Hey since we are having such fun with the athearn for 1200.00 lets hear some of the others and post pics if ya still got them, I.E. the empty floquil bottle or the dryer lint for scenery ( got a copy of that one and it was a funny responce to the first one, gotta find it in all the junk thou).
Why don’t we just leave e-Bay alone for awhile – people will always post exhorbitantly overpriced junk in an attempt to fleece the suckers who don’t know the true value of something.
Tyco locomotive and a few freight cars for $200+
Not weirdness…just insanity!
I still get a chuckle out of a Athearn CN boxcar kit that sold for $25.00 plus shipping…The MRSP was $7.25 and and the going street price was $5.25…
The BEST way to bid on e bay is to know your MRSP and going street price…All to sadly there are those that don’t do their home work and over pays or worst gets caught in a bidding war…Of course this makes the sellers happy regardless of their honesty.
I’M SURE that this ‘misplaced decimal points’ fellow will claim to have sold it - even with no bids.
Confuscious say “Many person cover his a** to save face”
My favorite was the fellow selling a huge lot of thousands of items with a starting bid of like $12,000… He had a story about collecting stuff for decades waiting to retire, but now had health problems and he needed money/couldn’t do the hobby any more, etc. Of course, he also said things like “some of the big stuff and some of those smaller trains” that didn’t exactly sound like a decades-long hobbyist.
He listed a few dozen items that certainly sounded interesting - 3-4 brass locos and other similarly “good” stuff. Maybe $2,000 worth of goods right there. But beyond those few dozen, he wouldn’t inventory them or provide a list: was there another $10 or $10,000 worth of stuff? Just some photos of a room full of c**p from too far away to see any detail at all, and most of that inside cardboard boxes.
I daydreamed for a bit about going for it – I’ve bought some lots in the past (much smaller) and made a nice little profit selling them piece-by-piece. So against my better judgment I sent him a note feeling it out: saying that people would assume the answer was “$10” without a list, and even a few dozen more of the “best” items being specified would help a lot. He said “too damn bad” (literally), and that a “local auction” was all set to take it off his hands if nobody bought it on Ebay…
Plus he wouldn’t even let a bidder arrange for shipping, it was strictly “you come pick it up” – and he was not precisely in a dense urban center like LA or NYC where he might still have a large pool of bidders; it was maybe a suburb of Tucson if memory serves. That’s actually the one thing that makes me think he was a guy who didn’t quite ‘get it’ rather than a total scammer – I’d expect a scammer to ship from a PO Box and want you nowhere near him for a live pickup.
It can be hard to tell the scamsters from those who truly just don’t understand what they need to do, or who think they have something they don’t. What’s not usually hard to tell is the auctions you need t
Kind of hard to do that as ebay will want their fees if it sold, although some have done that and paid the fees just so ebay won’t find out they were bidding against themselfs.
Not talking overpriced listings, although the athearn engine for $1500.00 is amusing, but the the items like someone paying over $400.00 for an mdc hon3 engine, now it was nicely done but!!! and I followed the sale all the way though, but what I had in mind really was items like the empty floquil bottle of driftwood stain that went for over $20.00 almost listed my three bottles at that price and they are full.
How about the retired, but fully functional, chinese steam locomotives for $100,000 each, shipped to a U.S. port of your choice. Once it got to port, it was your problem. Anyone who’s been here for a while may have seen the Iowa Interstate with a pair of them. Same ones. Repair parts are available from China, presumable off of already retired engines.
Brad
A year or two ago I saw an actual Amtrak F-40PH for sale for 2 million bucks. Not an HO scale but the real locomotive. It was pretty neat to read about though as the guy told all about the rebuilding cycles an engine goes through and all that. Needless to say I got outbidded.[(-D]
There’s a downside to drinking excessive amounts of coffee or triple lattes while bidding. This isn’t a goofy buyer’s listing, but it tickles me. Take a look at the bidding history. This guy was determined.
These Genoa’s aren’t worth that much in mint condition, much less with obvious wheel wear.
Nelson
That is a great example of what is referred to as “nibbling”. I hate it. Grow some &@lls and bid your max the first time!!!
It’s not that!!! bad, maybe double but I looked and he got some deals in the past but also seems to like to pay top $ for revirossi.
I agree Smitty. If he was willing to pay that much he should have entered over $100 outright. What a waste of time.
And I like Rivarossi too, mainly for nostalgic reasons, but he got rooked. I’ve seen them go for much less mint.
Nelson