Originally posted by morpho Are you guys using primarily evilbay to score these deals, or? Most of the stuff i find on ebay are seriously overpriced, it seems.
I live in a smaller dieing town so I'm of stuck with ebay. I never find anything locally. I can no count how many times I have seen stuff sell high or for too much but I have seen plenty go cheap too. RioRico's strategy is bid often, bid low, loose 99% of them. Mines a little different. I fill my want list with hundreds of potential items and anything that still cheap the last day to day in a half goes on sniping software for a low bid (and I still loose plenty). I often target listing errors, auctions that end at a bad time etc. I recently won a vivitar 90mm 2.5 "bokina" (if you are not farmiliar with it, its considered legendary quality) fro 45$ shipped. It is canon fd mount and in perfect condition, but it was listed as a vivitar 62mm (the filter size) macro lens. 3 in canon fd mount sold in the last 15 days for 175$, 175$, a179.99$.
Th vivitar series 1 70-210mm olympus mount I got for 15$ was listed as a sky light filter. One recently sold in olympus mount for 70$.
I recently won 2 promaster flash control modules for olympus that sell for about 50$ (and I have matching flashes to sell with them), a promaster 58mm wide angle (front mount) and 3 slr type teleconverters for 18$ or about 3$ ea. everything was new in box. I have got other teleconverters (slr type) for 3$, 4.13$, 5$, .7.50 and 8$ (mostof tose a still on t way . All were ebay except the 8$ one was b&h (prices include shipping so some were basically cost of shipping).
I have been accused of scraping the bottom of the barrel and have got total garbage before, but the majority were good to great. If you look at the total cost, and divide by the good stuff, price per lens for the good ones was pretty low.
Edit to add a little more now that I'm at a keyboard that works.
Worst was a camera with lens that looked like it had been buried in the back yard for a couple of years (seriously, even the aluminum was corroding away). It was crammed in a small flat rate box, and the box was all taped up because it wouldn't fit, even without any padding. The lens was broken in half when it arrived. The strange thing was he had been a seller for 5 years and then all of a sudden started screwing people over (6 bad feedback in a month killed his account).
The reason for all the teleconverters is I am experimenting with making adapters and have gone a little out of control buying (anything cheap and a decent brand, any mount). I need to stop and stick to looking for 1.5/1.4x ones which is what I really want (the only one so far is a kiron 1.5x which was the 8$ shipped one from b&h).
Last edited by ripit; 02-09-2012 at 10:24 AM.