lucky Ebay stuff

[mrbadger]

During the Lockdown I’ve been working from home, like pretty much everyone, thus saving a bundle on commuting costs and a ton of other things, so I thought I’d use this as an opportunity to expand my film camera equipment.
Such as FINALLY buying a Hasselblad and a few lenses and moving up into large format as well.

OK I had some extra money put by as well, my commute isn’t that expensive…..

Queue the searching on ebay, with all the associated risks, for some of the stuff I’d need. I got some in the UK, but Japan pretty much sells everything camera related, meaning I had to get most of my lenses and stuff from there. Oh man the import fees….

Thing is though, the only times I’ve been burned on purchases has been when I’ve bought in the UK. Even then however these have been lens problems I can get fixed pretty cheaply, and always for my 35mm film camera, never the expensive lenses.

Today a Praktica Nova (old East German camera, steel body, steel shutter curtains, weighs a ton, solid as a tank) arrived. Advertised as having two lenses and a light meter. I thought I could use the camera for spares, and the two lenses were pretty rare, so worth getting fixed given the price. I didn’t think for a second any of it would be in working order.
But when I opened the package I found a pristine camera set with everything working, that if the seller had known what they’d had could have been sold for three or four times what I paid. Everything dates to about 1964. It’s been used, but by someone who must have liked it a lot.

i had a Nova in the late 70’s until I lost it in a moving accident in 1998. They weren't the most well known camera, but they just didn't break unless you set out to misuse them. My current one that I bought last year is a bit rubbish, because it wasn't well looked after. So now that one is for spares and this is my main one.

I’ve got a few good deals on Ebay, but this is by far my best happy chance find.

[BaronVerde]

Nice to see someone's still in analogue photography. I had kept my old equipment and b/w darkroom stuff until I could pass it on in the family. I could, though, never afford a Hasselblad.

It is a bit of a shame that today's technology makes everything so insignificant and trivial. Even in astrophotography every nebula, cluster, planet and dwarf planet has been shot and published ad nauseam.

[mrbadger]

I own a mirrorless digital camera, but I refuse to use it for anything but video or digitising my negatives.
Digital photographs just don't seem to have any character to me. I like grain, and I prefer to have to spend ages selecting my shot rather than shooting dozens of images and hoping one works.

I've wanted a Hasselblad since I was 17, but they were so far beyond my means it wasn't funny. I could possibly have bought a 500CM a year later when I had a better paid job, but no other lenses than the one that came with the basic setup. Even that would have used every penny I had and needed a loan on top, so I didn't.

[Tycow]

Not lucky buying, but lucky selling.

I had an AMD 5600XT that I bought brand new in Sept 2020 for £260 from Amazon. I managed to get my hands on an nvidia 3070 for the MSP in December, which was a bit of a shocker. I let Christmas get out of the way then put the 5600XT on ebay as 'used, very good condition, literally months old'.

It sold for £390. Bonkers!

[clakclak]

Not lucky buying, but lucky selling.

I had an AMD 5600XT that I bought brand new in Sept 2020 for £260 from Amazon. I managed to get my hands on an nvidia 3070 for the MSP in December, which was a bit of a shocker. I let Christmas get out of the way then put the 5600XT on ebay as 'used, very good condition, literally months old'.

It sold for £390. Bonkers!

Does that make you what I have recently learned is a "grafics card scalper"?

[Tycow]

Allegedly so!

Was lucky I set my sale to auction rather than 'buy it now'... I was contemplating putting it on buy it now for £200!

[mrbadger]

I've got some things I can sell now, but I don't know how I would.
Ebay keeps offering me low sellers fees, and I could make use of them, but it seems like a lot of things could go wrong, so I've not bothered as yet.

[Tycow]

I've got some things I can sell now, but I don't know how I would.
Ebay keeps offering me low sellers fees, and I could make use of them, but it seems like a lot of things could go wrong, so I've not bothered as yet.

I'll be honest, I've had nothing but grief selling on ebay, but then the last two things I sold were higher value items: a PS4 with games, and this graphics card.

The main issue I had were:
- Chancers messaging me with ridiculous offers, then getting abusive when I politely rejected them. Such highlights include "would I pull it from sale when it already had bids of £200, and sell it to this person for £100?"
- Low feedback / new accounts making ridiculous bids to win the auction (outbidding legit buyers in the process), then messaging me to tell me the TWO bids they made were "accidental", and would I take half his highest bid?

I also had to sit cancelling bids and banning certain sellers from bidding because of this - nowt but stress tbh, and I won't be selling stuff on ebay again.

[mrbadger]

Due to things like this I've tended for the most part to return to the same buyers for major purchases, like large format lenses. For those I've only used one seller in Japan, who I found by chance first time round, and the lens they sent me, a 150mm Nikkor, was so great I've bought my other three from them, and they've not let me down. Large format lenses are pretty costly, and while I do know a place to get them fixed, that depends how broken they are. If bits are beyond repair I've lost around £500.

The most I've paid for a lens on Ebay is £740, from a guy in the UK last month, when I normally buy from people who also have real world shops too, for a 500mm Hasselblad (Zeiss) C series lens, I couldn't find one anywhere else that wouldn't cost a fortune in import duties, because these things are heavy. It worried me doing that, but being from such a robust series I was pretty hopeful I could get it repaired. He said it'd been serviced, and turned out to be telling the truth.
It's not a perfect example, there's a little external wear, but the lens works, and a 'perfect' one would cost hundreds more yet take identical images.

[Golden_Gonads]

About 10 years ago I nearly picked up a genuine antique tiger-skin rug for around £100... Sadly money was tight and I couldn't justify it. Bah!

[Alan Phipps]

If it was a genuine antique tiger skin rug and not horribly damaged then that price was unbelievably far too cheap (usually £ thousands). It may perhaps have been a post-1947 skin of suspect sourcing with forged provenance, and hence illegal to own and trade. You might have had a lucky escape. Article.

[mrbadger]

There is an issue of illegal or stolen goods being sold on Ebay, but I have no clue if this is something that can be addressed. I suspect most of that has moved to Facebook now, but I don't actually know.

i buy within a fairly limited range of goods, most of which aren't of interest to the general population, so would usually be overlooked by your normal burglar. those tend to go for high value easy sale goods. Or you've got the counterfeit market.
It's hard to counterfeit some of the stuff I'm after, short of outright sending empty boxes. Yes there were a fake Hasselblads made in Japan for a few years in the fifties, but not many, and those are now probably worth so much I wouldn't be able to afford one if I wanted to.

Which is weird.....