So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Stearmen]

eBay is worse. It's been a bone of contention among small sellers that the search engine which has a nasty habit of hiding their listings is rigged in favor of big box megasellers and the Chinese, both of whom have contracts with eBay which guarantees a certain sell-through rate even if it means kicking everybody else to the curb. After selling books on eBay for nearly fifteen years it was the megasellers that totally destroyed it for me. One of these megasellers, Thrift Books, the largest online seller of used books, practically owns the bookselling concession on eBay. They're the ones who, operating under at least several different names, offer books for only $3.97 AND free shipping and have tens of thousands of listings at any given time. They also have a huge presence on Amazon and ABE.

One way to get around that is to filter your search results to your general area or country!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

One way to get around that is to filter your search results to your general area or country!

Nowadays Chinese sellers masquerade as US sellers because they know that a lot of people won't buy from China. Unfortunately, what happens is that the item will be shipped from China even though the seller is ostensibly in the US and then when it's found to be a fake or a cheap shoddily made knockoff the buyer discovers that he/she has to ship it back to China for a refund and that the shipping costs a hell of lot more than what they paid for the item thanks to a deal the USPS made with China where it costs them next to nothing to ship from China to the US which is why our postage is constantly going up.

 

[Fading Fast]

Though nowadays the Chinese sellers masquerade as US sellers because they know that a lot of people won't buy from China. Unfortunately, what happens is that the item will be shipped from China even though the seller is ostensibly in the US and then when it's found to be a fake or a cheap shoddily made knockoff the buyer discovers that he/she has to ship it back to China for a refund and that the shipping costs a hell of lot more than what they paid for the item thanks to a deal the USPS made with China where it costs them next to nothing to ship from China to the US which is why our postage is constantly going up.

My grandmother used to say "there are no locks for thieves." Took me some growing up to understand what she was really saying, but your post made me think of it: misrepresenting your shipping address = no locks for thieves.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The same thing that happened to eBay happened to "flea markets" in the 1990s. I grew up in the flea market capital of Maine, and in the 1970s there were three big ones in town, all full of authentic 1920s-40s stuff which had just been disgorged from cellars and attics, and it was all there for cheap, cheap prices. By the 90s, though, the supply of such goods had dried up and was replaced by flea market "resellers" pushing cheap Taiwanese tool sets, fake designer clothes, counterfeit CDs, and shoddy leather items. I haven't bothered with flea markets for many years because of this. eBay has moved in much the same direction, and it's only going to get worse.

Here are some good rules to follow if you don't want to get cheated, or worse: Never buy new items of current manufacture off eBay, because doing so simply supports the whole structure that's been built up to encourage that kind of scammery. eBay is fine for one-of-a-kind or rare items -- out of print books and magazines, 78rpm records, and other such stuff which cannot be easily replicated by an overseas schlock shop. When buying old books avoid rip-off operations that sell you cheap "printed on demand" reprint copies, unless that's what you want to receive. When buying auto parts be very careful about items represented as "New Old Stock," especially brake parts -- the market is flooded by cheap reproduction parts from China which may or may not work. Do you want to take that chance?

Most of all, only use eBay if there's no way you can find the item you want locally.

 

[Trenchfriend]

How did we live before ebay, mobilephones, DSL and all this??

 

[Trenchfriend]

Ok ok, remember:

If you got five contentful (sweet and rich BUTTERY!) belgic waffles for evening-dinner, it's not a bad idea to use your 32year-old brain and stop after the third waffle, instead of eating all five.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

The Chinese are also slowly muscling in on antiques, collectibles and vintage. Areas already impacted are coins and militaria -- in the case of the former these fakes are now practically seamless. And worse eBay actually sends them lists of top-selling vintage items so that their new best friends in China can reproduce them, thus also providing free marketing research. It's not surprising in view of the fact that eBay's current CEO is, to use a quaint old term, an old China hand. He was previously in charge of eBay's China operations.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Ebay isn't a market, ebay is widespread-disease.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Can't really complain about eBay too much.

Over the past year I've decided to sell off most of my Civil War reenacting gear- from canteens and haversacks to my officer's tent and a number of my uniforms. Having passed the age of 60, any idea of still portraying a 28- 30 year old regimental surgeon is a bit silly. I have cleared over three grand thus far- not bad for stuff that was essentially gathering dust. I paid a lot more this stuff than I'm selling for, obviously, but it's an accumulation of over 20 years. I keep threatening to blow all of my earnings on leather flight jackets and such, just to drive dear wife crazy, but it's going into a long range Australian Vacation Fund. All said, I have no complaints.

But again: this is from a seller's viewpoint.

 

[tonyb]

I spend a good deal less time acquiring stuff online than I did a few years ago (where the hell can I put more stuff?), and I much prefer just happening upon groovy stuff at thrift shops and garage sales, but it's great that I can find just about any item online at a decent price provided I do a bit of homework and am willing to keep looking.
Of course, that's true of any transaction. Know the merchandise, and know you'll rarely get a good price on anything you aren't willing to walk away from.

 

[Zombie_61]

How did we live before ebay, mobilephones, DSL and all this??

Uhh...happily?

 

[Trenchfriend]

Full-moon...

 

[sheeplady]

I am so done with accumulating stuff. We'really cutting down what we own by 2/3rd's because I've found I'm spending too much time managing "stuff." With kids, we accumulate so much.

I would really like to buy a new sofa for the new house. I've never owed a new piece of furniture before, except for our mattress and the kids' crib and bunk beds (which aren't really mine, but I picked them out). I really want a Stickley loveseat. (Maybe someone will die and leave me money.) But I made a deal with myself... if we can afford it I need to get rid of as much stuff as the size of the loveseat I want before we even go to the store.

But to be honest, I've never owned more than two dining/kitchen chairs that matched each other and weren't broken, so perhaps I'll splurge on some matching unfinished chairs first...

And then I'm accumulating. Sigh.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Holy cow, what a brick!!

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=stickley+loveseat&FORM=HDRSC2

 

[GHT]

I would really like to buy a new sofa for the new house. I've never owed a new piece of furniture before.

In the early years of our marriage we did a lot of renovating of tired old items that we had acquired by way of thrift and charity shops, or from others who were simply bored with what they had. One such piece was a magnificent sofa, described as a three seater, it could easily accommodate four. My Father-in-Law, being something of a furniture carpenter, stripped it to discover, horse-hair stuffing, coil springs and hessian covering. The springs he took to work, had them completely renovated, he worked in a furniture factory, the horse hair was cleaned by a specialist, my wife replaced the hessian after skillfully restuffing the horse-hair and finally Father-in-Law covered the sofa in leatherette securing it with polished, dome head, brass tacks. It looked magnificent.
The only negative about it was it's size. When we moved, we gave it to our niece. A lovely woman, a mother to three small children and as poor as a church mouse. She was delighted, to her it was new. And the moral of this tale?
When we moved from London, our new home had to have new furniture, we spent a five figure sum doing just that and although we don't regret it, we both agree that the sofa and the previous renovations brought us a great deal more satisfaction than having the cash to go out and simply buy new. I do hope that you find your sofa, at an affordable price.

 

[tonyb]

I am so done with accumulating stuff. We'really cutting down what we own by 2/3rd's because I've found I'm spending too much time managing "stuff." With kids, we accumulate so much.

I would really like to buy a new sofa for the new house. I've never owed a new piece of furniture before, except for our mattress and the kids' crib and bunk beds (which aren't really mine, but I picked them out). I really want a Stickley loveseat. (Maybe someone will die and leave me money.) But I made a deal with myself... if we can afford it I need to get rid of as much stuff as the size of the loveseat I want before we even go to the store.

But to be honest, I've never owned more than two dining/kitchen chairs that matched each other and weren't broken, so perhaps I'll splurge on some matching unfinished chairs first...

And then I'm accumulating. Sigh.

My tastes in interior furnishings in recent years have trended more toward what is now called MCM. This is in no small part on account of my homes over that span being of a more modernist style, which kinda beg for modern furniture and art and window treatments, etc.

Which is not to say that certain genuine antiques don't play well in such contexts, but it's akin to wearing patterned fabrics with other patterned fabrics. You gotta have the eye for it.

There's a reason certain pieces (Eames chairs, Saarinen tables, etc., etc.) have attained iconic status: they are beautiful, plainly elegant designs. They remain in production and anyone with a fat bank account can drop into DWR and other high-end retailers and find stuff that makes it hard to go wrong. If I were rich, I might well do just that.

But I'm not rich. And I now know, after all these decades of practice, that snootiness isn't the exclusive province of the well-to-do. I see a space outfitted almost entirely in such "iconic" (an overused term, but in this context it fits) pieces and I say to myself, "now here's a person who relies on others to tell him what looks good."

It's akin to my being more positively impressed by a car with multiples of hundreds of thousands of miles on the clock than a new $100K-plus Shystermobile. Anyone with money (and money only) can have the latter.

 

[sheeplady]

In the early years of our marriage we did a lot of renovating of tired old items that we had acquired by way of thrift and charity shops, or from others who were simply bored with what they had. One such piece was a magnificent sofa, described as a three seater, it could easily accommodate four. My Father-in-Law, being something of a furniture carpenter, stripped it to discover, horse-hair stuffing, coil springs and hessian covering. The springs he took to work, had them completely renovated, he worked in a furniture factory, the horse hair was cleaned by a specialist, my wife replaced the hessian after skillfully restuffing the horse-hair and finally Father-in-Law covered the sofa in leatherette securing it with polished, dome head, brass tacks. It looked magnificent.
The only negative about it was it's size. When we moved, we gave it to our niece. A lovely woman, a mother to three small children and as poor as a church mouse. She was delighted, to her it was new. And the moral of this tale?
When we moved from London, our new home had to have new furniture, we spent a five figure sum doing just that and although we don't regret it, we both agree that the sofa and the previous renovations brought us a great deal more satisfaction than having the cash to go out and simply buy new. I do hope that you find your sofa, at an affordable price.

To be honest, we'll probably never own a Stickley. (To note, they are made here and they do have fantastic sales for the local public, they also turn up at yard sales, etc. And a used one would make me happy.)

To be honest, I'd be happy with a set of chairs that aren't chronically breaking. I've reglued my $5 chairs at least twice apiece over 10 years, recaned them once, and after my caning job broke (I, admittedly, learned on those chairs) I put in plywood seats... which have since ceacked. I no longer have the time to cane chairs between working full time, two young children, and restoring a house by ourselves. We also can't afford to have it done, the cost would be about $50 to $100 a chair. Caning with young children is a mess, and I can't afford to spend $400 on a set of chairs every decade, not when I can get a set of "new" chairs for that.

I also hate caning with the fire of a thousand suns...

I am keeping my two old chairs I pulled out of the dumpster. Those I've only had to reglue once, and they have leather seats.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I've occasionally bought a few things off if eBay, but really old things you can't get new anymore. Bought a few old tractor parts from individuals, and odds and ends here and there. It's good for that sort of thing. I wouldn't buy say a new blender there. I did buy one "new old stock" item: I found a guy selling an old unused double hinged catchers mitt. Most kids today don't even know what that means, so I wasn't too worried about it being some mass produced rip off.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One thing you shouldn't buy on eBay under any circumstances unless you absolutely know what you're doing is a spring-wound phonograph, whether a portable or a tabletop cabinet model. Most of them on eBay at any given moment are actually what experts call "crap-o-phones," manufactured in India from junky old 1960s suitcase portables dropped into shoddily-made new cabinets. Any search result for a phonograph showing India as the point of origin should be immediately disregarded unless you want to spend your money on trash.

 

[BlueTrain]

I've bought way too much stuff from eBay, including one very nice reproduction item that came from China. The seller was recommended by a reenacting forum. But most of what I've bought is just old stuff. I'm always looking for Filson clothing. I've even acquired items with the original union labels. In fact, the last thing I bought was a Filson shirt. Some of the stuff is too good to actually wear. But there really aren't any bargains out there unless you're looking for something really odd--that no one else wants.

And speaking of things from China, the chinaware at Mt. Vernon (George Washington's house) came from China.