On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 3:01 PM, Tom Hayes <hayesbikes@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would be interested in seeing statistics of Ebay sales on particular items
> on Ebay. I realize there is real difficulty in comparing that auction to
> this auction, but even if there were some rough kind of comparisons it might
> show something--though I am certainly not willing to do it nor do I have the
> skill to do it.
>
> Each year, maybe more frequently than once a year since the CR list has
> started, we have this discussion about market slumps or lack of items on
> Ebay. Yet, each year there are consistently sales and trends that seem to
> turn our speculations and musings (including this one) into something less
> than valid.
>
> I pretty much run the same searches, and I pretty much find the same number
> of items offered using the same search terms, such as "campagnolo" or
> "Reynolds 531." More on Monday than Tuesday, but most Mondays have roughly
> the same approximate number. Most of course I do not follow to the end of
> the auction. My sense of those I do follow, however, depending upon the
> quality of the pictures, price, and description, the components and bikes
> bring the roughly the same amount. There are some fluctuations in season or
> holidays, but otherwise, it seems to me that auction prices keep increasing
> including those over the past year. In saying that, I know there are
> notable exceptions, both extremely good bargains and high prices.
>
I'm currently building a database of Ebay auction photos and sale prices for CR-type components. As the data only spans a few years and is thin, I hesitate to draw any sweeping conclusions, but I would hazard saying that the assertions that the current market is significantly soft or that prices are globally down is probably at the least overstated.
If you are curious about what a given on-topic component is fetching, I can probably tell you within reason. Most of our components that appear frequently enough to establish sufficient precedents have settled into pretty predictable price slots. There are always the crazy outliers, high and low, though that make one wonder. A couple of times a month some seemingly prosaic bit of componentry seems to sell for multiples of the usual price and I have to wonder if I am missing some detail that makes it rare and desirable or whether a bidding war between two people who want the same piece and don't really care what they spend for it happens. Often there are pieces offered on auction at the same time as these that to me look in every way identical that go ignored at a small fraction of the price.
My pet theory: people are fecking nuts.
Kurt Sperry
Bellingham, Washington
USA