Hot Rods eBay is what's wrong

A search of eBay shows 150 listings for "Flathead Ford V8" including descriptions. Of those, listings start at a high of $199,000. Of those, 140 are Dealer. 10 are Private Party, but of the 10, 7 have had multiple vehicle sales in the last 12 months. That leaves 3...

Last year at this time, an honest 26% of all listings were Private. eBay fees and Dealer "price fixing" along with a range of various "I am a car enthusiast and offer cars all over the US" bullshit brokers with no interest in the hobby other than greed, are ruining the hobby for everyone.

All in my humble opinion, naturally.

 

Specifically, also, eBay greed, including the upfront listing fees, which in turn are reflected in Hemmings, etc. Thank God for HAMB.

 

Although maybe God has nothing to do with the HAMB.

 

Things change.



PS: Yes He does.


Bones

 

How do the dealers on ebay and ebay greed ruin the hobby? We can still get free ads on the HAMB right? You and I can still interact privately and you can give me a good guy deal on the cool stuff you want to sell, right?

 

we used to sit at the tavern and watch the car auctions and say the same thing. rich guys looking to flip cars ruined the hobby!

 

It doesn't seem to be ruining the hobby for guys who are out playing with their cars.

 

Respectfully, you're wrong. Dealers don't set the price, the market sets the price. If the ask is too high, don't buy it. If they want to sell it, and they have no interest at their ask, they'll lower the price until interest is stoked.

I personally have no issue at all with eBay, and it has been a great resource to dig up hard-to-find parts, even if they cost a bit more than I might pay on the HAMB or at a swap meet. You pay a premium for good parts anywhere.

 

My personal issue is the "bundling" of categories that are NOT representative of the item for sale. Thousands of unrelated articles that have to be waded through lest we miss the actual items we want. Pages of chrome lug nuts and stick on doodads that "also fit your car".....

 

Freedom of choice.
If E-Bay has had a personal negative impact on you, simply ignore/don't log onto it.
With the advent of the internet, our world has become smaller, we have choices to buy/search out items from around the world, not just our immediate geographic area..that option opens up unlimited sources that wouldn't have been available to us in the past.
I don't limit my options, when seeking parts for my cars.

 

Ebay and certain sellers changed a couple yrs back.

Ebay wants to become another Amazon so now you can run "never ending auctions" so to speak and i guess not much of a fee to do so then the sellers went " you mean I can list my high priced crap for months for free and maybe some idiot will pay it? I'm in !!"

And now you have whats left of a auction site that really doesn't appear to want to be a auction site anymore....

Really ruined what they originally had and thus you now have new true auction sites popping up and slowly stealing their buyers... I hope the buyers keep leaving.

 

Most of the time we are looking for used parts, so in the side line select “ used” and most of that crap will go away! I think there is one other thing that you can do to weed more crap out. A HAMB er once told me about it and it worked...... but I have forgotten what it was! Maybe someone here will know!






Bones

 

Years ago, both Goolag and FleaBay had very good search engines. "Most Relevant" to the search terms. Importantly, excluding irrelevant data or terms.

Ranking on the 1st page that displays for the internet was a huge deal, and could make or break a website. The metrics involved were proprietary, but, the more people that visited the site the better.

Then $$$ got involved, one no longer needed a lot of traffic for a website to be ranked. You could buy that 1st page ranking. That, as they say, was the end of that. The first 30 pages is all BS.

FleaBay is absolutely ridiculous, no specificity (kind of important when looking for auto parts) is considered important. So if you're looking for a Ford 302 distributor, they'll display Chevy, Buick, Toyota, whatever. And all kinds of stupid unrelated in any way shit too. Pathetic. "Here's a Bunny With a Pancake On Its Head" pathetic.

 

I like driving out to poke around a swap meet or out to someone's barn for old parts they are selling as much as the next guy, but I know for me atleast, ebay has been a great resource for my current '37 project, especially up here in the land or rot and rust and months of no swap meets during the winter season. I just try to think of it as a convenience fee, that if I find whatever 80+ yr old hard to find widget that I'd likely never run across in my local wandering around, where I may be spending a few bucks more than I had in mind, but it will be at my door in a few days, that's fine with me.

Theres a specific person who is the go-to late '30s buick parts guy, but he doesn't use a computer and doesn't email. Now this may be a product of me being born in the late '80s , but I don't want to spend weeks corresponding with someone through letters and mailing out checks to see if they have Widget B for sale, when I can go on ebay and pick out one of a dozen from the comfort of my couch and have it in my grubby hands a few days later. Of course there are many exceptions to this, and theres a lot of times that you need to chase people down for the extra hard to find things, but sometimes its nice to find what you need and buy it.

 

Good deals are everywhere and greed exists everywhere too.....not just on Ebay. I like Ebay because I can find things that aren't available locally and often buy them in bulk at cheap prices. Bought some rolls of Red and Black shrink tubing the other day for making battery cables. Bought some long cable off Amazon a while back to use for the cables.
Bought some flange head serrated bolts, enough to stock a drawer for future needs. Didn't have to spend the whole day driving around and not finding what I want ..........and the price was a lot cheaper than any local store if I was lucky enough to find what I wanted. Went to a Parker store a few months back to buy some quality air chuck hose fittings. A couple years ago they had some on a table for about $5 ea. Bought a bunch and used them in various places around my shop. Needed some more, so I went back to the Parker store. They wanted $35 apiece for them. Went back home and ordered some equivalent quality ones (5) for appx the same price. I LUV Ebay........

 

You don't have to have to be respectful: You'll set a dangerous precedent in today's society. (I only posted this originally to fire up the troops and see what divergent views there were.)

 

In the search field on eBay place "-fits" (minus quotation marks) after search item.

 

I think this best summarizes what I was getting at: Never ending listings at too high a price. Then, folks listing at other sites use eBay listed prices as the authority: If he's asking that, so can I.

 

I tried that and it took it from 63,789 to 8 hits . Unfortunately it also took out a lot of stuff that I needed to look at.



Edit: I think it’s “ also fits” maybe that works better.

Edit, Edit: nope, that was worse! Maybe someone else here has something.


Bones

 

Warning to those sensitive to "another 32 Ford" discussion.
Relating to just parts, we've kind of reached a point where this stuff just isn't out there anymore, especially at the prices we were used to, sure, the deuce grill shells that were butchered are a fairly easy find but it takes some skill to fix them.
And the price for a Winterfront grill insert, you could buy a roadster body for that some years back, yes, they needed work too, but the storys of the barn find deuce have become like the guys that find gold in an old mine.
You either gotta have skills or cash.

 

has anyone ever complained about selling something for too much money?

 

Probably. They bitch about everything else.

 

I always type "pre owned" after the item if I'm looking for a used part. Anything else, I try to find a part number and search that.

 

I have pretty good luck with EBAY and searching the internet in general, but one of my hobbies has become outsmarting search engine algos, so that helps.

 

"Warning to those sensitive to "another 32 Ford" discussion."
Ouch!

 

eBay is just another tool. It takes research and practice to become good at using it. And it won't help you find parts that are not listed on it. You need a large toolbox...

 

My bitch with Ebay, craigslist or any other site is price, simple as that,
and high prices are not the fault of any of these sites. It boils down more
to greed than anything else. I want to laugh at the people who use lines like
"Do you have any idea what this is worth?" or "Hey, this is a classic". It seems
most of us were into cars when damn near anything used was relatively
reasonably priced and guys wanted to unload their stuff, not stick it in the attic
or into a storage shed because it might be worth something some day. Now it's
"You need it badly, huh? How much is it worth to you?". I'm cheap, simple as
that. Since I don't desperately need anything I can easily pass on the high prices.

 

My only problem with them is the Private listing stuff.
You don’t know who you are bidding against and a lot of Shill bidding goes on.
You literally are bidding against the seller sometimes,,,,.
Shill bidding s against the law n most places,,,,it’s like bid rigging.
eBay encourages it because the fees get higher with the increased prices ,,,I guess that is just business,,,but not good business in my book.

Years ago I even had a guy tell me he was gonna bid it up,,,but if it didn’t bring what he wanted then we would talk.
Needless to say,,it didn’t,,,,and I never answered his emails after that.
If he deals like that,,,what else will he screw me on ?

I guess I am just born to lose,,,,,but I have my integrity,,,and sometimes that is all a man has.

Tommy

 

That's like for sh*ts and giggles I've followed stuff that people have listed for a couple months to see if it sells or if they dropped the price, example: I collect old console games and i followed 1 game listed at 499.00 and titled as super rare. I put the game title in and find roughly 150+ matches starting at bid price of 10$ or buy it now for 25$ and everywhere in between.

I really wanted to send that seller the search list and ask him if he had researched before listing.

Actually talked to a seller that listed crap like that and he told me flat out that he didn't care if he sold or not because he wasn't rushed to sell, its one of those things if he was wanting to sell it thats what it would cost to make him let go of it. And told me also that every once in awhile he does sell his overpriced junk and that was good enough for him.

 

Try putting "flathead ford" or whatever the search is for with quotation marks. Usually helps a bit, works with Google too.