After following a lot of soft lenses auctions on the bay, i came to the conclusion that the surge in sale prices, and the great (maybe in some cases even excessive) interest that many people have for such lenses, had a very bad side effect.
A number of vendors, private or professional, seem to get totally crazy, as soon as they discover that the item they are selling is very desiderable, and that some people are willing to pay big money to get their hands on the object of their desire.
I am not complaining about a few specialized sellers, auctioning over and over the same lenses at unrealistic prices. Probably they are waiting for some uy, with thick wallet, who absolutely wants THAT lens. I know very little about auction fees, but i suspect that they are paying much less than any private, small scale, ebayer.
What i can't really stand are the auctions (with bids!) abruptly closed short time after the opening, or other kind of wrongdoings, or blatant violation of the rules, that take place as soon as the vendor is made aware that there is some serious money that can be made. I have seen Pinkham and Smith lenses (always the same picture!!) "sold" by scammers... but i guess that very few people reading this thread could get hurt, the scam is too naive.
Believe it or not, i feel more disturbed by other behaviors!
I'll report the last example of disregards for the most basic rules. First link is the original auction, it was a big studio camera, plus a nice (albeit a little short, at least for me) soft focus lens. Then somebody probably contacted the vendor - there is a good chance that he got one or more emails from somebody on this forum - and raved about the lens, maybe saying at the same time that the camera + lens combo would be very expensive to ship to the other side of the Atlantic (or somewhere else in Asia or Oceania). There were already bids, but everybody knows that Ebay pays little or no attention to trivial things like this! Despite the fact that the vendor made already public that he was willing to ship the lens free, if the camera was not required... suddenly the auction was terminated (item not available). Of course, after very little, two new auction were opened, and the supposedly unavailable stuff got split in two separate auctions: one for the lens and one for the camera!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=150604473507
http://cgi.ebay.com/Cooke-Anastigmat...item2310e53f80
http://cgi.ebay.com/Wood-Brass-Kodak...item2310e57182
Now a small question:
would you trust somebody who does these kind of tricks?
do you consider it a minor misbehavior, just because so many people seem to follow the same route?
If i were the seller, i would have felt the obligation to leave the auction alone until its natural end. Am i too old fashioned (not too difficult, being 53)?
have fun
CJ