This is awful, but ...

[MK in NC]

... I'm guessing some of you have experienced the same phenomenon.

You purchase a used mandolin for what you suspect is a pretty good price. Not the deal of the century necessarily, but a good price.

Days, weeks, or maybe even months later, the same make and model (for an instrument that appears to be in the same condition) shows up on eBay at a much, much lower price. Do you track the item, hoping that enough bidders will jump into the process so that the sale price reaches at least the price you paid?

My example was the Flatiron 1SH that was featured recently on the Mandolin Cafe's eBay watch chart. When I first looked, the price was in double digits (gulp). I think the final sale price was within about $10 of what I paid for a similar mandolin (ahh).

I would still like my Flatiron pancake regardless, but I'm glad the other one didn't go for a fraction of what I paid. It shouldn't matter, but it does.

(By the way, I did not bid on the recent Flatiron 1SH. As much as I was happy to see that price inch up, I did not contribute to that process.)

[MK in NC]

Thank you to Scott Tichenor for moving this thread out of "post a picture of your mandolin."

[bookmn]

No one wants to think they've wildly overpaid for something. It's frustrating. I can't help but look at prices sometimes, but I never obssess - who knows what shape that other instrument is really in? The money's gone, the deal is done, I just enjoy my instrument!

[OldSausage]

If it troubles you, you should probably stop looking at ebay for a while. Ebay is just a hole in the Internet, filled with regrets.

[allenhopkins]

Marketplaces are marketplaces, whether on-line or in a Mideast bazaar. Unless you prefer "administered prices," such as were tried (with obvious negative results) in some of the more totalitarian countries, the "price" of any "good" is determined from many individual transactions. In some, both the buyer and seller are well-informed, economically rational individuals; that's the sort of model that pro economists like to talk about. How often it actually happens, well, perhaps another story…?

In other transactions, the buyer and/or the seller may be totally clueless as to what the "market price" for the mandolin, used car, collectible teapot, or bayside condominium "should be." We all get a laugh about eBay sellers listing for $10K a mandolin we think should sell for $250. We get a charge out of stories of lucky buyers picking up a '30's Fern at a junk shop for $150. These are the outlying data points in the universe of mandolin sales transactions.

It's a small universe. How many Flatiron "pancakes" are up for sale every day -- 100? Doubt it. So any individual transaction has a weight far beyond what it would have in a more active marketplace. Probably no one's spending a lot of time trying to figure out if someone else is buying a 2008 Toyota Corolla for more or less than he/she paid for it last year, because multi-thousands of those are getting sold all over the place. But that Flatiron -- that's a different story.

If you feel you paid a fair price, one you could afford, and you're enjoying the mandolin, that's really enough. Someone else's going to pay more, another person less, so what? I'd love to find a Lloyd Loar F-5 in a flea market for $250, but in this age of plentiful accessible price information, that's probably about the same odds as hitting the Powerball jackpot. I don't feel I've been "taken" on any of my purchases, and if someone else gets lucky, well, more power to 'em.

[abuteague]

I've got this nephew. If he sees you with anything, golf clubs, mandolin, coffee cup... He will ask how much you paid for it. You give him a number and he will say he saw it for half somewhere, ebay, yard sale, pawn shop etc. He will swear it was the exact same model even if you have custom features. He preys upon people who fixate on the purchase price of things.

[JeffD]

I know a fellow who has a real obsession with this, way beyond MK, with the purchase of cars and trucks. Getting the best deal ever is more important than getting what he wants at a price he is willing to pay. He continues "shopping" for a truck long after the purchase, driving around in the truck he just bought, just to see if he could have gotten it cheaper.

I went to him for some help getting a jeep, and he sure knew where the best deals were and the maximum I should have to pay. But for months after I had purchased the jeep, when ever I saw him he would tell me about the good deal I got because he recently saw the same thing over here for his much and though he could have talked him down to that much and yada yada.

[MK in NC]

Marketplaces are marketplaces, whether on-line or in a Mideast bazaar. Unless you prefer "administered prices," such as were tried (with obvious negative results) in some of the more totalitarian countries, the "price" of any "good" is determined from many individual transactions. In some, both the buyer and seller are well-informed, economically rational individuals; that's the sort of model that pro economists like to talk about.

Uh, oh. This reminds me too much of my paying job, Allen. Next we'll be talking about opportunity costs, trade-offs, and supply and demand curves.

Thanks for all the comments. To clarify, I don't obsess over this issue. The spark for this thread started when I saw a Flatiron 1SH listed on the Mandolin Cafe eBay watch list. Having recently purchased one, I wondered, "Gee, I wonder what the price is for this one." When I saw a number in the neighborhood of $30, I thought, "Ouch."

Once the sale was completed, and the final price was very close to what I paid, there was a slight sense of relief. Not joy. Not satisfaction. Just a little relief.

If that doesn't happen to you, good for you. But I thought there might be some other folks out there who had a similar experience.

[JeffD]

Its natural, I think.

I know for me when I am buying something, anything really, I get all wound up comparing options and studying it and finding the deals. Once I pull the trigger, it is sometimes hard to turn all that off. I will see another option and have to stop myself. Its sort of like the decision making machinery in my head has momentum, and doesn't shut off once a purchase is made.

As long as it doesn't get in the way of enjoying what you got, its fine. Believe me, there are folks worse than you.

[Tom Coletti]

Ebay is just a hole in the Internet, filled with regrets.

But on the plus side, vintage Italian or American bowlback mandolins and German domeback mandriolas are a form of common currency there, often found in great playable condition for under $100.

--Tom

[Steve Ostrander]

This is another curse of the internet. Years ago you would go to your local car dealer, pawn shop or music store and pick from what they had in stock. Now you can pick from the stock anywhere in the world and have it shipped to your door. It was easier back then....

[stevedenver]

I think, if you research well, over a period of several months or more, at least bi-weekly if not daily, and using as many resources to find information, then one makes a conscious and informed decision on price, condition, features etc, and will not likely be too far off. I recently paid perhaps a bit more than I might, but, timing was short, the mandolin extremely hard to find used, highly sought after, and although expensive (which I think narrows the potential sale a bit) the seller was top notch, ie I had confidence in his assessment and his reliability, and the examination/return terms were worth any premium. I purposely chose not to niggle because of these factors. Worse than paying too much is getting a bad instrument that you're stuck with, no recourse.

I feel strongly that if you take your time, you can more less learn the market value, and only then should one plunge in. Being in a hurry, or truly unique items change this completely. Effective negotiation requires knowledge and expectations, and a willingness to walk away from a bad deal. ebay is not always the place to get an idea of prices, imho. And this too with many dealers. I have seen astronomical asking prices on instruments I know don't merit it. Many depend on ignorance or 'new car syndrome'-"youll never find another", "its the last one", "they stopped making it this way", "big price increase on the way", ad nauseum. This is why long term, broad research is helpful, to weed out this misleading stuff.

[barney 59]

This is another curse of the internet. Years ago you would go to your local car dealer, pawn shop or music store and pick from what they had in stock. Now you can pick from the stock anywhere in the world and have it shipped to your door. It was easier back then....

Less complicated,maybe. You had little choice as to what you could buy and less choice when it came to price. If you were selling it was even worse. You could run an expensive ad in the paper and then make yourself available to people who sometimes were just looking or you could be victimized by the guy at the pawn shop or music store. I find that music stores are much more reasonable these days at offering a decent price if you want to sell than they were in the past. They have to or you'll run it on ebay and they know that. As far as ebay goes I've been doing it a long time now and for a large variety of different stuff. Instruments,tools, old stereo equipment etc. I am not in a hurry and I have found that if I am willing to wait what I want will show up and even then I only buy if it falls within a very narrow window of what I consider to be a terrific bargain. So I am the guy that got it for less most of the time. I've never been scammed and never gotten something that was not what I thought it was or I was at least prepared for. There is a particular piece of vintage stereo equipment that I am looking for now. It shows up fairly regularly and usually sells in the $200 to $300 range. Eventually though I expect to find one for about half that, it'll happen. Maybe I'm lucky but I don't think so- I think the bad deals and scams are only a tiny percentage of the zillion deals a day that go down on ebay everyday.

[TonyP]

My dad was a salesman. Not the type that sells ice to Eskimo's, but more a supplier of good product he believed in. But he was always engaged in commerce. So I got to watch him all my life. He was a haggler and that was just his nature. So way too many times I saw him see something that caught his eye that tickled some kind of fancy and he'd engage with the salesman and before he knew it he had talked the guy down so low he felt obligated to buy the darned thing. Then he'd have to deal with my mom

What that taught me was never get in a hurry to buy anything and find out as much as I could about whatever the choices are. For me the greatest boon has been the Web. Not only can I search for what I'm interested in, but when you find a piece, you can even find out about the brand/model and how much it is new. Everything after that is condition and price. It has almost completely gotten rid of buyers remorse for me. That and I've gone local and just deal with craig'slist now instead of evilbay. The 'bay ain't what it used to be. There's just too many folks trying to make a livin' by makin' a killin' on there now. The deals are just not what they used to be and there's too much to watch out for. Like cheap price and outrageous shipping. And doing it all "virtual" has made me less that 100% happy with a couple of purchases.

Now my searches take so long because I have so little $$$ that I'm totally sick of looking. Not doing any shopping after the purchase REALLY cuts down on the buyers remorse

[Bluejay]

Spend more time playing and less time shopping.

[Jim Garber]

Ebay is just a hole in the Internet, filled with regrets.

Spend more time playing and less time shopping.

Some wisdom (above) for the ages from the MC sages...

in the theme of "I had a friend": I had one who had a gas price fixation and this was way before $4 per gallon. He would fill up and then moan about how he would drive down the road and find the price 2 cents less per gallon.

OTOH i have been buying and selling instruments for decades. There are times I overpaid and times I underpaid. I paid top dollar for a Gibson snakehead in the mid 1980s. Did I overpay? At that time yes but it is now worth 5 times as much.

Just remember they don't make vintage Flatirons any more, MK.

[MK in NC]

Just remember they don't make vintage Flatirons any more, MK.

This is a very good point. Thank you.

And I should reiterate that I was very pleased with mine, which must be about as beautiful today as it was when it was crafted in Bozeman, Montana, thirty years ago.

[mandopete]

Uh, oh. This reminds me too much of my paying job, Allen. Next we'll be talking about opportunity costs, trade-offs, and supply and demand curves.

Lemme guess, supply chain?

[MK in NC]

Lemme guess, supply chain?

Think tank. We could talk all day about marginal utility and externalities and zero-sum games, but that would take time away from playing mandolin. Or, in my case, strumming a few chords and acting as if that's equivalent to "playing."

[fatt-dad]

I think the market is set on these. Pre-Gibson pancakes are $500.00 (low end) to $750.00 instruments. If they are trim level 3, they'll push a grand. Guaranteed there is an owner out there who'd take a hundred bucks for one of these. You may spend a lot of time and money finding that owner though. Not worth it.

These are great mandolins. Just make sure to use light-gauge strings. These are not instruments for J-74s! The GHS A-250 set matches the factory-recommended string gauges exactly.

I mention this 'cause if the instrument was strung with mediums, you may have a structural problem to deal with, which would really mess up pricing.

f-d

[belbein]

In some [markets] both the buyer and seller are well-informed, economically rational individuals; that's the sort of model that pro economists like to talk about. How often it actually happens, well, perhaps another story…?

I have a friend, an academic micro-economist (I mean, his area is micro-economics, not that he's particularly small). In one of his papers, he begins with this opening clause, "When producers and consumers have equal knowledge . . ." I jumped on him at dinner the other night, and asked him to defend this opening clause of his paper. When do consumers EVER have equal knowledge? After hemming and hawing and conceding and defending, in the end of our discussion he agreed that consumers NEVER have equal knowledge in the "free market." Which means that markets are always unfair, no matter how free (my words, not his; he wouldn't go that far, though I believe he knows it's true).

My economist friend gave me a book recently called Rational Irrationality, essays in behavioral economics. The second chapter deals with something called anchoring, where we irrationally determine what the price is for a product. We anchor on particular prices not because of value, but for other reasons. One of them is advertising ("It's only $99 but I get a gig bag and a tuner, too!"). But whatever the irrational reasons, we determine the "proper" price with little regard to what the market actually is for these products. Then we regret this price when AFTER WE BUY we do our due diligence by asking around and find out--surprise!--we should have asked questions first. I'm not throwing stones here: I did it with my second mandolin too.

We've all seen this irrationality in action, right? In fact, how many times have we had people sign on to these discussions to "ask our opinion" about "buying a _____", only to be told all the reasons not to, and then doing it anyway. Guaranteed: those people don't remember any of the opinions that said not to do what they planned to do. Even when the neck falls off or the soundboard cracks or the thing won't stay in tune, even when they learn that the contrary opinions were right ... they won't learn the lesson to do their due diligence before they buy; they won't learn not to get their "due diligence" facts from advertisements.

Anyway, I'm with my Café Colleagues on this: Make your best deal; then stop reading ads (and stop complaining once the deal is done!)
------------------------------------------
*No, I'm not going to stop complaining about my The Gibson The Flatiron. Grrrrrr.

[allenhopkins]

Reminds me of my grad studies in poli sci at the U of Rochester, where "rational choice" (or "rat choice" for short) models were going to explain and predict all kinds of political behavior, if they could only get the equations right…

However, one of the more flamboyant profs there insisted I should get on Edmund Muskie's Presidential bandwagon, and the department head told everyone in game theory class that Nixon was totally innocent of any Watergate involvement. Hmmm…

When my kid Dave went for his Ph.D. in political science, he stayed pretty far away from "rat choice." Sometimes microeconomics can't even usefully predict economic behavior, either individually or en masse, and works even less at explaining non-economic behavior. We who were dismissed by the "rat choice" people as "journalists," because we insisted on focusing on actual behavior rather than mathematical modeling, may have had the last laugh. And Dave's teaching at Boston College now...

[MK in NC]

This discussion has ended up being far deeper than intended. Behavioral economics? The limits of econometrics? My bass-playing Austrian school Ph.D. economist co-worker would be amused.

I find all of your observations fascinating. Not at all what I had expected, but fascinating.

[belbein]

We're a deep group, here at the Café. Very full of ... "wisdom" I believe is the word used in polite company.

I can't explain why I've started reading economics articles and books. Maybe it's just that I like speculative fiction.

[belbein]

grad studies in poli sci

You have an MA or PhD in Poli Sci? Are you teaching? All the poli sci people I know went to law school. A twisted sample (in more ways than one) of course, but interesting.