Concerning those ebay service stores, I have the classic bike story of all time concerning those guys, although I was only peripherally involved, the person at the center of the story will have to tell most of it, if he feels like it. It's a great story.
Back about 4 years ago, there appeared on ebay what looked to be a VERY nice, nearly NOS late 1970s De Rosa, in anthracite grey, with all the panto'd goodies. All-original. No lug-cutouts, far as we could tell, but, still, a VERY nice piece.
It was being sold by Auction-Drop in San Francisco. There was, as far as we could tell, a buy-it-now price on the bike of 900 bucks.. but some truly clueless person (if you're here, I apologize, but man, that was a clueless move), BID ON THE BIKE!!!!!!!!!! And the buy-it- now disappeared. Someone could have had that bike for 900 bucks, but by the time all us De Rosa nuts saw it, there were bids on it.
Then the auction was outed to this list, by someone who noticed a small inaccuracy in the description. This person (I don't remember who it was now) contacted Auction-Drop about the inaccuracy, and they pulled the auction! By now those of us who were interested in this bike were nearly frantic, trying to find out if it would be re-listed. I know I sent Auction-Drop an offer for the bike, a really obscene amount of money as I recall, and apparently I was far from the only person doing this..they must have been inundated with e-mails. I know two people who called them, trying to buy the bike.
so, they knew perfectly well what they had at that point, or should have.
I talked to two different people there, both of whom said the bike would be re-listed in the afternoon the following day. They said 5pm or some such. By this time, at least a few of us (by us, I mean me, and and the other people who wanted this bike), were certain that Auction-Drop would simply relist the same auction, with the same buy-it-now price!
In other words, we figured out that the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing up there, even though I was assured that the bike would be listed with no buy-it-now. You could tell by the way they dealt with questions that they were going to do some stupid thing like this.
Some poor schmoe up there was assigned the job of relisting the auction, and no-one bothered to tell this poor schmoe that they were to remove the buy-it-now option. They just pressed *relist* and, poof! the party was on.
So, I'm quite certain there was a rather sizeable group of nutcases, including me who spent two or three hours around 5pm continually clicking on the *relist* link on the original auction. Alas, when the link finally came up with the auction, I couldn't buy it fast enough, a fellow lister beat me to it.
Without going on further, or in any more detail, that lister never got the bike, although he came very, very close (that in itself is a surreal tale)...the owner pulled the bike, took it back, and I suspect he sold it locally to someone who saw it or heard about it on ebay, and approached him privately..or, he kept it.
Moral of the story? Other than the sheer entertainment value of the tale those Auction stores may well not have the faintest idea what they're doing and that De Rosa saga proves it.
Charles Andrews
SoCal