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Do those overpriced basses ever sell on ebay?

Nate74

Nate74

Mar 3, 2007
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DFW
#1
I've been keeping my eye out for a pretty specific vintage bass on ebay but when I've seen them come up, they're usually listed not as an auction but with a "buy it now" price that's 25%-35% over blue book and over what the market would seem to support as a viable selling price.

What's the strategy behind pricing like that? Do these sellers eventually accept a lower offer somehow?

I get that a lot of people stay away from ebay, but it does seem to have some nice basses on there. Hard to find stuff that I don't see on the other sites nearly as regularly...

Interest in how these sellers ever sell anything.

Thanks.
 
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#5
cheezewiz said:
I doubt they ever sell. Just like the basses you see in the classifieds here that are marked way over going rate, and have been posted for months with no bites.
Click to expand...

This. I don't ever remember a time here when basses were listed with such firm prices..... for months at a time. And many have phrases like "must sell" or "wife says one has to go". I think often guys are posting ads just so they can point to them and show their wives (under whose thumbs they obviously reside) and say.....

"See, your highness? I placed the ad as you had instructed. Please, no flogging tonight!"

All the while they know they have placed an ad with a price so high that no bassist in his right mind would touch it with a ten foot pole. ;)

As for the OP's topic, I think sometimes it is smart to just throw a number out there and see if someone wants it that badly. Why not? Say you have a bass worth $2,000. Why not start an auction and put a buy it now price of $3,000 up there just to see if this is someone's "holy grail" of basses?

I have had my eye out for a bass just like the first one I ever played live (which was actually a borrowed bass). If I were to find one in great shape it might be worth $650 at best. However, I would be willing to pay more than that to insure I got it before someone else did. The market doesn't support such a price, but it's more than worth it to me.
 
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#6
Gorn said:
There's a blue book for basses?
Click to expand...

I don't know how accurate this is, but I've seen many people refer to it: Invalid Link Removed

Reverb.com also lets you see sales history on specific items, though you don't get to see the details sometimes so you don't know condition, etc.

Regarding the ebay listings, many of these basses are listed by businesses with 1000's of sales so I assume they actually do have a strategy to SELL the bass, not just trying to placate the wife. There's gotta be something to it, i just can't figure what it is...
 
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#7
Do they all sell, probably not. But do some sell, for sure! International buyers live in markets that are quite inflated. What is a horrible, scam artist level pricing to us could be a very good deal on the other end of the globe. For the most part, you will notice that the highest prices are global shippers. They are targeting international buyers because many domestic sellers refuse to go through the hassle.

Mind you, I am not taking about the people with absolutely insane prices, I doubt that stuff sells. There is one bass that jumps to mind here on TB that somebody is asking double what this bass is worth on the best of days. It's been on here since last year and it will probably be here next year.
 
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#8
In digging a little deeper I'm seeing a "or best offer" on a lot of these listings. I don't know if I can look at the history of sales and see both the original asking price and ultimate "best offer" price, but I bet that would tell the tale.

Most of the time when I use ebay, it's on traditional auctions that start at some starting bid amount and then the free market does it's thing... usually in the last 10 seconds or so ;)
 
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#9
Gorn said:
There's a blue book for basses?
Click to expand...
Orion Blue Book : Guitars & Musical Instruments 2002 (Orion Blue Book. Guitars and Musical Instruments.): 9781892761217: Amazon.com: Books
Blue Book.jpg
 
As an Amazon Associate, TalkBass may receive commissions from qualifying purchases made via links on this site.
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#10
The trick is you contact the seller about checking the bass out then make an offer to buy outside of eBay.
eBay monitor messages for email addresses but mobile numbers are ok. OK you lose the buyers protection
but if the seller invoices you then you get covered by PayPal protection against non-delivery or faults.

This only works using PayPal of course.The cost to the seller is 3% but that's well below the eBay fees or you
can offer to pay the fees.

No idea why some price stuff so high but no harm in trying the method above,it's quite common here in the UK.
 
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#13
I was in the market to buy a Modulus Flea/FU. Unfortunately, those basses are becoming rare birds so I took to Ebay to try and find one, and I did. The music store (1,000+) transactions wanted somewhere near $3,000 for a used one. I sold my old one in 2012ish for $1,400, so no way was I going to drop $1,600 extra bucks for one. I made what I considered a fair offer of $2,000 and the seller essentially laughed me off as being a lowballer. Two months later, the bass is still there and waiting to be sold. I've gone through several other listing that the store has and I can't make out their selling strategy. It almost seems like there isn't one because barely any of the prices are realistic (even for more common instruments).
 
#14
Gorn said:
There's a blue book for basses?
Click to expand...
Yes! I first encountered it around 07-08 when a friend of mine and I took some of his gear to a pawn shop. They were truly stumped by his fretless 5 string SX jazz (SX was not in the book), they acted like we were trying to pull one over on them. After a lot of mumbling and shifty-eyed glances they finally offered about $75 if I recall correctly, which was promptly accepted by my friend.

I blame the blue book for the lack of awesome pawnshop deals of old, no more "they didn't know what they had!" unless they mistake the gear for something else, in which case they usually mistake something cheap for something expensive, rather than vice versa.
 
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#15
My guess is these sellers believe that by inflating prices, buyers will eventually begin to believe that these are the actual going prices. Even if it takes 2-3 years! Because I have seen some of these items up for sale for that long. So, the answer is NO, they are not selling. What these sellers do sell to stay in business, I have no idea.
 
#16
Nate74 said:
I've been keeping my eye out for a pretty specific vintage bass on ebay but when I've seen them come up, they're usually listed not as an auction but with a "buy it now" price that's 25%-35% over blue book and over what the market would seem to support as a viable selling price.

What's the strategy behind pricing like that? Do these sellers eventually accept a lower offer somehow?

I get that a lot of people stay away from ebay, but it does seem to have some nice basses on there. Hard to find stuff that I don't see on the other sites nearly as regularly...

Interest in how these sellers ever sell anything.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Most of that stuff doesn't sell on ebay, but it's dirt cheap to run the listing...so why not take a "shot in the dark"? Some ebay sellers run the same listings over and over again, for what seems like years. Obviously, they don't care if their item ever sells.

Unfortunately (read; deliberately), ebay "Best Offer" sales histories don't show the accepted sales amounts. Makes it a little harder to gage current values, but the upside is that there are some genuine bargains to be had from ebay Best Offer listings.
 
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#18
I will admit,I priced a few pedals I really dug pretty high(probably cuz I really didn't want to sell them) and they never sold, which I'm glad now as they are very rare, stuff that had no real value to me I sold at crazy blowout prices, I'd look at the lowest price already listed then go lower to ensure a sale so I did take a loss on most items, but oh well
 
#19
I listed a Tacoma ABG on Craigslist with a beyond top dollar price hoping to get some lowballers to offer me what I really wanted - A European tourist saw the ad and was happy to pay the asking price, it was still cheaper than he could ever find back home.

I think most of those high price ads are folks who either don't understand the used market or who are just stubborn and a bit arrogant about the price they want to get. A few know that almost anything quality and unique will sell if you wait long enough. Eventually an impulse buyer will come along.
 

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