Hello there gents, I hope you all are having a great day and enjoying your shaves. I will keep this post short and ask : have you ever witnessed such a shaving item on auction, where the bids climbed into insanely high level? Where you witnessed clash of shaving enthusiasts, ready to throw away everything in order to acquire it. Thats it, have a good day everyone Thanks
I have seen this many times. Sometimes the seller will have a friend drive the bid up if they don't want to let the item go for a low price. Other times it is people trying to bid at the last minute to win.
Back when Italian Barber first introduced the RazoRock Stealth Slant I would watch a couple on eBay for kicks. It was absolutely nuts!!! $400 for a razor that retailed for $89.. Nuts.
I've participated as a potential buyer in numerous auctions where the bids continued to what I considered ridiculous bidding levels. I don't get caught up in the frenzy and essentially bail out of the running. It's a 'contest' to some bidders where the chase is half the fun and the final price isn't reflective of the 'real' market value. As a seller I have benefited from last minute 'insane' bids where I watched a $200 top bid get sniped by one nearly two and s half times that amount. Crazy...but no complaints from me.
I sold my Simpson CH3 Manchurian a few years ago. It was one of the last ones made in Somerset while David Carter was at the helm, before the company was taken over by Vulfix. It was pretty unusual, since it was actually stamped "Manchurian." Most Somerset-made Manchurians up to that time were stamped "Extra Super." I almost never used it, and aside from its prestige, I didn't like it as well as my Somerset CH3 Super, which I still have. I listed the Manchurian in a 7-day auction, and bidding was pretty sleepy for most of that time. A bidding war erupted in the last couple of minutes, and my recollection is the price more than doubled in that time. The winning bid was a snipe literally placed at the last second. It sold for $500.01, which was more than what I paid for it when it was new, and is more than what new ones sell for today. The profit wasn't massive, so I guess you couldn't really say the price was "insane," but I was surprised the final price didn't reflect any depreciation for a used brush. My CH3 Super on left, and my former Manchurian on right For those who are curious, here's a picture of a Manchurian stamped "Extra Super," next to a CH3 Super, not from my collection.
I've seen it many times, where the item sleeps with few bids until the last few minutes there is a frenzy of bids. Because of the nature of auctions, and bidders competing with each other not wishing to be outbid, I've actually seen used items selling for more than a new one.
I've participated in at least three. One was a NOS RL Safari Mug & Brush set. Another one was for an incorrectly listed Nano Wee Scot. It was listed as a English made butterscotch shaving brush. I shudder to think how high the bidding would have gone if it had been correctly listed as a Wee Scot. The final one was for a NOS Kent boar brush from the 30's-40's. I won all three, but the bidding jumped from the $25-50 mark to the $100+ mark in the final few seconds.
I just entered a ridiculous high sniping bid for an item and I fear that there will be someone out there as crazy as me doing the same. It's a huge white whale of mine and it's not even a razor....
I put a high value on certain items, but I certainly lose more auctions than I win. In the three above cases, bidding came within $3, $20, and $10 of my maximum bid snipe.
