I do not often look at eBay postings for several reasons. Most important, I don't need any more tools (yeah, right) nor do I have room to store 'em (true). But every once in awhile I'll have a little morning coffee time and I will take a look. It can be interesting.
Today I put in the search box "used woodworking hand tools buy it now" and on the third page was a listing for a "user grade" Stanley 3C seller typed as a Type 12. From the photos I couldn't see anything that would make me question the Type. The plane had been buffed and cleaned up with some evidence of deeper rust but not much, all in all I would agree the plane would make a nice $40 to $50 USD user plane except for the "C".
The seller had the plane priced at $340 USD and, at least for me, what was even more head slapping was there were 60+ following the listing. The only thing I can think of to cause that many to follow would be just wanting to see if someone would really pay $340 USD for a user grade #3C.
I do that all the time with ridiculous listings. If someone wants a king's ransom for something I know is not nearly worth what they are asking, I will watch it to see if someone is crazy enough to "buy it now"
ReplyDeleteI watched an auction right before Christmas. People were bidding $60+ on a knife you could buy on Amazon for $42 and for about the same price "buy it now" on eBay. I thought maybe I was missing something about the knife, but nothing lead me to believe it was any different than the normal ones. I hesitated at $40 and Amazon ran a crazy sale for $21 so I bought two :-).
Crazy stuff.