A Golden Opportunity!

I regularly get on Ebay and search for 'transistors' and I exclude those such as 2n3904, 2n3906, 2n4401, 2n4403, 2n2222A, 2n2907 and a few others. I usually come up with a few hundred listings. I then check them out to see what's hot, what's not, what's rare, and what's a bargain. You've probably seen some of the old CK722 collectible auctions that I've posted to the newsgroups which may go for a hundred dollars or more.

For quite awhile I've been noticing that a few sellers have trashed up the transistors listings for months; they sell supposedly 'vintage' transistors for outrageous prices, and continually relist the same items over and over, ad nauseum, with never a single bid. This, to me indicates they're way overpriced and probably not really what the seller says they are. One seller in particular really bothers me and probably everyone else. They go by the name Goldenopportunities1, and sell just a few transistors for a minimum bid of $10, charge $6 shipping for just a few transistors, do not accept Paypal, and continually re-list the same items over and over, making it tedious to browse thru all the listings.

Well, I found that the new Ebay search has a feature that allows you to exclude sellers. WOW! I put this seller's name in there, and the listings went from 145 down to 83! This clueless, inconsiderate seller was taking up a full 43% of the listings! But not any more! He's outta there! What a Golden Opportunity!

I also notice that this happens on occasion to my test equipment searches on Ebay, but maybe not to as great an extent. So I hope this info is helpful to those, too. I've got several ebay searches bookmarked in their own folder, just so I don't have to redo the searches every time. On the old ebay, I never could get their favorites to work right, maybe because I've got the Moz security and privacy settings clamped down to prevent popups, cookies and such. But with these searches bookmarked, who cares!

Someday I hope Ebay improves their website even more. My wishlist includes putting the number of relists in each auction, so a buyer will instantly know if the auction is a white elephant. And if this doesn't help cut down on the relistings, I hope they put a limit on free relistings, so after some number, say 5 relists, it will start to cost the seller something.

Also I hope they put, in addition to the feedbacks, the ratio of the number of relists to the number of successful total auctions. Or some composite of this and other ratings that reveal how much of a bottom feeding scumbag each seller is.

Hope you're successful bidding.

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My email address is whitelisted. *All* email sent to it goes directly to the trash unless you add NOSPAM in the Subject: line with other stuff. alondra101 hotmail.com Don't be ripped off by the big book dealers. Go to the URL that will give you a choice and save you money(up to half).
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You'll be glad you did! Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't changed it:
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Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th
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THANK YOU for that tip. Seriously. I do the same search and that guy bugs me too. There are other searches I do where I would like to exclude certain sellers like the guys that sell those component kits.

One thing you don't always notice is that a lot of auctions get their bids in the very last seconds, so even though it doesn't look like some of the sellers like him are selling anything at all, they actually are. Looks like more and more people are using the automated bidding services now.

Ebay is a real hoot sometimes. Dunno if you saw this one or not...

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check out what he says at the very bottom of the auction

Also there were the ghost in a jar people and the haunted rubber ducky. If you haven't seen those search on "ebay ghost in a jar" on google to see archives of all of the damn auctions people put up.

Finally here is one last thing that people sell that is really funny..search on ORGONE and sort by highest price. Nearly as I can tell, they are selling a box with a bunch of knobs/lights and a couple tin ashtrays glued to it for $300-400.00...over and over again. It can't possibly DO anything.

funny stuff.

Reply to
(0

Yes that is correct. Many times I'm outbid when there is only seconds left. The item has not recieved any bid for days but then at the last few seconds there can be several bids.

"(0) -^- (0)" skrev i en meddelelse news: snipped-for-privacy@news-server.kc.rr.com...

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Reply to
Rune Christensen

And in that respect, eBay differs from conventional auctions, which don't allow sniping. I was recently involved in organizing the auction service on

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and we decided to do like a real auctioneer -- automatically prolong the auction if the bids rise more than a few percent at the last minute.

Auto-sniping essentially turns an eBay auction into a sealed-bid auction, the kind where you don't know people's bids until after the auction ends. Of course, you can run an auction that way if you want to, but it would be much easier to omit the "sniping contest" and simply ACCEPT sealed bids! Astromart chose not to do this, but eBay perfectly well could, if they'd like.

As it is, the sniping contest keeps the sale from going to the person who is willing to pay the most. It's fairly common to miss "winning" an item because you didn't snipe fast enough.

Reply to
Michael A. Covington

left.

seconds

It's called sniping, and there are software pkgs like snipe-it that will allow you to do this. But if the bidder bids the maximum sensible, informed bid on his first bid, then the sniper is just paying too much, or else he needs it worse than you do. But just remember that there will always be another of the same item available later, so just bide your time and don't get into a foolish bidding war. Especially with those old collectible transistors!

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Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

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It all boils down to the bid that gets the last clock cycle...

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

I have a substantial collection of transistors from the germanium era. How does one go about determining if they have value beyond the intrinsic?

Thanks,

Norm Strong

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Reply to
normanstrong

Amen to that!

Don't forget also that there are other sources apart from the USA, especially for equipment. Ebay has servers in most large countries, although the Latin American ones seems a bit weak yet.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:

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Reply to
Peter A Forbes

That statement shows a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of how eBay works.

The person who is willing to pay the most *always* wins.

-- jm

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Reply to
John Miles

Minor quibble, which may be at the heart of any misunderstanding here: The person who is willing to pay the most AND who places a bid for that amount before the end of the auction always wins.

Being willing is not sufficient. (But you knew that. :-)

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John Miller
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Reply to
John Miller

"Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, the Dark Remover"" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

My point. Sniping turns all auctions into sealed-bid auctions (except for the people who actually enjoy the sniping process as a game of chance). The published bids are *no* prediction of what people are actually willing to bid. So it's a sealed-bid auction disguised as an open-bid auction. eBay should make up their mind.

Reply to
Michael A. Covington

No... That was my point.

Sniping turns all auctions into sealed-bid auctions. That is, you have to decide what you are willing to pay before you place any bids at all. In an open-bid auction, you can use other people's bids as a guide to what you should bid.

eBay is, in effect, sealed-bid auctions disguised as open-bid auctions. I wouldn't be surprised if the people in California who license auctioneers would eventually take some interest in this, as a regulatory matter.

Entirely too many people have never experienced an auction anywhere but eBay and don't realize just how weird eBay really is.

Reply to
Michael A. Covington

But how could sniping be eliminated?

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John Miller
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Reply to
John Miller

Well, even sans sniping, the eBay auctions are only semi-open. If you're the leading bidder, others don't get to see what your maximum bid is... only that it's at least $MININUM_INCREMENT above the maximum bid of the next-highest bidder. An eBay auction would be fully open if and only if each bidder's true maximum bid was visible in real time.

I'm not at all sure that there's any way, even in theory, to prevent sniping. You'd always have to create some rule which would distinguish a "snipe" from a "non-sniping last-minute bid", and I really doubt that you could create such a rule which would not be largely arbitrary, and also rather easily circumvented.

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Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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Reply to
Dave Platt

True... maybe they should switch to a completely sealed-bid format.

Add 5 minutes every time the (apparently) winning bid increases by at least

5%.
Reply to
Michael A. Covington

Would this not be vulnerable to automated snipe-ware which submits multiple, gradually-increasing bids during the last few minutes of an auction, seeking to "push" the winning bid upwards at a rate just a bit below the one which would trigger the "extend an auction" rule?

My guess is that any rule that you can think up, someone else can figure out how to "game" with automated software assistance.

You're correct, I think, in that the current structure of the eBay auctions means that it's difficult to predict what the winning bid will be, based on the bids entered more than an hour or so before the auction closes. I've come to anticipate a 2:1 kicker... that is, for many items the winning bid will be about twice the leading bid a few hours before the auction ends.

The current eBay system (with or without sniping) seems to reward people who know in advance what they consider an item to be worth to them, and put in a bid in that amount (either directly or via sniping). They either win it (at a price at or below their limit), or they lose it because someone else honestly outbid them.

The people who are disadvantaged by sniping are, I think, those who try to place bids based on "what other people seem to be thinking that this item is worth" - i.e. those who bid on the item in isolation, and don't research it or look at the results of previous auctions. These people may "lose out" because they don't actually bid what they're truly willing to pay, and are outbid at the last moment.

These same folks are also disadvantaged in another way... they're the ones who are more likely to get caught up in the thrill of the process, and bid an item up to much more than it's worth from other sources. Their lack of prior research, and willingness to set an honest personal value on the product, leaves them vulnerable in both ways.

As one example: the Vertex AV-150 ham radio is available, new-in-box, full warranty, quantity 1, from the biggest two ham-radio dealers on the Internet (AES and HRO) for under $120. eBay auctions which have closed in the past week or two have sold this identical radio, new-in-box, for prices as high as $150.

I don't think you're going to be able to find an "ultimately fair" way to run auctions... you'll just have to create a set of rules, and then live with whatever ways in which people figure out how to game 'em to their own personal advantage.

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Dave Platt                                    AE6EO
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Reply to
Dave Platt

If you check the auctions on ebay for a few months, you will get a feel for which germaniums are worth a lot as collectibles.

I think it's safe to say that any germanium transistor that's made after

1960 and comes in a fairly standard common package is _not_ going to be a collectible. Many of the germanium transistors that are sold on ebay are used for guitar FX, and might be uncommon, but are not collected by collectors. They typically go for a few tens of cents to a few dollars.

The Raytheon CK722 transistors are considered collectible, and usually go for several dollars to several tens of dollars depending on the age and package material.

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

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Wins?? "A fool and his money are soon parted."

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

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I've never read anything that claimed that Ebay auctions were sealed or open. AFAIK, they just say that when the time us up, whoever has bid the highest wins the auction. And the winning amount is equal to the maximum of the second highest bidder (assuming there was another bidder).

If it were a sealed bid auction, the winning amount would be equal to the highest bidder, not the second highest.

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

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Well, see my other followup to yours - it's not really a true sealed-bid auction. And another point: you _can_ use the bidding history of past auctions for the same item as a guide to what your maximum bid should be. And there may be more of the same auctions going on at the time of your bidding, so you can also use them as a guide.

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So you're saying that it's neither sealed- nor open-bid. No??

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

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