Soviet Pre-empted sale ... yet again!

[JimZ]

For those of you watching with interest the E-GAY auctions of an OBK3, OS3 and OOL screwback as well as some other smaller items, you were probably not surprised to see the auctions have been ended early..... AGAIN!

I find this a disturbing practice and although its really a case of the seller trying to maximise his revenues, it very often happens that these same orders are bought by unscruplous profiteers as they many a time, turn up in the market in a very short space of time! It bothers me because this is quite clearly a view that an order or medal is a commodity, which has a quantum in monetary terms.... and quite basically screw the heroics and the deeds that earned the order.

A case in point was a previous auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...:PIC&ih=004 where repeated attempts were made to take this item off the market by dealers. In that particular case the, seller held out and good for him indeed. Although it was indeed another dealer getting the order in the end! But at least it was a fair fight! And I respect both buyer and seller for that!

Of course, no surprise if and when these orders turns up at that same price PLUS an extra $1000 just as it may quietly disappear into someone's wishlist.

Just my musings on a Sunday morning after losing an hour's sleep - having also lost a few hours sleep over the last days thinking about that Suvorov!

Jim

[Kev in Deva]

Hallo JimZ,

Frustrating to say the least when you have had your eye on a particular item.

Under EBAY regulations for a seller to end the sale early he must give good reasons why he did so,

Ebay do not like to see sales ended early as they tend to loose their "slice of the pie".

A genuine "early ending" can be brought about if the seller is unaware of the true value of his item when placing it on auction

or if the item is wrongly identified.

If a pattern of "early endings" with regards a particular seller can be noted any ebay member can make a complaint to ebay.

In a case such as the above I would recommend saving the particular web pages showing the auction as once the auctions are

over the relevant details are quickly flushed from Ebay files.

Kevin in Deva.

[new world]

Jim,

I would not loose my sleep over such matters. The reality is - such practices were always common on eBay, but they were less apparent in the old days where there were more listings for Soviet items and they were not watched by so many potential buyers.

From seller prospective - it could be good for him if he knows market value of the award. Imagine he was offered higher amount than he had in mind when listing the item. Also, he saves quite a bit on eBay final value fees. Such fees could be quite substantial if item sells for $4000 or $7000.

From buyer prospective - I guess you can file complaint with eBay, but they rarely punish sellers for such practices. If he provides valid excuse - such as "item got damaged" or "it was determined to be a copy" - then there's little eBay can do...

In a way it's the same practice as dealers scooping most of good deals at OMSA or SOS in the first few hours of the opening day, essentially depriving collectors of a chance to find decent priced items in the following days.

William

Edited March 30, 2008 by new world

[Wild Card]

Jim,

From seller prospective - it could be good for him if he knows market value of the award. Imagine he was offered higher amount than he had in mind when listing the item. Also, he saves quite a bit on eBay final value fees. Such fees could be quite substantial if item sells for $4000 or $7000.

In a way it's the same practice as dealers scooping most of good deals at OMSA or SOS in the first few hours of the opening day, essentially depriving collectors of a chance to find decent priced items in the following days.

William

Excellent points.

To the first. If an item sells for, let?s say, $4,000 on a ?short sale? where it could have sold for $5,000 are the ?final value fees? structured in such a way that the seller would net less? If so, there is something wrong with the fee schedule that should be corrected.

To the second. I agree completely and I cannot offer a solution. So many times I have seen an item sold by one dealer to another, for example, for $500 on Thursday that is then offered to the public for $750 on Friday and Saturday. The truly sad part is that in many cases, the public would have not only paid $500 but might have gone $600.

Very frustrating!