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.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
I pulled the Top-5 items from recent sales in the WWII category and found some real jewels. All of these items sold for more than $2,000+ led by the Chiang Kai-Shek auction. I really wasn't surprised to see the Zero radio land on this list because several months ago a piece from an original Zero sold for more than $20k. The item that I'm most interested in is the 82nd Airborne collection because Fayetteville, NC is not far from my home. Finally what would a top selling list from the WWII category be if it didn't include a few blades?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
As I've been building these Top-5 lists its been unusual to see so much competition for the best selling items. Normally, I will spot one or two items where the seller set a high minimum bid only to see a lone bidder come in to save the day. With each of the items I found from early February the bidding was pretty active. Take for example this weeks top selling item - the German Paratrooper smock. Three bidders were willing to go over $5k to get this vintage piece. However, only one bidder was willing to go high enough to trip over the reserve price and score a victory. For my money I would have been more interested in the US Antarctic group of items which included pictures, medals, and documents.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
For this blog post I wanted to see what were the Top-5 items from the WWII collectibles Category on eBay last week. Its really amazing to see the variety that these items represent. The top selling item was an Italian dagger that had almost nothing for a description and even was misspelled! The ringer in the group was the WW2 Ace collection that contains tons of memorabilia from a Naval aviator. One interesting thing about this top selling list is that only one item saw much competitive bidding. Most of the items led in with a high minimum bid and one was a buy-it-now purchase.
