Wow, what a mess
Nearly 2000 items listed.....dealers dumping items (starting them below original list) and now we have the $.01 listers
Oh
well, I did try and warn everyone several times.......
Ok, this is not a debate about what an item is worth, we have beaten that horse to death, this is simply about the marketplace.
I speak about it because I was there when it began, and not just with King & Country, I have seen it numerious times in the other fields I am active in.
Reguarding King & Country when I began collecting there was
0 listings on ebay. I would say there was a very limited secondary market, if any. I recall Louis saying he made deals for the sitting stock of wooden vehicles from several dealers. I remember finding Treefrog on the internet and purchasing the entire Roman Fort which had been retired, and being quite pleased.
When new items slowly began to come out I decided to sell items that had been my 3rd or 4th choice from the shop I purchased K&C from to make room.
I was quite thrilled to get my $89 back to buy a new set (less selling fees) imagine someone wanting my WS26 with the driver so
out of scale (sorry Andy) maybe he really was 8' tall.
Each day I would check for K&C listings and find none.....then one day someone listed an AN set and it sold with a buy it now for $400! I only had one Arnhem set at the time the AN16 sitting alone in a showcase, so I decided to list mine because I have several new sets I wanted to get and mine sold in 15 minutes!
Then a WS15W the
real Winter Tiger (ok, I know its not the wooden version) sold for $1,000 and the market took off.
It became a great place where you could go and find almost anything, even on rare occasion a
wooden piece! You could also usually quite easily sell almost anything to purchase something else you wanted to buy. It was free and easy (not speaking about fees here). No right or wrong, everyone free to buy or sell what they wanted to just like our free market system.
What people fail to realize is that no one forces you to bid on something you feel is too expensive.
Also no matter who you are, there are always going to be items priced outside your budget.
Finally, when something sells for a high price, another person will be encouraged to sell his, thus giving someone else a chance to obtain a rare piece.......all of this is good.
Today all of that is in disarray, people can't seem to help themselves listing on top of each other, and now what prompted me starting this thread is out and out
FRAUD by a lister.
We have a person listing an item and claiming its limited to 500 pieces when actually 1250 were made.
Now anyone can make a mistake, so I dropped him a note giving him the correct information.
He told me I was wrong. So I asked him to simply check the King & Country website, correct his information with no need to respond.
He told me to mind my own business, well providing accurate information to another collector about something he is thinking about buying should be every decent collectors business.
Anyone interested in this sellers id can send me a pm or drop me a note at
njja@bellsouth.net I will be happy to provide you the information and auction number.
