What Are We Coming To?
by Gary Baker
This article deals with using auction websites like e-Bay and Yahoo to buy and sell antique and classic boat parts, literature, and even whole boats over the internet.
Over the last six months, I have been stocking up on hardware parts to build a reproduction launch – with a small budget and high expectations. To date, I have almost all the hardware I will need for this project, including the engine, for less than $600 total investment. Most of these parts are period pieces from the 30s and 40s and are all bronze, authentic, acquired one at a time using the internet. Each was delivered by UPS or truck freight directly to my outdoor backyard boathouse before my wife got home from work.
By providing a venue for buyers and sellers from all parts of the country to offer their wares at auction, eBay and the other auction sites actually create great potential for finding items that would be unavailable to you anywhere else at a competitive price. Some listings are not always recognizable as antique boat experts like Lowell Arnold using spouse Marcias E-mail address (marciaarn) or Jim Staib (drrot), not to mention Andreas Jordahl Rhudes ongoing search for Thompson literature and parts. Others are as obscure as Y-3 and Dick3g, sources of some great listings for Chris Craft and Gar Wood items.
Although some items are inexpensive, others are not. It all depends on the day, the other bidders, and sometimes just plain luck. Whether looking for vintage advertisements, parts, trailers or even whole boats, there are a large variety of boating items at all price points. If nothing else, its great fun and educational too.
About E-Bay
E-Bay is the internets pre-eminent auction site, with over 5,000,000 transactions worldwide. In order to bid, you have only to go to their site at: www.ebay.com and find the Welcome New Users menu. If you are new to computers and the internet, you might prowl around the New to eBay or Why is eBay safe links, or just plunge in and REGISTER. The registration process is very simple. You will need only an e-mail address and the usual name, address, and phone information normally required to insure that you are who you say you are. After submitting the registration form, you will receive e-mail back from eBay with your user name and password. That makes you ready to either buy or sell.
If you are not quite ready to register but just want to see what is available, look for the text box on the first page. This is a search feature that will allow you to conduct an internet search for the items you are seeking or are interested in. (While reading ahead, fire up your computer and connect to the internet.) Although there are several strategies for locating items, lets start with the basic strategies as I see them.
Buying Strategies
The Everything interesting in boating is a Chris Craft strategy. Remember that we are dealing with the general public that thinks every old boat is a Chris. Being that, you will find just about any listing for an old boat item with the word Chris Craft in the description. This search normally brings about 5-7 pages of listings. You have a choice in how you want to view them:
- items ending first
- newly-listed first
- lowest prices first
- highest prices first.
Items ending first are those whose auction is soon to end. If you want to bid on those items, you have to bid quickly and firmly. For those who plan ahead, newly listed first lets you have first look at the items that have been listed within the last 24 hours. As most auctions last seven days, this gives you time to plot your strategy or review your budget. For the bargain hunter there is lowest prices first. These are the smaller items that are often offered as low as a dollar. The last category of listing is highest prices first. This usually gets you whole boats listed at the top, followed by engines and other expensive items, and all the smaller items afterward.
The entire process of scanning the items for sale takes hardly over 10-15 minutes, depending on your level of interest and the speed of your internet connection. Since the auctions normally last seven days, you only need to perform this search every week to keep up on the latest listings.
The I want a particular item, and only that item strategy. This can be either an easy or difficult strategy. Lets say you want a pair of Chrome Vents off a 1962 Chris Craft Super Sport. You might try that search, entering 1962 Chris Craft Super Sport Chrome Vents in the search box. Finding nothing, you might give up. On the other hand, you might try Chrome Vents or Chris Craft Vents. Generally, the more specific your search, the less chance you will have in locating an item the first time. The reasons for this are two-fold: 1) Most of the sellers are not boat experts. They rarely have the exact description you might expect, although sometimes they may surprise you. 2) Some boat items have multiple uses across several manufacturers and years. In my experience, it is best to be slightly general in your search requests. That will give you more hits to search through, but normally a significantly greater chance of success. Not only that, but even if you do locate an item with a complicated multi-word search, you are more than likely to find the seller is a knowledgeable boating person who knows the full value of the item you are looking to purchase. In this particular case of the vents, there was a nice pair of aluminum reproduction vents waiting to be polished that may have fit the bill, given you have conducted a larger search for those items.
Bottom feeding- my strategy of choice. If by chance you have more time than money, you might cast a wider search net. Assuming that the cheapest parts are the ones the seller is ignorant of and knows few, if any, details on; why not search under Old Boat or something equally generic? Although at the minute this article is being written, this gets you 35 pages of items to search through; you just might get lucky. My best day as a bidder occurred when searching under old boat parts, bronze. For $9.99 + $6.75 shipping, I obtained a 30s bronze fairleader, bronze burgee staff holder and a fantastic bronze stern light holder — each perfect for my launch project. When things get really slow, you can use your imagination to plot bid strategies. As I write this, a search for a baot gets me one hit. Today it was a baot ashtray; tomorrow, maybe a Gar Wood Windshield.
The variety of items available for sale is incredible. There are items you would never find at any price unless by blind luck: a 1923 Truscott launch owner finding an original Truscott brochure for $18.50; my finding a 1960 12 hp Albin sailboat auxiliary for my new launch replica; Kent O. Smith locating 26 old boat photographs for the ACBS archives (although outbid due to not having a budget.) I have seen all varieties of vents, bow lights, stern lights, Iva-lights, an original Chris Craft Bicycle ($335), an occasional Chris Craft refrigerator ($1995), even a 30s bronze cruiser toilet. I even witnessed a new in crate Hercules K engine block sold last month (now for sale in Rudder). Its actually great fun to watch even if you dont bid.
Selling Strategies
Not only are auction sites places to locate and purchase that last item to finish your restoration, they are also wonderful places to sell stuff you no longer need to finance your boat habit. In the last six months alone, I have sold over $800 of basement and garage junk to finance my boat purchases. Although selling is slightly more complicated than buying, it is easily in the capability of the internet novice.
Once registered with the auction firm as a seller (same as bidder) you can click on the Sell button. Depending on the auction service, you will have to choose an item category, enter a headline, an item description, price, shipping policy, and types of payment accepted. Better yet (and mandatory in my opinion) are photos of the items you have to sell. As a seller, the better the photo, the higher the bidding. As a buyer hoping for a great deal, the worse the picture the better. If there is further interest in this topic, I can provide more information on how you can easily list, sell, and post photographs of your items for bidding at a later time, as well as strategies for shipping and packing, and accepting and receiving payment for merchandise.
Receiving and Paying for Purchases
People are understandably nervous about paying for merchandise they havent seen, or shipping merchandise they havent been paid for. All auction sites have taken great pains to ensure that your satisfaction is guaranteed. Once a buyer or seller starts to conduct transactions using an auction service, they acquire a user profile. Each time a transaction is completed, both the buyer and seller involved in the transaction have the option of providing feedback about the transaction that is compiled under a users member profile. A positive result garners a 1 feedback rating, a negative, a (-1) rating, and neutral an O. For most eBay users, even one or two negative feedback responses are enough to enable you to reject a bid as a seller, or have a seller reject you as a bidder. Great care and importance is placed on a users satisfaction profile.
There are lots of payment options. The simplest is a personal check. You send the seller a check. When it clears, they ship the merchandise. Sending a money order gets your order shipped on receipt of the money order by the seller, cutting down the turn-around time of the transaction. For those users with more experience or those in a hurry, there are other services that can create immediate payment to the seller, resulting in an immediate turnaround of the merchandise. Although it sounds complicated, with a little practice and a few transactions under your belt, you can become an avid internet auctioneer.
For those who are still suspicious of the internet, I can only add this commentary. With only 80 transactions under my belt, I am still a relative novice at auctioning on the internet, but I can honestly say that virtually EVERY transaction is conducted honestly and cordially whether as a buyer or seller. I have made peoples day with some of my sales, and others have made mine with my purchase. My questions to sellers are almost always answered promptly and politely, and I try to do the same. Although I have had a few payments arrive late, Ive had others where my purchase arrived before I even had a chance to buy a money order and mail it out. I have returned a couple of items to the seller where there were problems with the description of the item not visible in the picture (I collect pelicans, not storks, ducks, or flamingoes), have had an item broken in transit (replaced with no questions asked), and both bought and sold to Sweden, England, Korea, Canada, and Mexico. Im sure there may be some transactions that will turn sour in the future, I am confident those will be few and far between. For those worried about those kinds of transactions, following the in-place safeguards of the auction sites should cause you to be completely protected. All in all, the auction participants are normally as friendly as those you might find in a BSLOL boat show.
In closing, here are my last two tips for getting started on internet auctions: 1) Never, ever, bid against a user named pelicanroost@home.com for any item, for any reason. This e-mail address gets a free pass for all items available for sale.
2) Similarly, if selling items, generously offer a 20% discount + free shipping for that same address immediately above.
Happy Bidding!
Editors Note: If you have any questions for Gary, send an e-mail to datamerj@aol.com – your answer will appear in the next issue of The BoatHouse.
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