eBay insane Sold Item Prices from specific sellers

[wottle]

I've got a side project where I am tracking sold prices on eBay and using it to provide an, albeit somewhat high estimate on going prices for vintage computers. And I've noticed there's some sellers on eBay that seem to have astronomically high sold prices on their eBay listings. These are confirmed sale prices, which I can confirm in the seller's hub research page that shows they are actually sale prices, not the original price before a best offer The problem is I can't figure out if they aren't real sales, what the benefit would be to the seller? They would have to pay high sales fees. And I don't think they're shifing the perceived market price for any of these machines meaningfully.

Here is an example of a listing by 1 of the sellers that always has extremely high prices,. In this example, it's $1000 for a quadra 700: https://www.ebay.com/itm/327253666010?nordt=true

I've found about 5 sellers (including the one we all know about, Mr. Goldman) that seem to be selling for extremely high prices. Now, many are fully restored and seem to be in good shape, but the prices seem unreasonable, even for eBay.

And if any of the sellers are people here, I apologize (maybe I should list for higher prices when selling fully recapped and restored machines with BlueSCSIs, maxed RAM?).

I'm just curious because I don't understand if they aren't real sales, what would be in it for the sellers, considering I don't see them selling other items for less crazy prices, so it doesn't seem to be immediately helping the sellers, and would, in theory, cost them a decent amount in seller fees (~ $200-250 for that $1000 listing).

What am I missing?

 

[wottle]

For a more extreme example, here's one of Mr Goldman's sales: a Quadra 840AV for over $3k... Having to pay $700 multiple times to make people think that's a reasonable price would wipe out the profits from actually finally selling one for close to that.

 

[Garrett]

That Q700 does seem a little high, given the case is yellow and the RAM/VRAM have not been upgraded. Looks nice otherwise. I've sold computer items on eBay myself, though not recently due to lack of available time. What I will say is that if I spend a couple weeks on a restoration and end up with a museum quality piece at the end, I'd want to maximize the sale price as much as possible. Even if said machine sold for $2000, the labor hours, materials, supplies, etc would still likely yield me an overall loss. Oh well, I am proud of the work I do and the end result.

What has bugged me about Polka in the past is he doesn't seem to restore or repair any machines, but still asks for the same if not more $ than the sellers who actually spend the time to build a robust and beautiful system which will last years into the future. At the end of the day, items are worth what someone's willing to pay. If someone really did buy that Q700 for $1000, it was worth it to them.

I'll get off my soap box now!

 

[wottle]

I agree. I generally value my own labor at zero because it’s a hobby I enjoy. I buy caps in bulk to keep costs down. The $1000 for a nicely restored Q700 is not insane.

I’ve generally sold within the community, trying to sell as close to cost as possible ( recapped analog and logic board SE/30s for $250 to $300, fully recappped color Classics for $300-350). I think I was just surprised by not just the outliers on pricing on eBay, but it seems to frequently be that the outliers are generally the same few sellers. It just seems odd that the seller who always seems to get 2-5x the going rate are almost always the same group. Maybe they just have a reputation for their restorations and they have better listings.

I’m certainly not trying to say restorers shouldn’t be paid appropriately for their time, so I hope my post didn’t come across that way.

 

[phipli]

I've found about 5 sellers (including the one we all know about, Mr. Goldman) that seem to be selling for extremely high prices. Now, many are fully restored and seem to be in good shape, but the prices seem unreasonable, even for eBay.

I'm not going to go into the details and teach other people how to do it, but there are at least two ways to produce inflated, untruthful completed listings due to something of a bug in eBay.

Goldman in particular is running a number of games, not just limited to his multiple accounts attempting to normalise his prices.

There should be a sticky about Goldman and how he treats people he does deals with, specifically people he buys from (as he seems to treat customers better other than fleecing them).

If you dig around on Goldman's completed listings, if I remember correctly, you'll find a fairly mundane computer that "apparently" sold for over $30k. Tens of thousands anyway. Perhaps it isn't visible any more, but it used to be.

 

[Trash80toG4]

I've got a side project where I am tracking sold prices on eBay and using it to provide an, albeit somewhat high estimate on going prices for vintage computers. And I've noticed there's some sellers on eBay that seem to have astronomically high sold prices on their eBay listings. These are confirmed sale prices, which I can confirm in the seller's hub research page that shows they are actually sale prices, not the original price before a best offer The problem is I can't figure out if they aren't real sales, what the benefit would be to the seller? They would have to pay high sales fees. And I don't think they're shifing the perceived market price for any of these machines meaningfully.

A clear benefit to the seller of collectibles (in general, not just our obsessions) with wildly inflated prices that are verified would very likely be money laundering activity. Self dealing on things like vintage cameras, lenses and whatnot are often efforts to keep sales pricing high overall in my estimation, if not for money laundering. Collectable camera/lens prices plummeted with increased, easily searchable supply with no such increase in demand.

IMO, eBay has been the most massive fencing operation since its inception. It's also a great conduit for money laundering.