I....hate.....eBay
 

Damned shills....either that or Bridgestone RB-1's are really worth over $500 after shipping? Then someone took the other one for $665.

Oh well, guess I could buy the yellow one for $1,000 smackeroos! Guess everyone has a tree with money growing on it in their back yard but me!

Pay no mind, just venting my frustration is all.....

Tom

If you thought someone was shilling, did you report your concerns to eBay? They do investigate.

When in their best interests. Cash that is. Greenbacks. Pay dirt.

Ya'll come bid now, you hear?

-Kurt

RB-1s have a near cult-like following. I'm not at all surprised they're still selling for that much.

When I sold my 92 RB-1 last summer I had 9 offers. Started at $700 and finished at $1,050. I originally paid $250 two summers prior. Nice bike, but that was a fairly wild ride.

Yeah, they are going for that kind of money on Craigslist ($600-800) here.

Karl

Um, maybe don't buy into the hype. Identify the new/next RB1-1 based on quality. Then you won't have to complain apres the fact because you'll be ahead of the curve ...

yep, one went for 385 a week ago but that red one looked really great. When I was a kid I wanted a RB-1 BAD...

And rightly so. They recognize that a marketplace rife with scam artists and cheats is not good for business. It undermines users' confidence in eBay, and thus their bottom line. I was taken several years ago on eBay for a sizable chunk of money. To EBay's credit, they worked closely with the FBI to gather evidence against and prosecute the miscreant, who at that time was a lawyer, and the others in his ring. In the end, I got my money back, the guy pled guilty and was dis-barred. That was a success story. But for every story like that, there are probably many, many cases of shill bidding that go undetected and unprosecuted.

Yeah, they sure do seem like really good bikes, even among the many Japanese bikes that were so well made during the 80s and early 90s. I try to tell myself that its all a learning experience of sort, getting into classic/vintage bikes and that sooner or later I'll find myself a nice deal and then I can brag about "I found (insert famous brand name) for $10 (or whatever smokin' good deal it was) at such and such"

Of course the wiser part of me knows that eBay isn't usually the best place for that smoking good deal. But it sure seems easier to find nice bikes there!

As I've posted a couple times before, I'm just sorta looking for a good all-around Italian/Japanese/French/English road bike from the 80s/90s that would be fun to ride. I'm not looking to 'flip' a bike or anything, and I don't have any illusions about such a bike being able to somehow 'outperform' the Cannondale that I've got on layaway. Heck, considering the engine here, the bike's the least of it :)

It's all kinda relative though. The Cannondale (caad9-7 btw) is going to be a little over a grand after taxes and all that. So if I find a nice bike for say; $250 then that would be a pretty good buy in the scheme of things. But $550 or $725 after shipping, even for a bike as legendary as the RB-1, is a pretty big pill to swallow. And on top of it I work at Wal-Mart and make 8 bucks an hour. So I'm competing with a lot of other folks, and coming off badly to say the least.

And I can't exactly take it out on my co-workers and say our bikes are trash now, can I? (but that is another story for another forum.....maybe when I eventually start commuting :p )

Tom

It is interesting though, in a market driven sense, how people will line up for a bike like an RB-1. Even on rides, my RB-1 would receive an adequate supply of inquiry about its origin. Often with a question about its availability. I never bought that bike to flip, the price and offers reached a point from which I could use the funds to try something new or formerly unreachable. I have long asserted with our club members there are many great bikes to try, so go ahead and do it.

Nobody can shill bid a properly-executed snipe.

And speaking of shill bidding, not everybody agrees that eBay is fighting shill bidding.

Sniping and shill bidding are unrelated. If a bidder colludes with a seller to drive up the price of the item, that's shill bidding, which is a form of wire fraud. It doesn't matter if the bid was placed in the first minute of the auction or the last.

But the shill bidder still has to have a real bidder to bid against. If nobody used the proxy bid, and nobody got sucked into those pointless bidding wars, shills would have nobody to bid against. At best, they'd put in a proxy bid which would function as a de facto reserve price.

Of course, noobs will still get sucked into bidding wars, and slightly more experienced noobs will still make proxy bids, so shilling will continue to work.

Me, I just figure out what the bike will sell for, and what I'm willing to pay for it, and make my snipe just before the auction closes. I've been pretty successful at getting something if I want it.

I'm confused. Are you looking the buy an RB1 in addition to, or in place of the Cannondale on layaway?

Seems to me if it's to replace it, then even if you spend $700 you're making out compared to the 'dale. If it in addition to...well , I can't say I have much compassion for you because why would you be buying a second bike when you can't afford the first one that isnt even paid for yet...

Aside from that, As you said, Ebay isnt really a buyers market. Maybe check out CL or the for sale forum here.

Well, that's what we're talking about, or at least what I thought we were talking about: a real bidder who has paid more than he should have as a result of shill bidding. If a bidder is working with a seller to inflate the selling price, that's shill bidding; that's not just against eBay's terms of service, that's illegal. It doesn't matter when the shill bidder entered that phony bid, it's still illegal. In the case of the guy who snookered me, the FBI got him on felony wire fraud for the shill bidding, and then mail fraud, also a felony, when he sent that item through the mail. The only reason he avoided jail time was because he agreed to testify against the others in the ring.

In addition to, but as you observed, I'm already committed to the C-dale. But I can do both if the price is right (obviously it would have to be very right indeed :) )

No need for sympathy points, as I said I'm mainly venting my frustration at discovering what I'm probably in for. I'm sure that I'll find something, somewhere, someday. Just not today (I've never been known for patience! ;) )

Been doing that already, nothing so far. But I've only started looking here just a few weeks ago. As for the local CL......hopeless. But it does supply plenty of good cannon fodder for the wacky ad thread :)

Tom

Wal*Mart, the store that killed Huffman Mfg. Co. (Huffy)

ebay is a snipe or buy-it-now arena, And as you have seen, RB-1's and a few other Bridgestone bikes have a solid following. Blame Grant.

Interesting.

How'd you find out a shill bidder was involved?

Nightly news. Several years ago a Dutch bidder made the news when he bid $135K on a painting on eBay. News outlets got wind of the story and started to dig into how the seller came to acquire this supposedly important work of art (which it wasn't). Lo and behold, the seller was the same guy who sold me a painting a few months earlier. When discrepancies started to surface in his story about what he knew about the painting and where he got it, the FBI started to take an interest, as did eBay.

I hate ebay too.

BUt that's because every time I'm going to get a flippin' good deal, the seller bullshidds and takes the ad down due to "inaccuracies."

Like with the silca pump that wasn't selling, or the dynohub I was lookin' at, or... AARGH!

BF may be the culprit on RB-1's. They get a lot of good ink here, helps drive the price up for the few that are out there.

I guess I'll refrain from posting that Miyatas are going to be the next RB-1, then.:innocent:

I like eBay. I can buy stuff there at prices I'd never see anywhere in town or the state unless I'm willing to spend many, many hours of my time searching. But once you figure in the cost of the time spent looking, the possibility of getting a "deal" goes way down.

If you think a shill has outbid you on something, just laugh at the poor seller who has to pay eBay a percentage of that shill bid. I doubt the RB-1 was won by a shill, people go crazy when one of those hits the market. Funny, if they'd sold this well back in the 90's, Grant might still be selling Bridgestones and Rivendell wouldn't exist.

I've been to coin auctions where bidders went crazy over walking Liberty half dollars; bidding way over even red book prices or what the seller was asking for the day before in his store.

Houses that sat unsold for months at price X sell at auction for X + 20%X as bidders get caught up in the excitement. That's why good auctioneers are well paid.

Like others have said, do your homework on the price and don't bid more than what you want to pay.