eBay maniacalty

Last Sunday, two Yamaha DD-55c electronic drum kits (one boxed) sold for £20 + £13 in separate auctions. Yet the same model sold for £51 + £9.95 P&P on Tuesday evening. And Saturday / Sunday are meant to be the best days for ending an auction and getting a high selling price!

I sold my scratched Tokina fisheye on eBay, and it ended up selling for £68.76 + £10 P&P. While the lens was scratched around the edge, it worked fine without problems for most usage - you could shoot into the sun without lens flare. The problem was mainly at night where you have lots of light sources around, this would sometimes cause flare. (The sometimes was enough of a problem for me that I decided to buy a replacement and sell this one).

The selling price seems very low to me, the lens normally sells for £300+. And another seller had listed a similar Canon EF 8-15 mm F/4 L USM Lens that has a scratched front element, but that flares when shot into the sun, and has a crack in the body, which sold for £400 + £11 P&P.

Similarly, another Canon 8-15 mm £530 + £9.80 P&P that has been scratched so if the photo is overexposed or taken against direct sunlight then the scratches will appear on one side. However this is only in certain occasions. There is also a tiny crack in the base of the lens Whereas an excellent condition boxed Canon 8-15mm sold for £560 + £10.00 P&P. So only £30 more for a version of the lens that works properly than a scratched flare inducing lens.

It seems that people are willing to bid much more for broken versions of some lenses than for others? Another good example of this is another lens that I sold. I bought a Samyang 14mm lens that was in parts, but the seller stated that all the screws and parts were included. They said that they managed to scratch the front of the lens, and had tried dismantling it to fix it, but gave up without success. I paid £30.07 + £3.30 P&P.

When I received the lens, it turned out the front element was scratched much more than I thought it was. After putting the lens back together, I tried it out and images were noticeably soft in the middle. I also had some screws left over. I listed it on eBay, with a link to a full size image showing the problem, and clearly stating the problem and that there were spare screws left over from putting it back together. Yet it sold for £165 + £20 P&P (to an overseas buyer)! With a bit of patience you could probably pick up a good condition copy of the lens for that much.

I sold a collection of photographic accessories for £3.23 + £4.50 P&P. The total value of the collection was probably more like £70 - £100. I also bought a collection of photographic accessories for £8.60 + £5.99. I then resold a couple of items from this collection, selling one for £5.00 inc. postage, and another for £12.79 inc. postage. So it seems quite clear to me now - don't sell items together as a bundle (by auction anyway), but rather split them up and sell separately.

Here are some other notable cheap / expensive items from my watch list:

• Lot of 5x Fuji Fujinon-TV C-Mount Zoom Lens H6X12.5R f1.2 sold for £133.11 + £6.00 P&P. I'm not sure if that is a good deal or not, but I suspect it is. The description stated: For 2/3″ C-mount, focal length from 12.5mm to 72.5mm, very bright constant f1.2 aperture. Includes front and back caps as well as high quality Pentax/Cosmicar 2x teleconverters and a couple of basic plastic lens hoods.
• Paramo Halcon Traveller jacket (large) sold for £55 + £6 P&P. The only problem with it was I have used it to walk the dog and the top left pocket has the remnants of a dog treat which although removed has caused a slight staining on the inside that I have tried to show. It is not visible on the outside. so seems like quite a good deal to me.
• Canon EF 135 mm f/2.8 Softfocus Lens sold for £50 + £4.95 P&P. According to the description there's the piece of crud you can see on the front element... The contamination doesn't show through in any images. Even pixel peeping raw's in LR.. So probably a good deal, especially if the crud was actually just under the front element, as it could probably be removed without much trouble.
• Camera Cross Slide Novoflex Castel Q with QR plate sold for £139.69 + £5.80 P&P, a great deal for the buyer. (Retails for $649.95 on B&H).
• 2 Pairs ROHAN Dry Ascent Trousers - Waist 32" Regular - Slate Grey sold for £28.67 + £3.30 P&P. So that's £16 each for trousers that retailed for about £100, given the description said they were in excellent condition, sounds like a great deal to me.
• X-Rite i1Display Pro Calibrator sold as untested, with no refund if not working, sold for £69 + £3.95 P&P. A good deal if it is working, but seems a big price to pay for the risk of getting a broken unit to me.
• Novoflex NOFLEXAR 3,5/35 mm Macro Lens sold for US $223.01 + $12 P&P. In excellent condition, but still seems a bit pricy to me.

And of course, there were the normal bevy of items that were ended early because of 'an error in the listing' and a few items that had been sold then relisted due to non-paying bidders. (Interestingly I had a non-paying buy-it-nower).