Can someone tell me what's wrong with this? (Deeply skeptical ebayer...) http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...Y_BID_Stores_IT

(DUH, obviously it's a cello not a double bass... Don't worry, i did notice that bit!! Sorry, was looking at other stuff before I posted. Easily confused. But my question remains - what's up with this?)

I can shed some light on this because we have some lower level Schroetters which are almost certainly from the same source. Bessons, the importers, is in administration - they seem to have pulled out of strings completely and be concentrating now on brass. A couple of weeks ago there was a sale of a lot of their stock, with every music shop for which the asset disposers had an address being contacted and invited to put in tenders. We only found out about it by accident and too late to raise much money but even so we did get some stuff really cheaply - we didn't bid on any small cellos because of storage space and lack of funds meaning that we had to prioritise, but it's a safe bet that any cheap Schroetters and Paesolds you come across on ebay in the near future come from the same place. It worked on a tender so no live bidding - we had to put in offers in writing for what we wanted, and since you have to pay what you offer, it's somewhat of a gamble and probably what these people have done is to bid very low indeed and get lucky. Clearly it's not going to go for £1 and reserve fees are expensive, so this is a calculated risk on the seller's part - but not much of a risk.

That said, I see he has a double bass and a flute which likewise started at £1 and there were none of those in the sale list so he might be one of those ebayers who sells off surplus stock regardless and doesn't worry about what it fetches.

One thing though - with feedback like his, and speaking also from personal experience which i cannot share on the forum - I wouldn't recommend bidding too high.

Liz

That's helpful, thanks Liz.

I've had a look through the feedback, and even some of the positives make negative comments (e.g. it's nice, but you said it was a Parker flute, and it's not marked, and comments about having to spend money for repairs when the stuff arrived).

I noticed someone asked him / her for model and serial number, and the seller studiously ignored the request, which I thought probably wasn't a good sign.

I have to say, it just seemed a bit too good to be true. I'll keep an eye on things and see what happens. If the DB doesn't get stupidly expensive, I was thinking of buying it for a friend who can't afford to get one for herself.

O yes, and he claims it's $4000 in the US. If you believe that you'll believe anything - singing chicken has them for £472.50 and although prices vary widely that would be a difference of something like 500%. I don't think so somehow!

Liz

The DB went for £560 - and you're absolutely right, I found them selling much cheaper that, including delivery, elsewhere.

You can buy the Schroetter double basses for about £500 new, their actually ok for slappin and jazz, not sure how useful they would be for classical stuff, but i've played with two bassists who've used them and they sounded fine to me.

Now this is the funny thing about ebay. We find we can put up a buy it now listing and an auction at the same time for the same item and people will bid up on the auction well above what they would pay for buy it now - and more than they could get the item from a non-ebay website which would quickly show up on a google search. The trouble is of course that relying on that happening is risky, and that is why we rarely do it and only ever with low value items.

Liz

I think part of it is people getting carried away with the excitement of bidding on it, and I know for a fact that the occasional unscrupulous ebay seller relies on people not checking the value of things before they bid. (one told me so once, unbelievably...)

My brother told me a humerous story. Apparently people put items up on Ebay with the reserve as the Argos price: if no one bids they've only lost 20p or whatever it costs; if someone bids they go out and buy it from Argos and then send it off to the person with a profit . To be honest if people can't be bothered to check the price of things, and assume it's cheap just because it's Ebay, then it's their own fault for being lazy .

Yes, to an extent I agree - but I was a bit horrified that the person in question would do it so barefacedly. It was 2nd hand music being sold for more than it would cost new!

I always check - but then I guess that's what I am like

Ebay relies very much on peoples averice, i've put things on ebay and sold them for more than i bought them which is great but the real beauty of ebay is that many fine vintage musical instruments that are no longer being used are coming out of peoples attics and being made available to modern players, this is great news. For example i was able to purchase a lovely Ferrari mandolin via ebay as well as a rare Frank Olds trombone with the original 'little copper bear playing trombone' couterweight.

Not sure it's always avarice. Sometimes i think it's old fashioned childish competitiveness. I paid too much for a book of the bach cello suites, because I'd been outbid on three items from the same seller in the last few seconds by the same bidder, and I was absolutely determined that it wasn't going to happen again. Utterly irrational.