Auction Shill Bidding Bots

Fram Fram is down in Savage. Same guy that is trying to sell a MicroMaster for $8500, lol.
Premier took over Hoff, correct?
 
ddickey said:
Fram Fram is down in Savage. Same guy that is trying to sell a MicroMaster for $8500, lol.
Premier took over Hoff, correct?
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Yes, pretty much. I think Hoff is semi-retired. I know Jim, Greg and Nate from Premier and they seem to be decent guys. I have bought quite a bit from them over the last couple of years. As others have mentioned, getting any deals on auctions lately seems to be rather rare.
 
I have made a lot of purchases from James G Murphy auction house. Mostly stuff I would buy and then resell. But have had times when something was pictured in the lot image and when I went to pick it up, things were missing. Most likely was someone picking their lot up and grabbed off my lot. Impossible to tell. Murphy's has always tried to make things right for me in these cases, but sometimes it is beyond their control.

As for prices, I have seen some used tooling go for almost retail not including the 13% Auction fee and Sales Tax. I see this especially with the On-line auctions. People get into a frenzy at the end and just keep hitting that button. Crazy. I haven't purchased a single thing in almost two years because of the prices. A couple I that had some great prices but were simple too far to drive for pickup for what I wanted.

Some auctioneers are not, in my mind reputable. I limit my auction adventures to ones with good reputations.
 
ddickey said:
@7milesup What do you think this will go for?

Machines Used | Denver ACE (Cincinnati Copy) Tool & Cutter Grinder

Denver Tool and Cutter Grinder - ACE For Sale Online Auction at www.machinesused.com Closes April 26, 2022
www.machinesused.com
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Wow, that looks nice. I predict that I will bid $50 more than you! LOL.
@JRaut and I have exchanged bidder numbers on a couple of different auction sites so that we don't end up bidding against each other. That happened on a couple of Wilton bullet vises we were bidding on.

That tool & cutter grinder is 3 phase which keeps some people from bidding.
 
We have a long running auction company that has a long history of shady practices. When they ran live auctions if someone was dumb enough to keep their hand up or quick to raise a bid, if no one else was bidding they would pretend to have another bidder to run up the bid. They ended up with the items on some occasions you would see the same item the next week. They went to online with very carefully poised photos of items for sale hiding defects or broken and missing
parts. A ex employee has said on the last day of the auctions they go through the bids looking for Max bids and bidding the items up to that point. Knowing how they operate this wouldn't surprise me at all.

A new auction house opened a year or so ago with weekly auctions. After the first of the year they have gone online. The price of almost everything has jumped significantly, even junk items. I think most people have no clue and just have to own it, paying anything to win. Might be the only time they have ever won anything in their lives??? Not sure how long this will keep going? I will say I was able to pick up a fair amount of machining items from the live auctions. Some very reasonable and some not quite as reasonable. I was able to meet a couple gentleman that have machining experience and have become friends. They have given this beginner some great help.
 
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It makes sense that these auction houses are going to online auctions as people seem to get into a bidding frenzy and drive the prices up. When it comes to machinery, while they are far and few between these days, I prefer the in person auctions. People generally come for something specific and are much less likely to bid up items. Sadly, haven't seen one of those in at least 2 years.
 
mickri said:
I used to always use Esnipe on Ebay auctions. Make the bid and forget about. Lately I have been making the bid on Ebay. Getting the same experience that I got before I went to Esnipe. Somebody would keep bidding a dollar or two above the current high bid to see if they could get it for the minimum bid above the current high. I have lost a bunch of auctions recently. So I am going back to Esnipe.

Most of the stuff I buy on Ebay is "buy it now". No bidding. If the seller is willing to take offers I always make an offer 10% to 20% less. My experience is sellers will always take a 10% under offer and often a 20% under offer. If I think the item is over priced to begin with I keep looking.
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I use eBay Buy-it-now for a lot of stuff. Lately I've been looking for cables and such for older equipment. I can usually negotiate a best offer for ~50% of the original listing. I think this works well with older equipment that doesn't sell often but is listed relatively high.
 
The issue with online auctions is that people realize after the fact that they’ve over bid, or just didn’t het some other item that was their real goal. As a result some of the online auction houses want huge deposits. At that point they have your money in hand so you’re at their mercy.
 
Used machinery dealers used to go to auctions to find inventory. I wonder if they can find anything now at a price they can mark up from.
 
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