Re: Ebay

On Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:50:58 +0100, "Dave Baker" <Null@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:

After 10 years online I'm still pretty much an Ebay virgin. I've bought only
three things on it and never tried selling anything. Every purchase has
actually gone perfectly well but you hear horror stories about Ebay frauds
and Paypal cockups which puts me off doing more on it.

Purchase one a couple of years ago was by pure chance when I was browsing
idly and came across a guy selling a job lot of 8.05mm machine reamers. Not
a size most people would be interested in but it's the valve guide diameter
for Ford CVH and Pinto valve guides and I build a lot of these and also make
my own bronze valve guides for race engines. Up till then I'd reamed them to
8mm and taken the last couple of thou out with my T&J adjustable reamers
which was a major PITA. No one else bid so I got 3 solid carbide and 5 HSS
8.05mm reamers for his starting price of £9 plus £2.50 postage. At shop
prices about £200 worth of goods. When they arrived there was even a 7.9mm
drill in the pack which was the ideal size for the final drill prior to
reaming. By careful measurement I was able to grade them into a range from
about 8.04mm to 8.05mm which allows me to suit individual guides to the make
and wear on the valve stem in question. Absurdly good value which you'd
never find elsewhere. OK so I could have bought just one reamer for £15 from
J&L so the saving wasn't that huge but it feels like it was and I have that
range of sizes to choose from. I might even try selling the carbide ones
which I never use.

Purchase two came about because I went through a spell of losing decent carp
because my 10 year old fishing line kept breaking. Hardly surprising as the
stuff is UV sensitive and ages rapidly. You're meant to change it every year
or two. When I finally got round to testing it against a spring balance it
was breaking at about half the nominal breaking strain. Not good.

£5 to £10 a spool in the local tackle shop but I got 200m of 12lb line and
150m of 6lb line for £1.50 a spool off a guy on Ebay with only 60p postage
cost for the two together. When it arrived I looked it up on the
manufacturer's website and it was such old stock they hadn't sold it for
several years but when tested both spools actually exceeded their nominal
breaking strain and clearly the stuff had been stored out of the light and
was in fine condition. Very happy bunny. No more lost fish.

Purchase three came about when my fridge freezer expired and everything
started to thaw out. An emergency trip to Comet saw me looking at about £300
to replace it with something similar and the one I wanted wasn't even in
stock. Bollocks to that so back on Ebay that night and I found a guy about
20 miles away selling a nearly new Miele fridge freezer which I won for
£64.05. The £0.05 because I don't have any of that fancy bidding software
and other people were after it. Sometime later next day with the help of a
mate with an estate car and we back in business with the thawing food
rescued. 2 years later it's still going strong. Total saving about £240.

So I've only had very good experiences but still don't quite trust the
thing. What's your mileage?

Bought and sold on around 150 or so occasions over 5-6 years.
Nearly all good, with only one or 2 very minor hassles on small
things, so a farly good hit rate.
The only item I never received was a £1.50 block of pure beeswax, and
I'm happy to write things off at that value.

Items have definitely got more expensive over the years though, there
seem to be far more higher starting prices and buy-it-now items, so
the value is perhaps not as good as it used to be.

Still good for obscure and obsolete parts. I'm restoring an old
air-cooled Yamaha RD350 from '75, and e-bay is about the only place to
get parts. I've bought a few bits from the USA which often seem to get
here faster than stuff shipped from over here.
Also thin parallels and precision angle blocks (all new and boxed) for
the workshop bought from the USA and shipped here for a fraction of
what it would cost to buy new here.

Peter
.