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Titanic History Wednesday, January 15, 2025 |
| 1956 - 1st class survivor Mrs Elisabeth Walton Robert died of heart failure / disease in St. Louis, Missouri, USA at the age of 87.
1889 - 1st class survivor Mrs Nelle Snyder was born to Thomas W. Stevenson and Cora Vincent Stevenson in Wisconsin, USA. 1998 - James Cameron's movie "Titanic" premiered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 1977 - Saloon Steward and survivor Mr Frederick Dent Ray died of bronchopneumonia and fractured neck of femur in Essex, England, UK at the age of 97. 1954 - Steward Mr John Edward Hart died in Paignton, South Devon, England, UK. |
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Columns: A Titanic Collector's Guide to Ebay
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The world over, people are familiar with eBay, the online auction house.
While Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, and other such sites have auctions, to which
most of what I'm about to say will pertain, I'm choosing to focus on eBay.
I have lost, and still lose, plenty of auctions, but now it's because I'm
not willing to pay so much rather than my own mistakes. If you're new to eBay, sign up and register before you find something you can't live without. They will require a credit card (so they have some recourse if you place bids fraudulently), but you can also use a debit card, so long as it has a major credit card logo on it, such as MasterCard or Visa. If you have any concerns about this, read their in Help section about why eBay is safe(http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/n-is-ebay-safe.html). As with all categories of collecting on eBay, you need to check the listings often. The more specific your search is, the shorter amount of time it will take to skim over the listings. To narrow your search, you can have a long list of search criteria. Here's an example: titanic (35mm,70mm,cell,cel,trailer,trailor) -(star,wars,dvd,cd-rom,laserdisc,game,vhs,cdrom) That would translate to anything with the word Titanic in it plus 35mm OR 70mm OR cell OR cel OR trailer OR trailor but don't include anything with star, wars, dvd, cd-rom, laserdisc, game, vhs, or cdrom. That gives me a specific output for my search. If you want more options, use their search tips (http://pages.ebay.com/help/buyerguide/search.html). Always (always!) search title and description. People are known to misspell things in titles, so if they spell it right anywhere else in the listing, you'll find it. These can be great auctions because your competition (other bidders) won't find them and the price will be lower. Who wants to type all that every time though? Something eBay has come up with is Favorite Searches. Do your search and scroll to the bottom of the page. Click "Save this Search" and it goes into your Favorite Searches. You can come back here by logging into My eBay and clicking the Favorites tab. Know what you're looking for and know how much it's gone for in the past. Next to the search button is a link to "Show Completed Items". See if a similar item was sold recently, how much it went for, and how many bids were placed. At this point, you should search for "titanic" at Yahoo, Amazon, and any other auction sites you can find. The smaller sites are a buyer's market since not as many people frequent their listings. Sometimes you will find the same item you were looking for on eBay for a lot less. If given a chance, search their completed listings too. This will not take very long since Yahoo usually has maybe five pages of "titanic" items. When you're looking at over 60 pages of Titanic items, you ought to skim a couple pages of items that are about to close and then go to the newly listed items. With eBay's Buy It Now and Yahoo's Buy It Price, you will miss out on a lot of listings if you wait to see what's closing in the next few days. Buy It Now means that if you're willing to pay a set price, you don't have to wait until the auction ends. For example, you might find a necklace listed at $15 dollars with a Buy It Now of $40. If you have looked at previous listings and saw similarly rare and quality necklaces for $50, you should use the Buy It Now so you don't have to end up paying $50 when the auction ends. Beware that sellers will use random numbers as their Buy It Now price. Make sure that you've looked over the other listings and past listings to make sure you aren't paying way more than you need to. Click on those "mystery meat" titles. Too many times I've seen auctions titled "Titanic" and nothing more. Usually this is Titanic on VHS, but other times it's scale models, images, displays, and more. These go under many people's radar, so you're much more likely to win. Watch auctions, don't bid. Yahoo and eBay allow you to watch auctions without bidding on them. The main purpose of this is not to show your hand too early. If you see something listed for $9.99 and you're willing to pay $30 for it, watch it and bid in the last few minutes of the auction. That's right, I said minutes. Often when people skim the listing, they're more likely to check something out if someone has already bid. If while you're watching it, it goes above $30, kiss it goodbye. Otherwise, you can go back to the listing, look at the picture longingly, and decide if you are willing to pay more. You might be curious as to what it will go for and you have the option to watch it to the very end. But you really shouldn't torture yourself needlessly. Look for online stores selling the item you're looking for. At Back to Titanic, we've done a lot of the searching for you in our Merchandise section. If you don't find it there, you can do extra searching on your own. A great example of the benefits of searching online stores is Ardleigh-Elliot's Titanic music boxes. The premiere issue of these eight music boxes plays "My Heart Will Go On" and can be bought at collectiblestoday.com for $34.95 and sell for under $25 at eBay. The second issue, which plays Southampton, goes for $34.95 at collectiblestoday.com but fetches about $30 at eBay. Since the last six issues aren't available online (to my knowledge) they sell for $35-$60 on eBay. Some people have tried to sell the first music box for $60 at MSN auctions and at the Titanic Artifact Exhibit they were trying to sell it for $50. Don't pay those prices! Hot Titanic items on eBay are film cels and items from J. Peterman and Franklin Mint. The film cels are sold one at a time on a few sites, though I have yet to find one that bothers to tell you what's in the cel. Franklin Mint has a website where they still sell Rose dolls, but you need to buy the doll from them before you can get any of the accessories and outfits. J.Peterman closed their doors and so the only place you can get anything they sold is eBay. Treat eBay like walking into a casino and keep your wits about you. The worst things I've done have been paying way too much and forgetting an auction. If you really cannot be at a computer when the auction ends, you might just bid your maximum amount. As frustrating as it can be, set that maximum in your mind. Sometimes you will get outbid by a few dollars and you'll say to yourself, I would have paid $3 more dollars. It's a slippery slope. If you're willing to pay $43 instead of your max of $40, you ought to have bid $43. But if you'd pay $3 more, why not pay $48? Or $50? And soon that maximum in your head is long gone and you're in the poor house. Don't bid in increments of $5. Most people think in terms of $10, $25, and $40. When you bid, make it $42.13. If someone else bids $40, you'll win by $1 (find out about proxy bidding at eBay). If you'd bid $40 after they did, you'd lose, since earlier placed bids take precedence. If someone bids $4 after you, you will win by 13 cents. As hesitant as I've been about sharing all this information with Titanic collectors at large, I believe the healthy competition will benefit other people by saving them money and earning them great collections. Enjoy eBay! |
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