Missing out on a purchase?

[Mad Ax]

Just another general interest thread to get things rolling on a lazy Tuesday afternoon

I'm sure we've all done this at some point - passed on a deal and missed a bargain, put off a purchase and been hit by a sudden discontinuation.  I think it's this fear of losing out that turns so many of us into impulse buyers and compulsive hoarders.  I was putting off buying a Novafox until a discontinuation notice went out a few years back, and I managed to find one of the last ones at a good price.  Same with the Rover Mini Cooper: I hit BIN on one of those the day I heard Tamiya had lost the BMW licence.

I think today's probably experience probably tops it for me, at least in recent memory, and you have to read to the end, because this one isn't what it seems...

 

So, about 3 months ago I went to a local truck meet, and there I bought a converted Bruder low-loader trailer for my rigs.  I was thinking of buying and converting another Bruder anyway, as I've always wanted to build a low-lower with a motor yacht cargo, so when this loader came up already converted for only a little more than it would cost me to build (not including time), I jumped on it.  That meant I needed a 1:14 scale motor yacht to fit in place.  I had a 1:16ish scale Robbe motor boat, but it was a bit too small and looked out of place sitting on the Bruder, so I hopped online and did a search for motor yachts from 70-100cm - approximately the right scale for a 1:14 trailer.

My LHS has a very nice Thunder Tiger motor yacht in stock, a gorgeous looking thing and just the right size, but priced at £190 it was a bit spendy for something that was going to sit on the back of a trailer and never see water.  I had a look online, and saw Heng Long do a similar Atlantic yacht, the same size, for £45 delivered.  I'm sure that was the price I saw on ebay.  Actually I saw it listed for sale in a dozen places at the same sort of price, and I added one to my watch list so I could come back to it later.

And I also figured, that since I now have a family to support and I'd promised to keep my spending to a strict budget every month, I'd wait until the next month rolled around before I actually hit the Buy It Now button.  I hadn't actually spent all of my June budget, and I could have bought it there and then, but I've gone right up to the edge of my budget every month since I instated it and I was trying to see how hard it would be to not spend money.  And in the three weeks that were to pass between then and July, I might come across a better boat, or come up with a better idea for a trailer.  So many times I've jumped on what seems like the perfect project purchase only to change my mind a week later and shelve it indefinitely.

So I put my Robbe up on ebay, figuring it was the wrong boat for anything I had planned, and it sold last week, raking in almost enough for that £45 Heng Long.  And we're now 3 days into July, so today I went online to make the purchase so it can arrive ready for next week, when I'll start putting the trailer together.

And today I discover that nobody is selling it for £45.  Nobody's even selling it for £55, which I would pay.  Nobody is selling it for £65, which I would feel cheated by, but probably pay anyway.  Or wait a month and see if the price comes down.

So what are they selling for on ebay today?

£145.99.

That's right.  £100 more than I would have paid 3 weeks ago.

There's a lesson to be learned here.  And no, it's not "buy stuff right now because it might get a lot more expensive later", although that's undoubtedly a risk of not buying.

The lesson is, in fact, pay close attention to the price when you decide you want something, because you (or, perhaps, only I), can get so excited at finding the perfect bargain that I can misread £145.99 as £45.99.  Because even in today's unstable geopolitical climate, I can't see the price of a model boat going up threefold in a three week period...

Sometimes, just one facepalm isn't enough

[nowinaminute]

They are probably just out of stock mate. All the listings on ebay are probably the same one or two sellers. They tend to bump the price way up till they have stock again rather than pull the listing. It's usually Chinese sellers who hold stock in the UK and they are probably waiting for another batch to come in.

Give it a while and the price should go back down.

Very nice looking boats I agree, and they actually go quite well even stock for a pseudo hobby grade but they make a nice base for mods too. Great just for static purposes at £45 though!

[Champ85]

Take a look at the completed listings on eBay (checkbox on left side of listings).  This will give you the recent selling and non-selling prices (usually).

I took the liberty of looking on ebay.co.uk for "heng long atlantic" and two recently (within the past 2 months) sold at auction for £27 and £43.  A couple of new ones sold for £145 and £245 ( £100 more than the other one for some unknown reason).

What's odd is I do not see any "unsold but completed" listings, which would have their prices in black instead of green text, indicating that the buy-it-now or auction completed without anyone purchasing the item.  So either these are new products being listed for the first time, or eBay decided not to track/display unsold listings for this item.  Odd.

Anyway, other than missing out on some sweet auctions that sold for ridiculously low prices, you didn't miss out on getting a new one for £45.  Which is what you realized after the fact.  I think I've done that once before too.

[nowinaminute]

You can see what they have sold for by going to the listing and clicking on the number sold.

[Mad Ax]

Awesome - I seriously thought I was having a senior moment!  I'll have to keep checking stock - I wanted this trailer ready for the local model expo in August...

[Sammo]

I'd been watching a Tamiya Mondeo body set on eBay for over a week. I was willing to pay whatever I needed to be able to buy it. Unfortunately the auction was going to be ending while Mrs Sammo and I were at the theatre seeing Aladdin. I thought I'd have enough time before the show started to increase my maximum bid but upon entering the theatre my signal vanished and I ended up losing the body set for a couple of pounds more than my original maximum bid! Very annoying!

[yogi-bear]

1 hour ago, Sammo said:

I'd been watching a Tamiya Mondeo body set on eBay for over a week. I was willing to pay whatever I needed to be able to buy it. Unfortunately the auction was going to be ending while Mrs Sammo and I were at the theatre seeing Aladdin. I thought I'd have enough time before the show started to increase my maximum bid but upon entering the theatre my signal vanished and I ended up losing the body set for a couple of pounds more than my original maximum bid! Very annoying!

you need to learn to snipe with an automatic bid. That way you should never miss a bid and I also use it to stop myself over bidding.

[wolfdogstinkus]

1 hour ago, Sammo said:

I'd been watching a Tamiya Mondeo body set on eBay for over a week. I was willing to pay whatever I needed to be able to buy it. Unfortunately the auction was going to be ending while Mrs Sammo and I were at the theatre seeing Aladdin. I thought I'd have enough time before the show started to increase my maximum bid but upon entering the theatre my signal vanished and I ended up losing the body set for a couple of pounds more than my original maximum bid! Very annoying!

Someone recently recommended gixen.com. I dont know how it works? Its an auction sniping tool app.

[Mark_C]

That was probably me who suggested gixen. It is free to use and will automatically bid 5 seconds before the auction ends. Prevents bidding wars.

The way it works is you give gixen permission to log in to your eBay account. Then you give it the auction number and your top price, that's it - just check at the end of the auction to see if you won. 

You can still lose auctions if 

1) someone out bids you, either by increasing past your max bid or by using another similar tool and bidding more right at the end.

2) your bid doesn't meet reserve.

3) item removed from sale or ends via a buy it now

3) this one is probably rare, but you might not bid enough, for example I put a max price of something like 20.36 didn't win it, the winning bid was 20.00 . The minimum increment was £1 so my bid wasn't enough even though it was more than the current bidder (and eventual winner).

I've had good success with it, I outbid someone on my monster beetle by something like 30p. I find it handy to just set a bid rather than remember when auctions are ending. 

Gixen do have cheap paid for accounts, but I've not really seem the need. It can do group bids ( I think it means if there are 5 auctions of the same item it will bid on them all to try and secure one of them), but I haven't ever had the need to use it. 

Give it a go, just don't bid on the stuff I want 

[StrokerBoy]

On 8/12/2018 at 7:48 AM, Sammo said:

I ended up losing the body set for a couple of pounds more than my original maximum bid! Very annoying!

How do you know the winning bidder didn't put a Max Bid of a million pounds ?

[Sammo]

2 hours ago, StrokerBoy said:

How do you know the winning bidder didn't put a Max Bid of a million pounds ?

I don't. But I'd suggest it was unlikely. 

[Mad Ax]

Aargh, I think I've done it again 

For a while I've had a project plan to build a shortened King Hauler.  At the beginning of this month I decided it was now or never - with big plans coming up I had to get on and buy the rig now, or it might not happen for another 20 years or so  

At the same time, I decided I'd buy the right chassis rails and propshaft (from a Globe Liner) so I could get straight on with the project when it arrived.  However when I saw the price of a new set of Globe Liner chassis rails I found myself a little lost for breath.  Quite a lot of money for two bits of pressed steel, I thought.  And, given that a lot of people buy King Hauler chassis rails to stretch their Globes (there's a few stretched Globes at my local meets), I figured some people must have some spare rails and props lying around.

Unfortunately the forums move pretty slowly in the trucking world and nobody at my local clubs has anything to offer.  I picked up my NIB King Hauler yesterday and figured, with me driving on a lorry demo at a local model expo this weekend, I'd be really fired up to start my new project next week, so it was high time I gave up looking for cheap rails and bought some new ones.

Only to find they're out of stock in all the places I'd usually get them 

(wanted post is now posted in the trades forum, btw )

[nowinaminute]

Missed an ebay lot a while back because it was collection only.

There was a Tamiya Falcon in the main pic but more importantly to me, lurking in the other photos was a Nikko Super Sprint, Nikkos high end hobby grade 4wd buggy, super rare in the UK.

I offered £50 for the sprint alone if they would box it up so I could have a courier and they said they would think about it. I subsequently offered £75 then £100 but no response.

The whole lot went for twenty something quid I think. There was also a Nikko toy grade 18 wheeler type truck in the lot too, could have sold that for £40 alone!

I've spent 2 years looking for a Super Sprint or Dandy Dash that wasn't insane money and when it came along it was just way too far to collect and the seller wasn't interested in working with me. I can only assume they were pretty well off and just wanted rid of some old junk, boxing it up etc was probably more trouble than it was worth to them.

[78Triumph]

"Missing out on a purchase" is one of the excuses I use to justify my overspending on this hobby. 

[StrokerBoy]

On 8/13/2018 at 10:30 AM, StrokerBoy said:

How do you know the winning bidder didn't put a Max Bid of a million pounds ?

 

On 8/13/2018 at 12:54 PM, Sammo said:

I don't. But I'd suggest it was unlikely. 

The point I was making is that you think you missed it by "a couple of pounds", but you might have been miles off.  You could have doubled your bid and still lost.  You'll never know.

[nowinaminute]

@Mad Ax

Looks like they are back in stock on the 30th mate! They are taking preorders at £45 again!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HUGE-RC-Heng-Long-Radio-Remote-Control-Twin-Motor-Atlantic-Yacht-Speed-Sail-Boat/263096152155?hash=item3d41c0b05b:g:w0wAAOSwjR5ZbzKL

[Mad Ax]

@nowinaminute thanks for the update - I had an order placed with a UK model shop, I keep meaning to chase them up!  Maybe I'll get a new toy this month after all