[SEL] 10. Re: United Type A followed me home!

[fero_ah at city-net.com]

Hi Tony,

Quoting Tony Pitts <mgomaize at yahoo.com>:

> Thanks for the link on the mag (120004362369).  Can't be in the market for
> one yet, but it is good to know what to look for. 

As Tommy said they can be hard to find and pretty pricy when you do find one. 
There are two main styles of these mags; one with a cast bronze body and one
with a cast zinc (or potmetal?) one.  My 3-1/2 hp United (T/G, gas/kero) has
the bronze body mag.  I've been told there can be significant cracking problems
with the other ones.

> It did seem rather unclassy of the seller to call out Arnie like that though.
> Not sure the story there, but it seemed an odd thing to do.

heh-heh-heh.  Methinks he doth protest too much...  (I wonder why?)

A good while back I had sent him an email on an engine he had listed on eBay
letting him know that his use of the "private bidder" feature would cause me to
not bid although I would have had it been an open auction.  I told him that his
stated "reasons" for choosing the private bidder method were bogus and that all
he was interested in was maximizing his selling price.  Fair enough, I told
him, nothing at all wrong with being a greedy bastard, that is after all why
eBay exists and why we put things up for sale.  You may recall another eBay
seller who switched to private bidders when folks were telling his bidders that
they could get Wendel's reprint BYB for $50 from Wendel when the seller had
listed it at $100 and was making sales well over that price.

I pointed out that another approach that some greedy bastard sellers use is to
have shill bidders run up the price on an auction.  I described how a potential
bidder can easily spot this, but NOT if the bidders are hidden.  He replied
"but look at my feedback" that clearly PROVES I don't use shill bidders.

Right...  All it shows is that the winning bidders were happy with the
transaction.  They might have been even happier if a shill bidder hadn't run
the price up (but there was no way for them, or anyone else, to know, was
there?).  In the unlikely event that a shill bidder wins, I'd wager he'd leave
FANTASTIC feedback...  8-))

Needless to say, this seller seems to be overly sensitive to the notion of
using
shill bidders.  This sensitivity seems to be a shared characteristic among
those who choose to run private bidder auctions.  But as long as they choose to
keep things hidden, you just need to trust 'em.  Or not...  As for me, I won't
bid on private auctions.

And that's the "rest of the story."

See ya,  Arnie

Arnie Fero
Pittsburgh, PA
fero_ah at city-net.com