Wednesday, June 08, 2011

What the ????

As seen on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Elecraft-K3-10-Amateur-Radio-Transceiver-QRP-Ham-NR-/190542936014

A K3/10, which is currently at $107.50 at 026UTC on June 9th, 2011 - no reserve !!!

My gut tells me something is wrong here - but if things were to go just right for the winning bidder, this could end up being a bargain and a half.  Why are there alarm bells going off in the back of my head?

It will be interesting to see where this ends up.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least.

6 comments:

  1. Don't see anything wrong there, Larry. I never set a start price or a reserve when putting stuff on eBay. I see the K3 is up to $610 already with 4 days tp go. So I'm sure like most radio gear it will sell for a fair price in the end.

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  2. I don't normally bid on an eBay item until the last minute if it's a hot item. This one is now at $600 this morning when I looked and there are 4.5 days left. It will go likely go for the normal price that similar K3 models go for when they are put up on eBay.

    Stay cool!

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  3. Larry I looked at the add and it sure does seem that something is up. There is no one I know of who would give a K3 away for that price. I would think on Ebay you can have a minimum price to start from.

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  4. Anonymous11:22 AM

    Larry -

    When I sell items on eBay that I am confident will attract enough interest, I start the bidding at 99 cents. The main reason for this is to encourage early bidders. This way, I have a group of people who have already bid and therefore have an interest in following the auction. A high reserve price can have the effect of discouraging folk from getting involved.

    So far, this system has worked for me, and with the bidding on the K3 now standing at $710 with 4 days still to go, I'm thinking that it's not going to go that cheaply.

    Now if Wayne would put one of those prototype KX3's on eBay....... (joke, of course!)

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  5. Anonymous6:09 PM

    With four days to go it's already up to $860, so there's little doubt it will sell for a reasonable price.

    The ebay bargain hunters have to be cursing you for drawing attention to this, however. I mean, you kind of kicked all of us in the shin who might have been in the market for a heck of a deal on a K3 by alerting the ham radio blogosphere about this "bargain". You may have driven the price up. Food for thought.

    Otherwise, very nice blog. Many nice articles.

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  6. I might have driven up the price - maybe you're right. Too bad I have no idea who the seller is - I might be tempted to ask for a commission. The other commenters seem to think otherwise, though - that the radio will end up going for a fair price as the natural process of these things.

    As far as the "No Reserve" goes - if I had been the seller, I still would have hesitated to do that. My luck, the radio would have sold for just a few hundred bucks.

    :)

    Larry W2LJ

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