Thread: A Moral(ish) Question

All good points,Ebay has it's place,the one big plus is on occasion you have the oppertunity to bid on things,(sometimes very esoteric items) none of us would ever part with.

Have we factored in time and effort that goes into restoring the razor? Of course, this assumes the seller reclaimed a razor from rust Valhalla.

Personally, for some of the BIN razors, I see the value in getting it to the state it is in. And the few that I got from eBay Like that have merited the price. Then again, they were from sellers I had personally dealt with prior. You just have to trust the other guy. And that takes time to develop.

Looking at the cheapo bin at razor emporium I'm led to ask myself if they are cheap because they have unhoneable defects or are just not prestigious enough to be given a polish and cleaning. If they are honeable they seem better than spending the time and money to personally hunt for acceptable razors in person.

If someone who's knowledgeable (not in a collector's sense of the word) has razors they sell un-honed and uncleaned (relatively!) that they know aren't warped or badly ground, cracked, chipped past acceptability (i.e. past shoulders) and they charge more than I can find at an antique show... maybe the price is justified because it's passed their criteria for a working, usable, practical razor. That is a quality factor, which can be justifiably added to the price of the razor.

People who don't sell a lot of stuff on eBay don't have the same "lose some, win some" attitude, so setting a reasonable starting price is more a defensive practice. But from the original post, I think I get it. There will always be someone who wants more than you think the item is worth.

I have seen a few razors on Ebay with high BIN prices that dont sell and then I see the same razor listed in the classifieds here for substantially less. I think that is reasonable marketing . On Ebay your likely to find some one willing to pay that and thats their choice. Where as here, your selling to like minded folks that you may know or at least may have chatted with. People who are likely going to shave with that razor and give it a good home.

I'm not an eBay seller, so I don't know the details, but I assume there are sizeable eBay and PayPal fees that also factor into the different prices there compared to here.

I've also seen the opposite problem a lot, where buyers take advantage of unknowledgeable sellers. For instance, there were recently two natural combo yellow coticules that were not listed as such, and the sellers posted questions they got for offers of around $30 (one of which signed his name, and I see him do this all the time). Sometimes the seller gets ripped off - this one (eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices) went for around $30 / razor as per BIN suggestions from buyers, and here it is the next week for $125, cleaned up a little: Joseph Smith and sons Sheffield vintage straight razor | eBay. I can understand if a buyer charges a low price to grab the item, but to make lowball offers when the sellers don't know what they have, is this ethical?

Then again, it is fleaBay and part of me just wants to step back and watch.

Originally Posted by ryanjewell

considering the spirit of what SRP seems to be about, to be charging the max (or more) and not even letting the market determine what it is worth by making it a BIN?

Excluding the seller's valuation of a given item is a distortion of the 'free market'. It costs them money to list stuff regardless of whether it sells or not, so they have an incentive to not list at a price that won't sell at all.

Originally Posted by ryanjewell

I am definitely for someone being able to make money on finding something for a deal...especially considering the time it takes to hunt for these types of things, 20-30% seems totally reasonable to me.

The problem is that you don't really know how much time and effort it takes the seller to do it. 20%-30% looks to me ridiculously low. I think ebay + paypal take 10-15% of that, but assume that's factored in. Suppose the seller has to spend five hours each week checking on his local sources and ends up with two-three reasonable razors that he buys for say $10 each. Then to be 'fair' he sells them for $15 a piece and ends up making about $10 for his 5 hours of going around plus another hour to deal with completing successful sale on ebay. While to some people that's a perfectly enjoyable way to have their hobby, I would not expect it from anybody.
Seems like a perfectly realistic scenario to me given my local market and as much as I like to 'help' people, if that were my top priority I'd spend these 6 hours answering threads on SRP.

Then if somebody buys a nice razor say Joseph Rodgers for $30, but that razor is worth to most people more, say $100 as we saw from the post above, what happens is the razor just exchanges hands few times increasing the price in the process profiting ebay, the postal office and the consecutive buyers/sellers instead of just the original seller. I'm not sure how that's preferable, even if each of them feels good about themselves because they've made only a small if any profit.

Originally Posted by ryanjewell

it's if someone is charging more than what a ferrari is worth

Vintage straight razors aren't Ferraris with an established 'worth'. The problem is that what a razor is 'worth' is hugely subjective. That's why we also have the SRP policy that we do not provide appraisals, or discuss prices. The goal of the forum is to help everybody who needs help, but doing valuations would do far more bad than good.
So instead we can simply do everything else and let the buyers and sellers decide between themselves whether and how to conduct a transaction.

Originally Posted by Theseus

Another thing to consider is that we as users of straights are not the only ones buying them. In fact, we're not even close to being the majority. The collector market for straight razors is quite large and consistently draws higher prices than the user market would. )

With all due respect , I have to disagree .
I don't know of any large group of razor collectors , outside of this forum .
I would bet that at least 90% of the razors sold on ebay , are bought by members of this forum . All we have to do is look in the mirror , to see who is paying crazy prices for razors on ebay .

Originally Posted by dave5225

With all due respect , I have to disagree .
I don't know of any large group of razor collectors , outside of this forum .
I would bet that at least 90% of the razors sold on ebay , are bought by members of this forum . All we have to do is look in the mirror , to see who is paying crazy prices for razors on ebay .

Go to some major gunshows,are many collectors outside of SRP.

Originally Posted by dave5225

With all due respect , I have to disagree .
I don't know of any large group of razor collectors , outside of this forum .
I would bet that at least 90% of the razors sold on ebay , are bought by members of this forum . All we have to do is look in the mirror , to see who is paying crazy prices for razors on ebay .

I had someone bid up and pay$60 for a Genco Safedge based solely on the fact that it was made in PA by Case and he was a knife collector who collected Case knives. I only expected it to fetch around $10 as it was missing the guard and had pitting at the edge.