I don't find ebay a rip off particularly, especially when you're
looking for something hard to find. For example, I wanted a new
electrical switch for my Maximat V10-p and sure enough, after about a
year or so, one came up and I bought it for about $150. It's actually a
surprisingly complicated little piece of interlocking switches for
both the lathe spindle and the milling head. Since I've wanted to keep
the machine pretty much original, now I can. Lots of other cool Emco
accessories have come up over the past three years, but they've been a
little too expensive for my taste, but if I wanted them, I could easily
have had them.
This may have been false economy on my part, as the better-tooled
Maximats are selling on ebay for $3,500. I bet if I'd shelled out
$500 for the original toolpost grinder and $350 for the rotary table in
the past year, I might have been able to sell my whole setup for nearly
$5,000 and thus been able to parlay my meagre funds into Hardinge HLVH
territory.
I have found over the years that ebay really levels out the
playing field. There are almost no bargains, the market is too big and
too vast, but sometimes the market rules in interesting ways. For
example, I've followed Edison cylinder phonographs for years, and I'm
pretty sure that Ebay has caused the market value of the basic standard
and home machines to fall in value. Now there are a bunch to be had in
one place.
The reverse is true of Curta calculators (in some ways the
ultimate machine shop project!) Before ebay, you could still find them
in odd places for $50, now they're at least $1,000 or more.
As for shill bidding, I'm sure it does happen. Frankly, I don't
care because ultimately the market will rule. If the shill bids too
high, he won't sell his merchandise and relisting looks unattractive.
In selling, I've found it much better to put as much value as possible
into something I'm selling and then start the bidding off at one cent
or whatever's the lowest possible these days.
I think lots of people are ****ed at ebay because if you're into
Curta calculators or whatever, you run into about 10 others who are
just as interested.
I wonder sometimes about trying to corner a particular market.
Look at small metal shapers in good condition. You can just see the
prices rising, and there aren't too many terrific ones. What if you
invested $100,000 in buying every single one for two years. You simply
bid $2000 on every nice Atlas, Logan, and South Bend. Most bidding for
such machines peters out around $800 or $900 nowadays. Let's see, that
gives you a warehouse of 100 terrific shapers by 2007, by which time
the pent up demand is insane. You start to sell them at
Christmastime....bet you could double your money. With my luck though,
I'd probably go broke. Truth is, the number of potential shaper
customers like me is probably decreasing as the years go by due to
events beyond our immediate control...