TalkBass Should be the place...

[Fire-Starter]

With the ever increasing frauds on Ebay, I think TalkBass should be the place for ALL BASS PLAYERS to buy/sell their bass and why not...at least we watch each others back here and I know I feel much better about buying from a member here even though I have never met any of you. It just makes me sick to see all the fraud on Ebay and the number of times I came close to being taken myself. its just and Idea, I know there may be some legal issues and all involved and why TalkBass would not want to become the EBAY for bass players, but you cant tell me its not safer to buy here than ebay, and some of the proceeds could go to help fund the website yes? and since we have members both here in the U.S and International, if someone tried to pull a fast one, we could just find out what state they lived in and have a couple of local TBERS kind of find him and kind of RE-CALIBRATE him to straighten him out. Just and Idea

[Ryan L.]

I would much rather do business here than on Ebay. I don't look on Ebay all that much anymore, but I check the classifieds here very often.

[WillPlay4Food]

I haven't had any issues at all as a buyer or a seller here on TalkBass. Heck, I traded a bass for another bass here. I would never have done that through eBay!

[ladros2]

Well, then all the scammers would follow us here, and we'd be left with nowhere.

[Trevorus]

Originally Posted by ladros2

Well, then all the scammers would follow us here, and we'd be left with nowhere.

Yeah, we want to keep it on the D-L. It's just like when a punk band goes mainstream, then everybody hates it, and all the annoying teeny-boppers really like them, and make it a miserable experience having to listen to them along with the music, yeah?

[Indi86]

It is, IMHO, a terrible idea to have all sales for anything in one place on the net. The best example I can think of is the paintball nation (PBN or PBnation) forums. Their buy sell trade forums house thousands of new ads a day. Granted the site has thousands more members than talkbass, but this is irrelevant.

The whole process moves so fast that your ad will move off the front page in 15-20 minutes. This is a problem even with 5 or 6 or 7 subforums they have now. There are scammers by the dozen there, as well. Guns get traded and retraded so many times that there is a huge archive of information and photos to cull for stuff to scam with.

As a direct result of both the size of the forum and the average age group on PBN- 13-16ish is a good assumption- the price of used pb gear online has dropped drastically below fair market value. The reason for this may not seem obvious at first, but a look at the PBN/BST forums in depth will prove my point.

Because a large majority of these guns are not bought first-hand by their teenage owners but bought by their parents, these kids feel no remorse in asking for half or less of what was originally paid for a NIB gun. This has become such a widespread occurence that you literally cannot sell a piece of equipment for more than 50-55% of what you bought it for. Make no mistake, there is a large amount of public outrage by those that understand the fair market value of paintball equipment, but there is nothing they can do, and as a result of this the forum has become dominated by people that have no appreciation of the value of money. These people lowball so incessently, and have such a strangle on the market that if you want to sell something quickly, you have to succumb to their will.

Closing the BST forums to supporting members only was one of the best things I've seen happen to a forum. Go public and get the scammers, lowballers and kids that don't really appreciate the value of what they have. I am completely in favor of a more "elitist" and picky market for bass gear.

[MJ5150]

This IS the only place I buy and sell gear.

I am about to buy another Epifani cab, and an amp. I have already decided to make both purchases here at TB.

-Mike