While sorting out stuff for the NEC next week, I had the PC on ebay and was browsing on a simple search for "engine", with a list of exclusions that reduced the number of hits from 6500+ to 2000+
40 pages of hopefully interesting auctions?What became pretty obvious is that a large number of dealers/traders are at work, and worse still there apopears to be a lot of shill bidding going on.
There was also the guy who appears to have two Petter diesel engines on auction, but the same engine is photographed in both auctions... someone is going to be disappointed.
A normally aspirated Merlin looked nice in a crate, but the rather high opening price discouraged me! Interesting that there is still this sort of item around on the surplus market.
Rolls-Royce CV12 was much more to my tastes, but still a bit big for rallying...
Looking at the stationary engines, there is one seller with a lot of engines for sale, and amongst the bidders is one who has bid on all this vendor's auctions, and has only just joined ebay this month. I would be very sceptical about that. It may well be genuine, but experience says it probably is not.
Another buyer cropped up on a disproportionate number of engine auctions, either an enthusiastic buyer or a dealer...
I did get through the whole 40 pages over the afternoon, and decided that the market is still potentially interesting but could be unhealthy unless you have your eyes wide open.
Peter