Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/20
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Wolfgang, I see that others have already answered your question about reserve prices. I have a couple of tips if you want to use ebay: 1) You are dealing with private sellers whom you do not know. Obviously, you want to be careful in this situation. Ebay has an escrow service, whereby the transaction is conducted via ebay (the buyer sends them the money, which is not released to the seller until the buyer has received the merchandise). 2) A lot of final selling prices are unreasonably high, as people get caught up in action fever and bid up the items to ridiculous levels. If you are interested in an item, you should first investigate the local cost (for example at http://www.foto-hobby.de) and then put in a bid lower than that as your maximum--and stick to it! If you are outbid, so be it. After all, what is the point of buying something in the US (where the vast majority of ebay sellers are located) if you could buy it for the same price in Germany? A related issue is shipping to Germany and possible customs duty and VAT--once you add around 20% to the price, is it still interesting? Opinion related to ebay is divided here, some people on the LUG have reported getting incredible bargains, while others have not. I am in the latter category--every time I have bid on an item, I have been outbid in the end, and the final price was almost always higher than I could buy this item for in Europe. Nathan "Wolfgang.Oehms" wrote: > Hey lugs, > > we have got now in germany ebay as well. They sell at the present time about > 40 leica-items. The us-ebay offers more then 600 leica-items and they are > much, much cheaper then in germany (shops and ebay). > so i will try to buy some items from there. But what does that mean " > reserve not yet met" ? > > Regards > > Wolfgang - -- Nathan Wajsman Overijse, Belgium General photo site: http://members.tripod.com/belgiangator/ Belgium photo site: http://members.xoom.com/wajsman/ Motorcycle site: http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Downs/1704/