MauvaisPoil

Hi, I've been looking for a mid-1970s Peugeot PY10 completely gold like the one below (ebay link) for quite a moment now. But I never am capable of winning an Ebay auction (the one below I was very close), and that is when there is actually an auction for it (happens very rarely). I am wondering how you guys are capable of putting your hands on them other than going through ebay? Are there collectors here that make trades, are there local bike shops where you find them? Here in Quebec it seems like nobody bought thoses bikes back in time, they're impossible to find. How were you guys processing before Ebay even existed?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/AWESOME-75er...vip=true&rt=nc

RubberLegs

For me, I hunt Craigslist
https://sarasota.craigslist.org/bik/4154764494.html
[h=2] Vintage 1970's Peugeot PX-10 Frame with Parts - $225 (Venice)[/h]
https://orlando.craigslist.org/bid/4171197595.html
[h=2] "ROB"- 50cm PEUGEOT ROAD BIKE - EXTRA NICE! - $395 (Apopka)[/h]

Chombi

Wow! I800 bucks (shipped) for that UK PY10??!......There you go again, the Power of Goooold over C&Vers!.....

cyclotoine

Sign up to the Classic Rendezvous mailing list and ask if anyone has one. If they do there is a chance they'll sell for the right price. In fact most of us will sell most of our bike for the right price (and then spend the money on building another one while trying to have beer money left over).

MauvaisPoil

actually more around 1600... it sounds enormous for a Peugeot, but there's something in this bike's design that fascinates me. And yeah I know I could get some awesome italian bike with that money

MauvaisPoil

I have no idea why I haven't seen that mailing list before... been there so many times for bikes info. Thanks!

cyclotoine

Actually it is a google group now I believe.

MauvaisPoil

Yes exactly, pretty much the same thing, daily emails, etc.

miamijim

PY's are rare in comparision to PX's so the odds are stacked against you before you even begin.

They show up on rare occasions. I know Kurt found one local to him in Miami a few years ago.

RubeRad

Also possibly you are not bidding at the right time. Do you know about sniping? I have found that sniping has been very helpful in winning eBay auctions, often even at good prices.

In case you don't, sniping is showing up in the last seconds of the auction and putting in your bid. If you put your bid in a day before it ends, it is easy for somebody else to overbid you by a few dollars, due to the strategic error of you revealing your information (bid amount) without knowing anything about your opponent.

Set yourself a reminder for when an interesting auction closes, and decide on a maximum amount you would be willing to pay -- this is important now, BEFORE you load up the auction and check the current bid. If you don't you risk getting caught up in desperate auctioning and end up paying too much. Ask yourself questions like "if I bid X and end up getting out-bid, will I regret not bidding higher?" Choose X so that (a) if you end up winning the item for X, you can afford it and will not feel ripped-off, and (b) if you lose the item for more than X, you do not feel you have missed an opportunity.

After you have picked your max bid price X, then AND ONLY THEN load up the auction page (this should be like 1-5min before auction closes). The page will be live, the remaining time red and updating, and the current price will also be automatically updating. If it's already over X, kick back and watch the suckers pay more than the thing is worth (to you). If it's less, wait until about 10 sec, then bid X, and hope for the best. If your bid puts you over the top, most likely other bidders will not have a chance to respond.

When you make this a regular practice, (a) you will never pay more than what you calmly value an item to be worth, (b) you will sometimes pay X (perhaps there is another sniper working, or perhaps the actual bid of the auction-leader before you is by coincidence only X-1 -- for this reason, try to choose non-round numbers, like instead of $5.00, do $5.23 or instead of $1000, do $1007.89), or (c) you will often pay less than X (depending on how much larger X is than the auction-leader's actual bid)

Good luck!

RubeRad

I just thought of an analogy; eBay sniping is like a track race with a track-stand -- whoever makes the first move loses. You need to wait as long as possible!

Velognome 

Or just be willing to spend more than anyone else.....that's always worked for me.

artclone

For a beginning pimp, one could always start out with a standard PX. There's a shop here that specializes in gold plating truspoke rims on Caprice Classics and the hood badges on old Lexus coupes after they are lowered/jacked. Plating Mafac bits can't be that hard.

Plugging in the Alpine X-subs might be hard though.

A trailer! That might do it.

David Newton

Excuse me for being dense, I think I understand the difference between bidding and sniping, but if I am willing to pay the highest price for a bike on ebay, what does it matter if I place the highest bid (my maximum bid) on the auction site on the first day of the auction or snipe at the very last second?
If someone else wants to "reveal" my maximum bid on the second day of the auction by bidding up to and more than my maximum, he was going to win anyway by having a higher maximum bid, right?
Someone can't snipe my bid at the last second unless they bid higher than my maximum.

RubeRad

In the bidding history, I assume you bid 1500 at 9:40:27, and got outbid at 9:43:21, auction closed at 9:44:15. I'd say your mistake was bidding an even $1500. I would have added a few dollars and cents to that to make it not round. When that sniper came along and saw the bidding history leading up to $1405, it's possible he guessed your likely hidden actual bid to be $1500, and bid not far over that.

For X=1500, I would add a few insignificant dollars and cents to make it a hair higher, so if somebody else saw $1405 and bid $1500, they would not get it from me.

I'm not saying I would necessarily have put enough dollars and cents to fend of this particular sniper though. YOu never know.

RubeRad

You are correct if your max bid is truly a cast-in-concrete maximum for you. But often there is not just math, but also psychology involved. I'm seeing in this case OP set a max bid of $1500, and in the end he got beat by $12 bucks, and is disappointed, I'm guessing not because the other guy had (at least) $12 extra bucks that OP didn't have access to, but because, after the fact he would not have minded paying $1512, which shows that his max bid is kinda soft.

The sniper attacks that soft space above a round-number max bid, and does it so close to the auction end that the earlier bidder has no time to respond.

If OP had bid $1500 as soon as the auction opened (which would show minimum bid at first), then yes other people would bid him up, and if the winning bidder took over at $1512 a full day before the auction closed, would he have given up? Obviously I'm not OP, but I would suggest that many people would give some consideration to a max bid of $1550.

And then again, if you put your $1550 in 23 hours before auction end, and the other guy comes back and (apparently) barely outbids again, this leads to a vicious cycle of frustration-bidding (and a happy seller!)

That's why it's so important when sniping to ignore the auction for a while, decide on a price, and come back when there's just a few minutes left. The less time there is left, the less time there is to get outbid -- and also, if you do get outbid, the less likely you are (the less time you have!) to make a bad decision and keep bidding up!


Anyways, sniping is not for everyone; placing a max bid early fits the temperament of many, and it often works, and works as well as any other strategy for low-demand, few-bid items. But I'd say for high-demand, many-bid items, sniping is statistically more likely to result in a win, and also has the favorable feature of avoiding an out-of-control bidding spree. For those reasons I find sniping to be a less stressful way to approach an auction; I understand many might not.

RubeRad

Another reason not to bid early is to avoid being locked into one item if a better one comes available or is discovered with an earlier auction end time. But that's not the case here, as this bike is very rare and unique.

the_tool_man

Exactly my strategy, down to every detail.

Of course, if everybody does this, then it won't work any more.

RubeRad

Yes, I think it would drive prices up. If everybody bids silently with no information, the more bidders there are, the more likely it is that some bidder will overestimate the value.

I had a math teacher once that used an auction to teach this statistical point. Every year he would hold a silent auction for a glass jar full of pennies. He never once failed to make a profit.

TimmyT 

I use esnipe. It was recommended by another member here. You set your bid, set a lookup time, and wait. If the item is over your desired price at the lookup time, you get an email.

I also never put an item on my watch list that I have a snipe set for. I don't want the item to appear in the suggested items that "other members are watching."

EDIT: I've probably lost as many as I've won because I'm a cheapskate. The things I've gotten though, I've gotten pretty cheap.

bertinjim 

MauvaisPoil-

The EBay advice given is good but you asked for otherwheres. Try Steel Vintage Bikes out of Germany and even A Great Vintage which announced here a short time ago.

Velognome 

I would think the ebay victory process of winning one of these is simple.....bid $2,500 and be happy where ever it lands...this bike would have been yours.

Other places to search? I'd start with local shops, let them know what your looking for, if a golden PY is around, they'd most likely know about it.

1960frejus 

The world of the wants and the means to out bid. I was bidding on a set of Brand New In the Box... Model 61 Universal Brakes. Waited till the last 20 seconds or less, should have waited for the last 8 seconds, but another bidder wanted them more than me.
Believe me, these brakes at over 300.00 is a lot of money. I thought they were going to go for a little over 200.00 dollars, but I would not go any more than 300.00, winning bid... 306.00.
I was a little disappointed, but realize that even 300.00 was a premium that was going to hurt my pocket book anyway, but like it is being expressed here, we all at one time or another let the parts get the best of us.

However, I did noticed that the hoods did not have any background color in the Universal logo, because my Universal brakes on my professional model Frejus had blue in the logo, as seen on the Rendezvous Light Weight Site on the Red logos and Champagne scheme Professional Frejus there, and have see them with red in the logo also back in the 60's. There must be a difference as to either when they were made or better quality as I would access.


Philo

kroozer 

Try Ebay France (ebay.fr). Put out pleas on all the vintage (or even non-vintage) internet forums. Get in touch with the French forums like Toton Velo.

Chombi

+1!.........I just beat a couple of snipers at eBay earlier this week, bidding for a pair of really hard to find French pedals in the last 5 seconds of the auction. I noticed that the guy I beat with the second highest bid had a round/whole figure for his sniping amount. Mine was set to max at something like $3.79 over his number and that's what got me to win over the guy.....
YEHEY FOR MEEE!!