Originally Posted by
Quick
(I hate you :))
eBay is not like a flea market or yard sale anymore. It's quite sophisticated with advanced searches, alerts, proxy bidding, sniping services, etc., and mainly the scale -- bazillions of people 24 hrs a day. It's gauranteed that others will see the item you're looking at and it's gauranteed some will know it's fair value. There is always some very small chance that all the above people just happen not to be buying at the moment. Generally prices are a bit lower for the following reasons: Sellers may be just selling off unwanted stuff, no store front or overhead; basically the barriers to entry to set up business on eBay are almost non-existent. The flip side is risk to the buyer. As always, the better deals inherently carry more risk. The occassional super deal is most likely a result of a poorly described or poorly presented item due to the seller's lack of knowledge and/or skills. The risk to the buyer is higher in that they won't know exactly what they're getting until they have it in hand. I think the highest margin is to those who add value after the sale, the people who restore razors for example.
With razors in particular people don't factor in the extra costs. I bought a very nice Kinfolks for $86. Probably somewhat of a deal (since GSSIXGUN happened to fall asleep at the time...). I wasn't really positive about the condition but it turned out to be NOS. Possibly with little to no use. Then I spent an additional $20 to get it honed. I'm thinking that razor, new and shave ready, might be fairly valued at $135? $150? Hard to say since they aren't made anymore and there is that value.
Bottom line is that if there were consistent bargains then someone already has made a business of buying and reselling on eBay. There are loads of people doing just that already on the very tiniest of margins. Remember there are practically no barriers to entry and the scale is huge so if you can make a penny on a dollar people are doing it as a full time business. Even with the low overhead to reduce prices they are driven back up a bit due to the allure of finding that spanish dubloon from the santa maria for 50 cents. Very much like buying lotto tickets with similar odds.
I do think there are tremendous deals on only the most esoteric items and straight razors are not that. I won a used Hogan Apex Persimmon 5 wood for $15 once. It went with the Driver and 3 wood I had bought new (each going for something like $180 at the time). It was a phenomenal deal but not many people use persimmon woods anymore... I felt bad and sent the guy $25 so he could cover shipping :)