published.

I love eBay! I don't have any idea how many things I've sold, but my feedback rating of 300 represents 355 positive posts (some buyers bought more than one item). And not every buyer bothers to post feedback. When I can get around $185.00 for an HOn30 AHM diesel that I paid $10.00 for, I am pleased!

I recently came across two large old toy trucks near a local recycling bin. I don't think they would fit into the bin opening, so they were left there. I took them home, cleaned them up a bit and offered them on eBay. I got $63.00 for one and $39.00 for the other. And they did not cost me one cent!

Bob Boudreau Canada

...but think they know everything about eBay because they heard it in a newsgroup.!

You got that right, EBay is just one big online flea market. Reminds me of those Carnivals that had the $1.00 grab bags. They guaranteed that what was in there was worth more than $1.00.

Quality is subjective. I have looked at stuff that others have said is great and I think it is crap. Someone else may look at what I think is good and think it crap.

EBay is like that, you pay the price and take the chance.

I've sold a couple of old cans of tennis balls, still unopened, that I'd had for 25 years. People actually collect stuff like this. I recently sold some paper kites that I'd had in a closet for 40 years.

Excellent stories Bob. I've had very similar experiences. Most eBayers who sell used merchandise can relate.

Jim

It works for me. Especially with Pay Pal. I sold a few unwanted items, left the money in Pay Pal and went shopping. Many web sites with shopping carts use Pay Pal. When my Pay Pal account gets low, I sell some more junk on Ebay. It used to be we were stuck with thing we no longer had a use for. Now we have a way to turn them into cash and get things we want. How could that be a bad thing? Doug

I've never had a problem with PayPal either, Doug.....

There's one guy in the bus hobby who makes a life out of bashing Paypal...yet folks have checked and he doesn't even have a Paypal account, at leastnot in his known e-mail address. Just one of the bandwagon jumpers I guess.

for my two cents worth, when I started ebaying in 1998 (as a buyer, I've never sold on there) I used it to find some good deals on stuff like baseball cards. OVer the last 5 years, things have changed and now I rarely find a good deal on e-bay...So why do I use it? Because I can find things there that you can't find anywhere in the world. Who in the world would buy cement lab samples from the 40s from the atlas cement company? I would (and did) thanks to e-bay. Ditto on a postcard from my home town from 1910.

E-bay is pure capitalism. It matches sellers with buyers. If people didn't want to buy what other people are selling e-bay would not exist.

Al