Ebay is indeed strange

Among other things, I'm selling a chrome headlight rim for a Honda 400
Four.

It's in superb condition - nearly new. And bidding, with 20 hours or so
to go, is already on £21.

Dave Silver lists them as brand new for £19+VAT.

Highest bidder is in Belgium. Hm.

 

I never use BINs, but yes, they're playing silly buggers all right.

The bids on the headlight rim have now risen to £27, believe it or not.

 

and note that the ebay shop fees have gone up quite a lot. Doesn't bother
me, I closed mine when they screwed them up before.

 

You must have the magic touch, my CB72 stuff isn't selling well at all.

 

When does it all time out? And you have offered to sell it worldwide,
haven't you?

Apart from the US, mind, because they're just timewsters there in my
experience.

I've just done an Ebay search on 'Honda CB72' and drawn **** all. What's
your username? What have you listed the stuff as? This could be your
problem.

 

Got nothing on at the moment. Listing it as "Honda CB72 or CB77"
followed by the item description and we make sure it times out in the
evenings. Side panels went for a tenner and the chrome tank panels for
a tenner, but everything else gone for pennies. We've had a few watchers
and a few contacted me out of ebay but the main market seems to be the
US, at least for the road parts.

US ebay has loads of CB72/77 stuff on, in fact I expect the US is where
I'm going to be getting a lot of my parts from, either from ebay or
online shops (plenty selling CB parts with worldwide shipping).

Engine going on later and maybe some downpipes so we'll see how they go.
Took me bastard ages to drop the engine out this morning, they're fiddly
fuckers to work on compared to the RD, but I suppose that's what you get
for another 20 years development. Seems a pretty simple bike though
apart from the fiddly bits, should have one done for Spring easily, or
that's the plan anyway. Main expense is likely to be the paint (come on
beav, ygm) and wheel rebuilds.

 

Hm. Well, all my 400 Four stuff timed out last night. The bike that I
bought for £500 from five miles away....

....when broken....

....went for £1200.

Basically, I took all the desirable stuff off, listed it item by item,
and was left with the carcass, which I also listed, as it stood (rolling
chassis and engine, basically) and listed that too.

Rear mudguard went for £200. Ye Gods. Tank & panel set made £170. Even
the carcass made £200.

I'd expected about £800-900. £1200 was amazing. If only the exhaust had
been in good nick....

 

The message <1im89hm.1ha7nnsiswxf8N%>
from (The Older Gentleman) contains these
words:

Couldn't you have advertised it, if not as an antique, as a restoration
project? Genuine patina.

 

How many hours of mechanicking, listing, answering emails, and
posting, etc, do you think that 700 quid of profit cost you? Not that
I'm criticising, I just wonder how many man hours it takes to strip a
bike and eBay it.

 

Well, stripping a bike doesn't take long. Dunno about the Ebaying though.

Back in the days when I had energy, I wanted to be sure my bike (well,
bike and sidecar) would take me to a college interview.

OK, a Douglas is a lot easier to dismantle than most modern bikes, but
the morning before I was due to leave (Hornchurch, to go to Abingdon) I
stripped it, checked the engine - ends and mains, bores, rings, cam-gear
trains, carbs, magneto points, cleaned it all thoroughly, inside and
out, set points and tappets, etc, cleaned the frame and sidecar bits,
and, as they looked a bit tatty, brush-painted the lot with Belco,
stayed up half the night, but was in time to have a good hot bath and
leave - in time to arrive for the interview before 7 am.

So, if TOG's used to Ebaying things, I'd say it was a good profit for
not too much work.

 

I recently did that to a Guzzi T4 - it took three hours to strip it and
take pictures of the big lumps.

I'd not bother ebaying, wrapping and posting a fairing again.

 

I've togged out bikes in bits a few times over the past year and I find
that for me the part that takes most of the time is the writing of the
ads, not the stripping of the bike.

As TOG has suggested before, if the bike is complete enough and a
runner, you leave it together and punt out the engine, stating that the
buyer can hear it running but will have to help you to get it out of the
frame. Once the engine is out, it's a few hours to break down the rest
of the bike into ebay-sized bits. I reckon it took me about 2-3 hours to
reduce the then engine-less 400/4 into a pile of bits and photograph it,
but the writing up of the ads did take a while. Mind you, I'd expect TOG
taking less time to do that.

Posting the bits is the other part that's quite time consuming but even
that shouldn't take much longer than a 5-6 hours in total.

All in all, if you make as much from it as TOG, it beats stacking shelves
at Tesco by quite a margin. Not bad as a hobby, I'd say.

 

Biggest pieces I'll post are tanks and seats, and possibly
forks. Anything else, especially big and fragile, clearly says
"collection only" which means that you get tons of people asking "how
much for posting it to Azerbaijan".

 

About three hours to remove all the bits that are in the want
(mudguards, clocks, switchgear, brakes, some electrical items, bars,
lights, exhaust, seat). Another hour or so to photograph and set up the
auctions. What I cba to strip (engine removal, taking it down to bare
frame) simply gets left and that gets offered as a lump, byer collects.

Postage and packing - take 'em down in batches. Say six or seven hours
overall.

 

Excuse me?

 

uh huh.

You must use some sort of listing tool, yes?

Hmm - I find ebaying stuff more time consuming than that, what with
answering questions etc, but then you do a lot more of it than me.
Mind you, even if your estimate is out by a factor of 3, it's still a
bloody good hourly rate!

 

And a new meme is born

 

No, not at all. Once I've put up one part (say a Honda 400 Four brake
caliper), then I click the 'Sell Similar' button, which contains all
the original text and links. I just change the crucial text to read
(say) 'master cylinder', and alter the photo links to read 'mcylinder'
instead of 'caliper'. If you've got a couple of dozen 400 Four parts,
you can whizz through all the various listings pretty smartly.

Don't get many questions with parts. You tend to get quite a few with
complete machines, though.

I think my estimate is about right, and Timo's seems to be broadly
similar. The thing is, breaking SOBs is relatively easy and so many
parts command stupid money. You wouldn't get £200 for a Fireblade rear
mudguard, for example.

 

I don't like posting fuel tanks, because you've got to get every last
bit of fuel out of them, and they're so easily damaged. The tank (and
panels) off this 400 Four went to a bloke who lived in Lydd, luckily,
so when I went down to see my Ma in Rye on Wednesday, I delivered them
in person. He was terribly pleased to get them so quickly.

 

lol...you're so right... world would be so much better if we could go
back to 1975... no ebay or anything... yup... **** ebay...