Tuesday, March 9, 2010
This blog entry features the top selling items last week in the WWII subcategory for United States on eBay. One lesson that these items demonstrate is that a story with documentation can exponentially increase the value of a collectible. Would you have thought that the Case V-44 knife would sell for over $10k? If not you need to click over and read the history of this particular piece. Moving on to the bomber jacket lot - it isn't so surprising that this group of items did so well. It might surprise you to know the seller starting the bidding at .99! Every auction featured here sold for north of $1k so click the link and check them out.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
You know its bad when a user bids over 50 times in the same auction and loses! That is exactly what happened in the auction on the USMC captured Japan book. I can't say that I've read about the "incremental bidding" strategy in any of the forums or eBay chat rooms that I have visited. However, some bidders like to just keep dinking their bid up a few bucks over and over thinking that they need to slowly inch over the top. Many of these auctions saw some furious back and forth between just a few bidders in classic eBay auctions.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
If you keep a good watch on eBay you can pretty much follow the 7-day auctions that are the typical format used by sellers in the WWII Category of eBay. However, with tens of thousands of items listed in eBay Stores and with the popular 30 day fixed-priced option there are plenty of items that sell with only one "bid". Each of these top items from the last month sold with the buy-it-now option with most going for over $2k. There is another way to look at these sales. Some sellers utilize the "best offer" function to see if they can get any takers to step up to the plate. If you are a buyer you might have even entered an offer on a listing just to see how low the seller was willing to go. Can we take any lessons from the two items on this list that did sell using best offer? It looks like the sweet spot was between 76% and 78% of the asking price. While that's no golden rule it might give you some food for thought the next time you are in that situation.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Would you be surprised if I told you that WWII collectors like to snipe? Probably not! I've got evidence for you in the top selling items from last week in the WWII category of eBay. For example in the best auction on the WASP wings there were five bidders who chipped in at over $2k. However, 4 of those bids were snipes coming in the last thirty seconds. Needless, to say the one with the most firepower took it home after the priced jumped by over a thousand dollars during that barrage. The #2 item, the Captain's helmet, went much the same way. The price jumped nearly a thousand dollars in the last minute thanks to four snipers - one of which was the good old fashion type who was sitting at his computer doing it manually. Click the text links to see that action on these great pieces for yourself.
