Sluggish bidding on my Wheatstone on ebay!

[Andy Holder]

I'm selling a lovely early Wheatstone EC on eBay.

 

The bidding is very slow and I'm certainly not letting it go for two or three hundred quid. I know there's usually a flurry of bids at the end but these days you just can't tell.

 

I would much rather the commission went to CNET so if anyone is interested, I would be happy to sell direct, with apologies to the other bidders.

 

Andrew

[Ann-p]

Andrew, It looks great, could love an instrument like this. Pity I play duet (after a fashion!).

Ann

[conzertino]

The problem with ebay is that many "serious" bidders only bid in the very last minute - or let a program bid for them.... There may be several bidders waiting for the last minute - or there may not be.... A reserve can help, but spoils th fun of bidding....

Good Luck!

[Geoff Wooff]

23 bids as of today... surely shows a fair amount of interest Andy?

 

Good luck with it,

Geoff.

[Andy Holder]

Thanks for the encouragement. It's always a problem. I don't like using reserves as I think it puts people off after a couple of bids that don't make it. You might as well do a buy it now. But sometimes you get loads of watchers (I have 96 at the mo.) and it goes up by £50 in the last 20 seconds. It's not that I'm being greedy but it is such a lovely playing instrument I would rather keep it than let it go for £500.

I think the best system is more like a real auction where, if there's a bid in the last minute, the auction extends. There is one site that does that, but of course nothing touches eBay's monopoly.

Thanks again all.

Andrew

[Geoff Wooff]

Ebay only has a monopoly because we let them.

In France there is a successfull website that is just like the "Classifieds" in a newspaper, this is much prefered by the French. Ebay has a far smaller presence here and also has introduced a section for advertising your item alongside its normal auction listings.

 

If I am looking to buy something, in France, I first check www.leboncoin.fr sometimes there are bogus adverts there too but with care I have purchased several things, including engine parts for Dirge's old vehicle friends in New Zealand.

 

Surely there ought to be a site like this French one in all countries ?

 

Geoff.

[Peter Laban]

I think many countries have Geoff, we have donedeal.ie (a bit like the old Buy and Sell), there's marktplaats.nl in the Netherlands and Belgium (ebay recently bought that I think).

 

They're useful in their own right.

 

Heard a story a few days ago from a guy at my wife's place of work. He had a trailer he liked and he wanted another one of the same make as a spare. He looked on donedeal and found one. Only, it was a photo of his own trailer in his backgarden in Ennistymon. He decided to contact the seller and buy it just to see what would happen. The same night a few guys turned up to take the trailer from his garden.

[Theo]

There is also Gumtree, Adtrader, Craigslist, http://www.musicalinstrumentsales.co.uk/, http://www.musicalads.co.uk/, netinstruments.com/ and probably many more. I'll sell your instruments if you wish on The Box Place, 15% commission on a completed sale, no other fees, set your own price. Just sold two concertinas this week.

[Andy Holder]

There is also Gumtree, Adtrader, Craigslist, http://www.musicalinstrumentsales.co.uk/, http://www.musicalads.co.uk/, netinstruments.com/ and probably many more. I'll sell your instruments if you wish on The Box Place, 15% commission on a completed sale, no other fees, set your own price. Just sold two concertinas this week.

 

Thanks for the offer Theo. It did sell in the end, not quite as much as I hoped, but I'm reasonably happy. I have noticed prices going down over the last few months. Maybe there's a recession going on!

Andrew