Hi guys,

I've been watching with shock, horror and many time raucous laughter as I see the price of XA and XB items go through the roof on Ebay.

I have a lot of experience in chasing car parts for this and that, i've been to more swap meets in the last 30 years than I can remember and IMO they are the best way to determine what something is worth while still giving the buyer a chance at a bargain.

Ebay, on the other hand is a totally different story.The auction system is full of fraudulent activity and you never know who else is actually bidding against you.

Too many people think they're rusted out POS are worth big bucks because they see something similar sell for big dollars on Ebay.

The truth is, almost everything you see sold on Ebay has its end price inflated by the seller and his mates and in many cases the item is actually won by the person selling it as he attempts to drive the price up, this is why, despite items ending with a winning bid, they invariably re-appear on Ebay again a few days or weeks later.

Always the same bull**** reason to, 'The buyer backed out so I'm re-listing', Crap, you won it yourself you clown!

Another personal fave of mine is the 'Item is listed elsewhere so I reserve the right to end the auction early', you will see this a lot with cars, especially the Coupes and GT's. That's just plain bull****, they put that in there so they can pull the auction in the last 5 minutes if it hasn't reached the price they want. If you ask them where else it is listed and for how much, they won't tell you, they'll reply with such dribble as "It's an Auction mate, your'e supposed to bid", garbage, if you have it listed somewhere else, tell the bloke where you moron!!

The sellers that utilise this tactic quickly identify themselves as frauds and untrustworthy. How many times can the same person sell a sky blue XB Falcon 500 sedan that has a factory sunroof, I've seen it listed about 5 times and sold 5 times! Some poor bugger must have won it?

Honest buyers, like me, with a large 100% Ebay rating are onto you thieves and crooks and won't bother bidding on your goods because we know you and your mates will bid on it anyway.

If people want to know what something is really worth, go to a Swapmeet and have a walk around. If something you saw in the morning for $200 is still there at the end of the day, then it's too expensive, if it's gone then the price was right.

For the owners of these cars that are looking for parts, Ebay is actually a bad thing. You might get the odd trinket now and again but what it does is get people to hold onto thier items indefinately, as they seek that mystical bidder who'll give them $150 for a door handle when it's only worth $20 and every other tom, dick and Harry that see's this bloke with his 'Buy it now' price of $150 thinks his door handle is just as valuable and also waits for a high price. The market dries up and what do we get, stupid prices for items that are still in just about every back shed, wreckers yard, tip, garage sale and paddock in Australia.

If people made an effort, and looked around, you might actually find that item you've been chasing for so long and not get suckered in by the Ebay con.

Just my opinion but I've been doing this a while, take it or leave it!

I have found over the last couple of years that every time I go to a swap meet the prices are getting dearer and dearer. Especially for XA-XC coupe stuff and Monaro stuff.

I have asked several stall keepers for certain parts and have often been told t

Thats all very well when you are in a location with car swap meets every second week but in WA we get about 3 or 4 a year so the chances of getting stuff you want/need are not that good sometimes. Ebay is good in that the part you want will turn up event

I've got the brown landau body on Ebay at the moment the first time I listed it with what I thought was a fair reserve of $1500 and the bidding went stupid. Thought I had described it well enough, in the end it was 2 newbie bidders fighting over it when t

I feel your pain Landy, you do everything right and some spanker lets you down.

I'd name these clowns in my item description when I relisted it, it would show to people that the reason it's being listed is genuine and also help other sellers to identif

looks like im alone here but i think ebay is pretty good,you can buy things from homw that sometimes would be very hard to find.if you think an item is only worth say $100 and you decide you are prepared to pay say $110 for it whats the problem????i have

You can only set reserves when listing motor vehicles.

I know this because I sold a car on there last month and I set a reserve.

There are no reserves available for other categories except motor cars, motor bikes etc.

I too believe that ebay is sometimes a bit 'how ya going' but for things like complete engines its great. You can buy engines for next to nothing and then resell them at a higher price than what you got it for, still under the real value. I still reckon t

I dont agree with a lot of things that go with ebay ,way too many crooks , I go to what ever swapmeets i can and all you hear the older im talking 60 and over is about the prices on ebay and they have a heap of them at home or at their stall , and what th

Agree with Craig's comment re: Ebay. I have found the Trading Post is a lot more realistic in terms of pricing and being able to negotiate with the seller(I have recently bought two HQ GTs/4's on teh Trading Post.