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I see these with fresh paint and a few stickers going for well over $100 all the time.....?  Are these auctions for real....?  If so looks like easy money to be made to me.

Brian

thers is an ass for every seat, it only takes one dumb ebay buyer

I find the final bids incredulous.

only takes one is right, when you are bidding against the house! That is the only way those sell for that much. Paint one up and put it out there and you will see!

I have never understood these auctions either. I sold 4 nice restored Acorn Gumball Machines, 2 black and 2 blue. They were blanks, no theme just the Acorn price decal on the glass globe and I couldn't give those things away. I relisted them a few times on e-bay lowering the price each time and had to end up having to ship them overseas just to get rid of them. I think I got around $125 for each PAIR. Thinking about it now I should have just kept the damn things.  :darn:

some of those bids have to be a sham don't they ? I can not believe that many people buy those.

I did two, one Pepsi and one Dr. Pepper.  If I set up to sell at a flea market or a show I always bring these.  Almost every person that comes to my table loves them and asks about them.  A lot of people ask if they are real, I feel like saying yeah, they dispensed soda from a gumball machine

How much do they sell for from your table?

I dont really want to sell them so it is usually a bad combination...a seller that likes them and buyers who want things for free.  I generally use them as a conversation piece and to bring people over.  Last time I set up I was telling people $150 which is pretty good if you compared it to ebay, I even told one guy both for $275.

Part of that price is the time involved, I took these apart, stripped them down, repainted and then applied the decals.  It takes several days and probably something like 4-5 hours of total work involved.

      Those always get listed at night and when I glance at them in the morning they all have multiple bids, like a whole flock of people just waiting for the bidding to begin.
Real buyers don't throw their bids in until near the end.
It's shill bidding, the sellers keep listing the same item week after week and their buddies keep winning those same items from them.

I met a couple of wannabe pickers who throw their stuff on ebay and then shill bid it up.  most of the time they wind up buying their own stuff because they do a no reserve auction.  I would love to turn them in but I feel like it would go nowhere so I decided to not even bother.  Does anyone know why they would risk buying their own stuff repeatedly, seems to me they would pay the ebay fees repeatedly for the same item until they got lucky and someone fell for it and bid

You can agree with the buyer to cancel the auction after the auction ends..... No fees. Its really easy to agree to cancel the auction when you are the buyer and under a second name like your wife or you have your buddy tossing in protection bids. I have a buddy that got caught bidding with a second account in his own name and got suspended for a bit but it was no big deal and he was right back on.

Think if it this way, a real auction doesn't get into the middle of bidding and run out of time while people are bidding. the give last call and if a bid goes in everyone gets another chance to bid so you can't time a bid. So it is just a way to make sure you get full value of what someone wants to pay without paying a reserve fee which is a total useless fee anyway. Also, people won't bid against a reserve, but they will bid against another ebayer all day long.

Well dang....I was ready to get rich.....LOL

Brian

     " Also, people won't bid against a reserve, but they will bid against another ebayer all day long." 
 
     Such a true statement. I know that I never even bother placing a bid on a reserve item.
     A live auction house has reserve options too, but they take bids until they get the price as high as possible, then they inform the bidder if his price didn't meet the reserve.