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Old 20th Nov 2018, 10:06 pm   #21
martin.m
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

I have bought quite a few transistor radios from online auctions and have been happy with them all. Fewer people are interested if the item doesn't work, while some radios are genuinely "untested" because the seller doesn't have a PP9 battery. It's also a good idea to check what other items the vendor has for sale.
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Old 20th Nov 2018, 10:19 pm   #22
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

I think you can do worse than read Duke Nukem's guide (of this parish)

It is way to accurate.

http://thevalvepage.com/ebay/ebay.htm

Killer stuff

Cheers

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Old 20th Nov 2018, 10:33 pm   #23
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

I often wonder whether misleading descriptions are intentionally misleading or whether the seller just doesn't know. I used to work on the principle that you should never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by pure stupidity. I don't know whether that applies to on-line auctions

I recently bought an object which I won't describe further to avoid the auction being identified. It had a resistance which was described as being spot on 13.7 Ohms. Sounded good so I bought it without thinking further. When I received it I realised that the resistance should have been 1.5k Ohms. When I looked at the photos accompanying the auction the damage was visible if you looked carefully but not mentioned in the description.
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 12:05 am   #24
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

Ah, so you bought something from someone who'd read Duke Nukem's guide

It explains a lot!

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Old 21st Nov 2018, 8:59 am   #25
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

I've never seen that before and it's very apt.

Same thing with "xyz guitar pedals" selling "untested germanium transistor lot" for £50. Basically left overs.

I did see one description as "total death trap frankenstein electrical lot". That was a good description!
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 9:19 am   #26
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

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Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler View Post
Ah, so you bought something from someone who'd read Duke Nukem's guide
It sure looks like it although he's now in my black list. Curious thing was that the resistance was nowhere near 13.7 Ohms. In fact it was open circuit. A couple of minutes with a soldering iron to reattach a wire and it was working again so I had the last laugh.

A few weeks ago I saw something else amusing. Someone was offering an object (nothing to do with electronics) which wasn't described as being anything special. There was a picture of the object showing that it was actually something quite rare and in very good condition. I reckon that it could have easily fetched €1000. The seller obviously didn't know what it was. When the bidding reached over €500 he ended the auction. A couple of days later the object was reslisted with a large notice in bright red that he didn't want any unserious bids this time. The bidding got up to over €500 again and once again the auction was closed early. Shame. I might even have bought it if I'd had the chance.
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 10:30 am   #27
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

Regarding valve description rather than pictures. One person had listings repeatably described as fully tested on Avo... and other listings as untested as dont possess a valve tester! All in the same few weeks!
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 11:25 am   #28
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

I like 'untested as it has the wrong / no mains plug'. Mind you, that's how we like them. I suspect it means 'plugged it in; it went bang!'.
An auction I used to go to had the returned portable TVs from the local supermarket. These were ones with known tube faults. One or two a week went for auction, usually with a greenish picture, and invariably fetched over £100 (this was in the early Eighties). The puzzling thing was if you popped half a mile down the road to the same supermarket a brand new guaranteed one could be yours for £89.99.
The next day I'd often have a customer come in with one of these saying 'the auctioneer said it just needed a slight adjustment...'
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 3:58 pm   #29
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

One favourite of mine are the pictures that show the 'excellent condition' valves with that strange white coloration inside - LOL.
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 4:00 pm   #30
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

I must admit I wonder why some people bother with the hyped description - agreed you get the odd strange price setting but something 'in excellent condition and working well' being offered for a very low starting price surely makes people wonder??
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 4:32 pm   #31
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

Quote:
Originally Posted by MurphyNut View Post
I'm often amused at adverts that describe a radio as Art Deco or from the 1930's, when it's in fact an unremarkable 1950's set.
I hope members don't spoil this thread and get it closed, it's got a lot of entertaining mileage in it!
It's what's commonly known in the trade as '50s Deco'.
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 5:56 pm   #32
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

The buzz-words are great entertainment. Rare, Amazing, Collectable*, Reclaimed (Reclaimed from what!?)

*Collectable is a favourite. There are a range of little plastic caricatures on the modern market, of everything from the Royal Family, to film characters, to music legends, to cartoon characters. They are phenomenally and inexplicably successful as a series to collect, and when i first saw them i thought 'what a clever idea- they must have an embedded chip or data storage from which you can download, games, videos, or a random gift'

I was wrong. They're just plastic caricature dolls. I'm not rambling-my point is this- they're badged and marketed as COLLECTABLE - but such a term is in the eye of the buyer not the marketer, seller or designer. Please no-one mention the brand name of these toys, i don't want to get anyone's vest in a vibration, as Basil used to say.

I have to say that of all the vintage pieces and modern stuff i have ordered online, i have been massively impressed with RM and all their rival couriers, the standard that people package things to, and the interest that vendors show when you tell them something about a vintage piece that they did not know- this sometimes elicits a story about the piece, or what their father or grandfather did in the war, etc. I am always a little sad when a nice but low value inheritance is put on sale- 'I don't know what this does but it was in my Mother's stuff' On occasion i have been tempted to try to persuade people to retain things rather than sell them.

I have only had one incident of minor damage, and two incidents of misrepresentation (one of which didn't really matter.) There's a lot of good eggs.

Dave
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 6:33 pm   #33
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

There has been a thing (it seems to be on the wane now) for dolling up old theatre lights and selling them online for domestic use. The most common are the small diecast 500W mirror spots and fresnels from the 1950s-70s, I won't call out the individual model numbers. The usual treatment involves stripping off the paint and polishing to a mirror finish, replacing the P28s lampholder and 500W lamp with a bayonet holder and small lamp, and finally, mounting the finished device atop a reproduction telescope tripod.

The thing that by turns annoys me or makes me laugh, is that the resulting object is often called 'restored'. Yet they cannot possibly be used for their original purpose (you can't put the proper lamp back in as the holder has been discarded and the internals modified); they don't look anything like the original (they were usually in drab, matt paint finishes to blend into the architecture) and they certainly don't belong on a tripod (floorstanding lights on stage use single-column heavy base stands as tripods are much too bulky and easy to trip over in the wings).

The headline will read something like 'Grab a piece of beautifully-restored art-deco film studio industrial lighting history'. A better description would be 'Grab a mutilated and weirdly-presented 1970s light from the local primary-school hall'. Admittedly, the shiny finish can look stunning in a domestic setting and 60W is probably more useful than 500W in the living room. But aaargh...those tripods! Can you imagine a mirror-finish silver DAC90A converted to a cassette player on one Dansette Leg (tm) screwed to the floor?

The most hilarious though was mounted on the legs of a bar-stool! Restored, they said...
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 6:58 pm   #34
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

All portable radios seem to be a "transistor radio", oh yes and of course it is the rarest thing on the planet.

And have you ever seen a photo of one of your own radios for sale, I have.

Mike

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Old 21st Nov 2018, 7:05 pm   #35
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

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Originally Posted by The Philpott View Post
I have only had one incident of minor damage, and two incidents of misrepresentation (one of which didn't really matter.) There's a lot of good eggs.
I had one issue of pretty bad damage - a Weston wattmeter wrapped in a single layer of corrugated cardboard, which was not surprisingly damaged. But the seller refunded in full, and said he'd have a word with the person who wrapped it.

I had one lucky one - a very rare radio, in a single-layer cardboard box with half an inch of padding. But it arrived OK.

Sometimes sellers are genuinely misinformed, but a few photos makes things clear. The frustrating things are the miss-spellings (Ecko is a common one) which obviously text searches miss, till you realise you need to search under a few different spellings!

I tend to regard the people who use the sites as generally honest and OK. I'd expect to catch a cold a few times, that's a penalty I accept.
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 7:09 pm   #36
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

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[The frustrating things are the miss-spellings (Ecko is a common one) which obviously text searches miss, till you realise you need to search under a few different spellings.
That can work in your favour. By searching on Ecko, Echo, Phillips etc. You may well find an auction which others have missed and there'll be fewer bidders.
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 7:55 pm   #37
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

Also look out for the increase in erroneous copy & paste descriptions that a vendor has purloined from other vendors to try and save time- which can work in your favour or not, as the case may be.
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 9:12 pm   #38
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

Some of the views expressed here are a little jaundiced, I fear - but there is truth, too. My experience was to find a radio offered on Ebay that used a photograph of a set that I'd restored. Of course, it looked good (why wouldn't it? I can handle Photoshop...) but seriously, it was far better than a second photograph the seller had posted on the same auction, of his ACTUAL set which in fact was an earlier model and very different from mine. So the buyer would have to use his eyes and then work out which was the correct photo, or whether either were.

I contacted the seller and told him that the photograph was copyright and he had no right to use it, and that I would be contacting Ebay about the matter. I did contact Ebay but got nowhere. The set sold a couple of days afterward.

Moral? Do not trust photos; they can lie. Caveat emptor, as always and especially with auction purchases.

Tony
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Old 21st Nov 2018, 11:37 pm   #39
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

I agree about online purchases from charities- some of my best test meters have come from them- realistic reserves, and no flannel. I have more confidence when that little coloured ribbon appears on a sale item.

Dave
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Old 22nd Nov 2018, 9:47 am   #40
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Default Re: The auction photo that gives the lie!!

The charities may only get a small proportion of the sale. "Sellers can donate a portion of their proceeds to their favorite charity" it says in the text from the site. They only get it all if it is the charity selling direct to you.
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