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Excessive "High Reserve" .....

RancheroPaulRancheroPaul Member Posts: 1,459 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited December 2001 in General Discussion
What's up here? There are several auctions which are of the "Reserve Type" which have used guns with starting bid prices of over 100% of Blue Book value!I e-mailed one guy and he sent back his "Reserve" price and said he would sell it for that if I wanted it.......146% of the 100% Blue Book Value......Must be having an attack of "Sometimer's" because I couldn't figure how to justify such a bid on this gun.......especially when the gun wasn't capable of any housework at all!!
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Comments

  • usmc2498215usmc2498215 Member Posts: 82 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Caveat Emptor! It pays to research what your buying.
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  • robsgunsrobsguns Member Posts: 4,581 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    If its in your price range, buy it, if its not, dont buy it, thats what we all do. As for the Blue Book, toss it out when you come on here. Some guns sell for an appropriate price and some dont. The Blue Book isnt always correct either, for instance, look up the price of a NIB Ruger Super Redhawk 454, then tell me why you suppose it is you can get it for 499.00 here on the site, when its supposedly worth so much more? Like I said, if its in your price range buy it, if not, dont buy it.
    SSgt Ryan E. Roberts, USMC
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  • nunnnunn Forums Admins, Member, Moderator Posts: 36,078 ******
    edited November -1
    Blue Book. I would never be without one for reseaching variations, years made, makers, etc.But for pricing, it is only a GUIDE. Way high on some guns, way low on others.Don't believe it? Look up a 3rd Generation Colt SAA. And then try to buy one for the book price. I would take a 53' dry box full at book price.
    Certified SIG pistol armorer/FFL Dealer/Full time Peace Officer, Moderator of the General Discussion Board on Gunbroker. Visit www.gunbroker.com, the premier gun auction site on the Net! Email davidnunn@texoma.net Jesus is Lord!
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  • adminadmin Member, Administrator Posts: 1,079 admin
    edited November -1
    Nunn is dead on. Do you know what amazingly unscientific method Blue Book uses to judge gun values? They poll dealers and ask what the dealer thinks the item is worth. Blue Book is an indication of what a small sample of dealers think an item is worth.I have seen items that routinely sell on GunBroker.com for double what the Blue Book states, and others that consistently cannot fetch the Blue Book value. Blue Book is often unable to accurately predict the value items that are in absolutely perfect condition and are in short supply.If you look at the selling prices on GunBroker.com you will get a better idea of what an item is really worth because it is based on real-world sales data over a large statistical sample.
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  • talontalon Member Posts: 150 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Admin: When will your data base be ready to provide Auction Sales Norms and Ranges on most firearms for CY 2001? You are (or should be) sitting on a gold mine of such info. Until someone starts mining your data and providing Facts, I'll depend upon the professional's best guesses found in the maligned Blue Book.
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  • luger01luger01 Member Posts: 230 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    You know, every now and then, there's someone who knows nothing about prices, who is willing to pay WAYYYYY too much for an item.That's what those sellers are looking for.BTW, if you know anyone who will pay $1500 for a used S&W model 10, I'll sell mine! Also, I'll sell my home for $1 million cash. Any takers? Nah. You guys are too smart.
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  • ibtruknibtrukn Member Posts: 443 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Yo Nunn, wonder how many out there no what u ment with the "53 foot dry box". U may have possibilities after all.......could have added 102" into that mix......does it come with a "slider" or u runnin a 9'6''spread?hehheh
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  • offerorofferor Member Posts: 8,625 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    If the gunbroker auction site's experience echoes that of eBay, it will be a great leveler of prices on stuff that is not rare, eventually. The reason is that when a guy has the only issue #1 of Famous Monsters magazine for a hundred miles around, you might pay him $4000 for it if you were a die-hard fan, but when #1's start coming up fairly regularly on eBay, the price goes down to $300 or less for anything short of mint condition. Same basic thing will happen with guns, now that the national market is on line in one place. This is a good thing, but it takes a bit of time to shake out.
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  • 7mm_ultra_mag_is_king7mm_ultra_mag_is_king Member Posts: 676 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Thats a 10'2" spread, also I have yet to see a spread on a 53' van Wouldnt be legal for bridge law
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  • adminadmin Member, Administrator Posts: 1,079 admin
    edited November -1
    talon: over the last year we have thought a lot about what you have asked. It stands to reason that our database contains an accurate picture of what many common models are worth by reviewing what they sell for and what they do not sell for. There is one major difficulty, and that is that since we do not list the items there is no standard way to group like items together. Let's say for instance that we want to price a Colt King Cobra with a 6 inch barrel in good conditioin. Some sellers might list this as 'Colt King Cobra GC' and put the barrel lenght in the description. Others might say 'Colt King Cobra 6" stainless', or 'Colt King Cobra 6in GC', or 'King Cobra 6 inch barrel good cond.', and so on. There are a limited number of permutations of King Cobras. Think about guns with barrel lengths, calibers, finishes, chokes, and so on. It seems like it would be tough to give a number unless someone reviewed and categorized each listing.I know that GunBroker wants to offer this info to help sellers price their items. The tough part is figuring out a way to make it work without manually reviewing the listings.
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  • luger01luger01 Member Posts: 230 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Dear Admin,Yes, that's a problem, but not insurmountable. I would say the ay to compile and present a database such as you have is by using generalities and spreads.For instance, say the average "very good" Colt Python sold (over the past year) for $500. The range was $350 to $1000, and one std. deviation from the mean was $45. Since you don't have more information as to the actual condition, only what was stated (which is a subective appraisal - usually by a non-professional), this would be helpful. Or at least as much as the Blue Book price.I would propose that the data be grouped by 1. maker, 2. Model, and 3. Condition. If there are trends where a 6" barrel model sells consistantly for $50 more than a 4" model, then a note to that effect would be warrented. Trying to be more precise than that, with only reported information, and oftentimes missing information, is impossible to do accurately.Producing such a report as this would be a big job, requiring someone with a solid foundation in statistics, and a decent software package to do it easily. Also, trends in values with time would be a very, very interesting result from multiple analyses of the data. I spent 13 years doing statistical data modeling and analysis for one of the DOE National Labs, and I've got an idea what kind of effort would be needed.There are many pitfalls as well. Some guns that only sell a few per year are hard to give good values to. Those that sold in 'bunches' (i.e. 1000 Romanian SKSs in 2000, 100 in 2001 due to supplies drying up) can give a biased result. When they were plentiful, prices were lower - short supply, higher prices. Any good report would include numbers showing how many sales each estimate used, and what the time period was.Your proplsal would be very nice, but know that it will require a significant effort and an ongoing one.Happy New Year to all!
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  • talontalon Member Posts: 150 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Admin: I am quite surprised that several marketing resurch firms haven't tried to buy your data (or have they?), or that of other auction sites. This 'countrywide' (worldwide?) bidding pool with real selling prices and an indication of 'hot' prior used products is an opertunity that has rarely existed before, particularly in almost ready digital format. True, a lot of human review is necessary, but that's true in most studies. Hay, this concept has a lot of applications, and you should do more developement on the basic idea. Amoung many of the outputs of such an effort is a better "Blue Book".
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  • IconoclastIconoclast Member Posts: 10,515 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Well, I'm in a little different boat than most of y'all because I concentrate on collector ammo, but I've done my own database using info gleaned over the last four years from this site, three other auction sites, mail auctions and other resources that gives me a pretty good picture of what sells at what price / condition in which market. Admin has an excellent point in that there is a lack of uniformity in verbiage, to say nothing of condition evaluations, that would make an automated census extremely difficult if not impossible. And I would reiterate a point someone else raised about some sellers attempting to exploit a potential bidder's lack of expertise in hopes of scoring a high multiple of a 'normal' profit on a particular item. By the same token, when one is a knowledgeable buyer in the same market, one can find anything from good deals to outrageous bargains. I do see the leveling occuring, but there will always be opportunities for those willing to do the research. And the 'Blue Book' . . . any time I see someone pull that bit of trash out to justify / calculate / offer a price on an item, I figure they either don't know what they are doing or the next thing they will produce will require KY jelly.
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  • robsgunsrobsguns Member Posts: 4,581 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    This is gonna sound really stupid, probably, but as far as this compilation of data goes, how about this. Everyone could make a fair bid if they actually had the money to spend, and DID NOT bid more than what they believed the gun to be worth. That being said, if admin. really wanted to compile a data base of what a gun was worth, they COULD simply start making a list of guns that they would like to start out with, listing the guns description as they see fit, ie. bbl. length condition, finish, etc., and start listing these guns, xxx amount of them a week, and through participation of the board members, in a special forum, with specific instructions to the members to rate each gun at what they believe it to be worth if they were bidding on it, not to inflate or degrade the guns value. It wouldnt be any different than what we do on a daily basis. To check the forum for accuracy, admin could check its results against real auctions of the past year and see how things look. If the info. compiled was pretty close, then admin. could take it from there as what to do. They could continue the forum, for fun, or they could continue for data purposes, or not do it at all. Just my 2 cents worth. I think that most of us that use these forums, that would take the time to evaluate these guns, would do a good job of it. We sure couldnt do much worse than Blue Book does.
    SSgt Ryan E. Roberts, USMC
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  • BlueTicBlueTic Member Posts: 4,072
    edited November -1
    It seems to me that the "ask the experts" section is a very good resource for finding out what a firearm is going for today. There are a great many dealers and collectors on this site who enjoy the research of different firearms. I also like the research of things I have collected, but if I can't find it in my books these guys have been great. The "Blue Book" is not even close on some as stated, the traders books and the "Standard Catalog of Firearms" are much better for current market values. I guess what gets me is the sellers who do not know the differencs between NIB and 95% used
    IF YOU DON'T LIKE MY RIGHTS - GET OUT OF MY COUNTRY (this includes politicians)
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