Leather jacket pricing in classified thread - wishful thinking vs. actual market

[breezer]

but ultimately it boils down to your maximum bid - that applies to sniping as well....your maximum bid is what it is, whether its a day or a second before the auction ends. You either win or you don't.

 

[Guppy]

but ultimately it boils down to your maximum bid - that applies to sniping as well....your maximum bid is what it is, whether its a day or a second before the auction ends. You either win or you don't.

True, but if few people bid, then the price tends to be less than if a lot of people bid, even if many people only increase the price by the minimum margin each time. The more bids an item receives, the more visible it is in searches, and the more likely it is to receive even more bids. As the price rises, the psychology of the bid sniper is to increase their snipe amount to ensure that they win, meaning a higher final value overall. If buyers only bid one time, over the course of the listing, setting their proxy at their max, and didn't raise again if outbid, the final price would not be much different, but lots of people tend to chase when outbid. Even so, if many people place a bid, rather than just watch and bid only if the price stays low, it's to the seller's advantage. Not extending auctions enables buyers to get away with last minute sniping.

 

[technovox]

I agree with the original post- 60-70% of original retail seems to be scraping the top end ceiling of what the market will pay for an almost new coveted model. With 50% or less going for a more common design. But pricing is a personal matter. Occasionally I’ll see a used jacket going for more than original retail new. Seems insane that anyone would pay more than original cost for someone else’s custom fantasy, but who am I to argue?

Personally, I’ve had more luck with rare vintage jackets.- I’ve actually manage to stay in the black. But when it comes to selling a custom Aero, honestly, I’m just happy to place it in a new home, recover a reasonable fraction of my losses, lick my wounds… and move on to that next elusive grail, aka “final perfect jacket.”

 

[Sloan1874]

I've had variable luck with eBay. The best circumstance is when an auction ends in the middle of the afternoon of a week day: fewer wild card bidders, genuine interested parties are often too busy to get involved in a bidding war, which helps to keep prices down to realistic levels. I recently won a Buco(Real McCoy) Speedway t-shirt in this way for £20. It was in extremely good condition, hardly worn I would say, and given that RMs cost upwards of £70, I would say a bargain.
As a rule of thumb, when it comes to selling, I'll check what completed auctions have gone for, set my starting price about 20 - 30 per cent below it and see what happens. If it doesn't sell, I'll relist for an additional week. After that, I'll just leave it for a few months and try again.

 

[ProteinNerd]

When I sell, I only use buy it now pricing these days. I work out what I’d be happy with plus fees and list it.

Every jacket I’ve listed I’ve sold for what I wanted. Some take a few months but they have all sold eventually, you just need to be patient until the right buyer comes along.

Luckily I’ve never had to sell something cause I “needed the money”.

I’ve learnt the hard way not to bother with the best offer option. It only attracts time wasters that offer you ridiculously low amounts, insultingly low....so low it really is a complete waste of your time even reading and rejecting the offer.... unless of course you decide to have fun with them. One guy offered me 40% of my reasonable asking price so I replied along the lines of, if that’s what you think it’s worth, you don’t understand what quality is and don’t deserve to wear this jacket. Others I’ve counter offered with 2cents off the original asking price. The low ballers get the idea pretty quickly lol.

 

[tmitchell59]

but ultimately it boils down to your maximum bid - that applies to sniping as well....your maximum bid is what it is, whether its a day or a second before the auction ends. You either win or you don't.

As far as bidding, that says it all.

 

[58panheadfan]

... But when it comes to selling a custom Aero, honestly, I’m just happy to place it in a new home, recover a reasonable fraction of my losses, lick my wounds… and move on to that next elusive grail, aka “final perfect jacket.”

You took the words right out of my mouth

 

[rocketeer]

Agreed...I haven't bid on an auction item and won in years...even when I've overvalued my bid. Then, strangely enough, a few days or weeks later here comes the same item with a sob story about a non paying bidder...yet they decline the option of second chance offers for my overvalued bid...Shill bidders are mostly shill sellers me thinks...

I would always expect to loose money selling on a fairly new jacket. You come across it all the time "Broken in so you don't have to do it yourself" always amazes me. By defining the so called 'Vintage' jackets a 20 year old Highwayman, personally I would class in the fairly new, while a 35 year old Highwayman I would class as 'Vintage', though personally I hate the word Vintage as it covers such a wide span of years and styles.
If you are happy to start a bit at "No reserve" and start from scratch, say £1,$1 etc then you should be happy if it sells low, maybe disappointed but thats the risk(Starting a "No Reserve" at £100 isn't truthfully a "No reserve" is it).
As for shill bidding and second chances; Personally I would never respond to second chance offers unless it was considerably lower than the next bid down, I don't think it works like that. I have been accused of having a friend put a high holding bid on something I was selling when in fact I had a potential customer ask if I would do a Buy it Now, I suggested they stuck in their highest bid if they wanted it rather than piddle about with silly £5 bids if they were outbid, which the bidder did and won, as the complaining bidder bid in the last minutes in his silly small bids. Finally I have sold stuff at a reasonable price, then the buyer not pay up as they found, bidded and won the same item a lot cheaper, the buyers excuse was her daughter was bidding using mums ebay site This was in the days when you could see what eBay names were bidding on. As for leather jackets, I could see this last thing happening with newish items such as said Aero, Eastman or replicas as there are so many similar items to there but there are not that many same style jackets in the same size in the same colour and condition when it comes to 70 year old garments.
Just my thoughts

 

[Edward]

It's like anything else - a jacket is worth what someone will actually pay you for it.... Big names help; Aero and Goodwear, for instance, are well known enough within our niche that they will be sought out. On hte otherf hand, you can have the most beautiful, perfect jacket from one of the less well known Japanese makers - Rainbow Country, say - and it might go for much, much less .On eBay, having a title that will get you up the search returns is king. It's why I'd no longer try to sell anything on there that doesn't have a brand or type that will pull in viewers. That said, it's also why so many people abuse other brand names - the number of "like Aero" or "Aero, Buzz Rickson, Real McCoys" or "NotAero, NotBuzzrickson" type headers I see.... All in violation of eBay rules, but for all I report them it never seems to make any difference. I've long come to believe eBay only care about anything that loses them money.

funnily enough, i had an experience the other day with an aero jacket for sale, where i am 100% sure the seller had a friend put fake bids on it to raise the price. there were only 2 bidders, me and one other guy and everytime i bid, he started putting bids in like 5€ steps, as if to make sure he didn't overbid me by too much and scared me away. at first i thought it was a real bidder, so i raised by 100 and then he legit bid 20x, every time 5€ more just to slightly overbid me yet again, and it was a 0 feedback guy who was bidding on nothing else.. i'm maybe naive that this never came to my mind before, but is this a thing on ebay? do people try to influence the auctions of their items like that?

Certainly sounds like you may have come up against a shill bidder. Though there are some people on Ebay who bid like that. I use a sniperf software to avoid that sort of thing.

Sellers also are vulnerable to being ripped off by buyers abusing the dispute resolution process. EBay has proven incapable of preventing fraud economically. It's virtually impossible to find the facts, and arbitration is very expensive relative to most transactions. Most transactions go well, but all the ones that do, are because both buyer and seller entered into contract in good faith and were honest. Fraud pushes prices upward as a cost of doing business.

Ebay has become bad for sellers - aprt from their greediness with fees, it's also a pain that they don't allow sellers to leve anything other than positive feedback now. I understand what the problem was before, but what they've done now is leave the seller totally at the mercy of the buyer. I've long said that what they should really have done was to set it up so that neither party could see the feedback from the other until they had both left feedback. Cuts the chances of unfair / strikeback negatives.

Ebay should automatically extend auctions when there is bid activity in the final moments, and close auctions when bidding activity subsides after the set closing time. This would solve many problems, but still wouldn't address shill bidding. Other sites extend automatically, it's a mystery why eBay doesn't do it.

Same as anything else - what eBay currently do works for eBay, and while I'm certainly no fan of the so-called free market, it's certainly true that eBay holds all the cards while it remains largely the only game in town. I prefer Etsy these days, but Etsy is only good for certain things, and the search facility is inferior.

Agreed...I haven't bid on an auction item and won in years...even when I've overvalued my bid. Then, strangely enough, a few days or weeks later here comes the same item with a sob story about a non paying bidder...yet they decline the option of second chance offers for my overvalued bid...Shill bidders are mostly shill sellers me thinks...

Worst I had was the guitar that I was minutes from winning for about a third of the RRP when the seller pulledthe auction as "Item damaged or no longer available". A week later, the exact same guitar appeared on eBay again and sold at a significantly higher price. The seller was clearly in breach of ebay rules (putting an auction up on eBay is - as they make clear - an offer to contract, and obliges the seller to sell to the winnig bidder at the price given at auction close. The eBay rules require that you can only withdraw the item from sale if it has been damaged or lost/stolen). Whe I went to report it, however, there was - surprise surprise - no option on eBays system to fit. But then why should they care? They got more money in the end...

One guy offered me 40% of my reasonable asking price so I replied along the lines of, if that’s what you think it’s worth, you don’t understand what quality is and don’t deserve to wear this jacket. Others I’ve counter offered with 2cents off the original asking price. The low ballers get the idea pretty quickly lol.

I've occasionally offered 50% of the list price for things - surpsing how often that is accepted. I believe though that eBay has a function where you can set it up to automatically discount bids below a certain level - if you trigger the auto-reject three times, then it automatically blocks you from making further 'best offers'.

The ebay things that used to annoy me were the guys who back in the day didn't want to pay the price for listing an item they had with a £300 reserve at closer that, so they listed a start price of a penny.... and then snarked when people bid low amounts like ten dollars.

 

[Guppy]

but ultimately it boils down to your maximum bid - that applies to sniping as well....your maximum bid is what it is, whether its a day or a second before the auction ends. You either win or you don't.

In my experience watching auctions on eBay since 1999, more bidders, bidding actively throughout the life of the listing results in a higher closing price. It's not just your maximum bid. It's the maximum bid of all the bidders. Knowing a lot of people are interested in the item informs interested parties that they will need to bid higher if they want to prevail. When there's little interest, buyers sense that they may be able to get the item with a lower maximum bid. It does come down to the maximum bid, but maximum is higher with more activity.

 

[breezer]

I was bidding on a BR zip sweat only this morning. Now I know this item would normally go for between £60 and £90, but the auction was ending mid morning - and as Sloan points out above, this often means less bidding activity and more chance of snagging a bargain. There was only one bid prior to the auction ending, it had been sitting at £34 for days. So I lined up a cheeky bid just under £50 which I punched in 6 seconds prior to the auction ending. But it wasn't enough, others were doing the same and it sold for £56. Still lower than you would expect, so somebody got a bargain. but I wasn't bothered, and my bid reflected that. An item is only worth what someone is prepared t pay and in this case someone was prepared to pay more than me. If I'de wanted it....really wanted it, I would have stuck in a max bid of £100. And I would have won.