I'm a regular Ebayer. Before the internet, before Ebay, I would walk around antique malls and charity shops.
Ebay is like having tens of thousands of charity shops and antique shops in your house. Ebay has most of the same joys and dangers of those.
Lozq wrote: 'Buy It Now and Wait Ten Weeks for Delivery'
If the implication is that long delivery times are typical, the default Ebay thing is to require an item purchased to be shipped in three business days. Yes there are overseas sales and other sales with longer delivery times but they must be revealed by the seller. You can filter your search by delivery time, if that's a priority.
Lozq wrote: ...hoping to find a tasty flute on the cheap.
I don't do flutes on Ebay, but I've bought and sold a fair number of Highland pipes over the years there.
I warn people that buying vintage instruments on Ebay has potential rewards for those with detailed knowledge, but potential danger for newbies. This isn't Ebay's fault. A buyer's level of ignorance or education is the responsibility of the buyer, and can't be blamed on anyone else.
With Highland pipes there are bargains on Ebay every day. I run into pipers all the time who have spent $1,500 or $2,000 on a mediocre-sounding new bagpipe when for half that they could have bought a vintage set on Ebay that would play circles around their new set.
When people ask me about buying vintage pipes on Ebay I warn them it's not for the non-experts. I tell them to let me know when they're ready to purchase a bagpipe, and I'll give them a list of the current Ebay bargains.
Both of my Highland pipes are great-sounding 1940s sets that will outplay anything made today. Both were got on Ebay. The seller of both is somebody I trust. He has a large number of great old pipes. All are in nice condition, and his prices are very reasonable.
One set cost $600, one $800. I have $1400 total in two great vintage bagpipes, less than one mediocre new set costs.
BTW people new to piping overpay for mediocre new instruments because they don't realise that musical instruments aren't like cars.
They think new=good used=bad. If they looked around they would see that most of the good pipers are playing vintage pipes.
Lozq wrote: What I've noticed is that quite a lot of the items seem to get relisted over and over again.
Yes if an item is priced too high it probably won't sell anytime soon. It's usually the case of the seller not knowing the item's typical value. I can only guess that somebody "informed" the seller about the item's value, and the seller wants to stick to that price. The only way such an item will sell is if an unknowledgeable buyer with too much money comes along and overpays. Experts will leave it alone.
People like that- unknowledgeable buyers with too much money- is why it behooves sellers to go the auction route. All the fixed-price Buy It Now does is prevent somebody for paying more for your item than you think it's worth.
I've contacted sellers before, when they list an old set of bagpipes for an absurdly high price. I'll tell them what that sort of pipes generally goes for- all they need to do is look on Ebay to see I'm correct- and I assure them that they'll never sell the item at anything close to that price unless a total ignoramus with a pile of money burning a hole in his pocket happens along. You can wait years and never have that happen. And indeed these pipes get relisted in perpetuity.
Lozq wrote: I would've thought an auction is meant to be a case of you get what people are willing to pay, and then you're obliged to post it.
I'm not sure what that sentence means, sorry.
When an auction ends the seller has to go through with the sale to the highest bidder, even if the seller imagines that the item is worth more. If a seller wants to cancel a sale once the auction is over it has to be approved by the winning bidder.
In general things on Ebay don't go for much less than they're worth because knowledgeable buyers will bid up the item. Like water, an item's value will find its level.
However you can get lucky! There was a 100 year old set of pipes on Ebay with an opening bid of $200. I thought sure the bidding would go up, but when the auction ended I was the only bidder and I won those pipes. I still play them, they're amazing. The seller sent the pipes to me with an angry note saying the pipes had been appraised for nearly a thousand dollars. That's the seller's fault, not having a minimum built into the auction. If you list an item with a super low opening bid, with no minimum, you take that risk.
Lozq wrote:The other little mystery...all these instruments...the description invariably reads something like 'I have no idea what this is...'
A seller can't know everything about everything and they often end up with things they know nothing about. Perhaps a relative passed away, or they bought a blind lot at auction, it doesn't matter.
About the claim that sellers feign (the word you were looking for) ignorance as part of a scam, I buy and sell vintage things on Ebay pretty often and in my experience that is virtually unheard of. The knowledgeable sellers are Ebay regulars and they describe things very accurately. The unknowledgeable sellers are obvious. Usually they're up front with their ignorance. Even if they don't specifically state that they know nothing, that fact is obvious by the way they word things.
It's a mistake to believe that sellers have something to gain from vague and inaccurate descriptions. As a seller I know that if I miss the tiniest thing in my description it can come back to haunt me! The buyer will find a microscopic scratch and want their money back and/or give me bad feedback. You won't last long on Ebay that way.
One frequent bane is a seller having inadequate and/or blurry photos. Anybody with any knowledge and common sense will be scared off, or they will ask the seller to take better photos. Things with blurry photos won't sell, except to an unknowledgeable newbie with more money than sense. Once again it's the buyer's responsibility, not Ebay's, to educate themselves.
Lozq wrote: And one last bit of mystification...Pakistani flutes and pipes...who the hell is actually buying these things...you don't just wake up one morning and decide that 'Today I'm going to buy a cheap set of uilleann pipes, without learning the first thing about them"
But people do!
That's their market, the ignorant newbie.
As a bagpipe teacher I cringe when a potential student tells me "my husband bought me some bagpipes when he was on a business trip to Ireland last week" or "my wife gave me a set of bagpipes for Christmas" or "I picked up these bagpipes on Ebay". There's nearly a 100% chance that they show up with Pakistani trash.
Actually I have more encounters with Pakistani Highland Dress things- kilts and sporrans etc- than flutes or bagpipes.
These are marketed in sneaky ways. The first thing is to set up a firm in the UK, so Americans see that it's a UK firm and imagine that the things are made in the UK.
The other thing is that evidently in the UK clothing isn't required to carry a label stating where it was made. In the US clothing must carry such a label. So a UK firm can be set up calling itself "Celtic Kilts Scotland" and it can put labels in their kilts saying Celtic Kilts Scotland. US buyers see that label think it's the US-required label stating country of origin. It's not, "Scotland" is simply part of the firm's name.
Since bagpipes and flutes aren't required to be stamped with the country of origin, sellers don't have to resort to such stuff.