John Betamis wrote that we should organize and all agree to not competitively bid against other bidders who are on this list. Speaking of eBay "ethics", The US Department of Justice has a name for this: Collusion in restraint of free trade, and it is a felony.
Ed Feinberg Newton MA (I'm not an attorney but I've raised several of them)
John Betamis wrote:
While on this subject, I have to bring up another angle; that of bidding against someone you know on this list.
For the last few months I have been looking for a Simplex Tour de France type rear changer for the Claud Butler I plan to build up. Every time I saw one come up on eBay I watched it to see if I could snag it for $50-$60. That seems like a reasonable sum to me since these were very popular in the 1950s and many thousands would have been made. Invariably, however, I saw the price shoot up well over my ceiling, sometimes double that. On three occasions, if I recall, I saw our own John Crump bidding on one of these. In one case I was also bidding and felt really bad in case I drove the price up and then had to drop out when I could no longer afford it and Mr. Crump would end up paying more than he would have otherwise. As it turned out, we were both outbid by a big margin. I finally did get my derailleur a few days ago at a price I was willing to pay (although it's a 4-speed rather than the 5-speed I really wanted) and I even outbid a buyer from Japan. Mr. Crump was not bidding. Maybe he'd been so discouraged in previous auctions, he'd just given up. Anyway, maybe this has been brought up before, but it sure would be useful to have a database of CR list members' eBay handles so we don't end up bidding against each other on items that regularly come up. There's lots of vintage stuff out there and if you don't get what you want today, you'll get it a month from now.
John Betmanis
Woodstock, Ontario
Canada