Over Priced Used Motorhomes.

rgatijnet1 wrote:
Look on eBay for "completed" auctions. This will give you an idea of what coaches are actually selling for, NOT what people are asking for them. You will be surprised at how few are actually sold. Probably somewhere around 10% or less actually sell. Then compare the actual sales price and you will see that they are selling for below the low retail at NADA. Some of them are quite a bit below the low retail.

I also used to use Ebay "sold" auctions as a guide of value for items, but I learned that this is invalid as a measure, so I no longer use that method.

Here is why: I both sell and buy on ebay, have for many years. A couple months ago, I sold a used smartphone in an ebay auction for in the neighborhood of $250. The buyer was a deadbeat -- did not pay. Since I sell alot on ebay, I have it set up that after 4 days of no pay for an item, it automatically goes into a non-paying case in the Resolution Center. Then if the buyer has not paid after 4 more days, I as seller am issued by ebay, a refund of the fees they charged me when the item sold. I then re-listed the phone after the 8 day delay. The same exact thing happened, with a different deadbeat!! No pay, then my smartphone was tied up for another 8 days while I waited for the process to complete. Meanwhile, my item was off the market, and in the case of a smartphone, was depreciating.

So I started researching, and found that a LOT of used and unique items (this makes them easy to identify when re-listed by the same seller) that sold, were then re-listed, sometimes several times. So now I NEVER list an item on ebay as an auction, ONLY fixed price, and even then, I require "immediate payment", which means the deadbeats cannot tie up my item by bidding and not paying.

What I have found in my long years of selling experience is that auctions have the greatest amount of deadbeat bidders (as opposed to Buy it Now items), but both get them. Non-paying is rampant on ebay. Management doesn't seem to care, as there seems to be little penalty to the deadbeat buyers. I think one of the reasons they don't care, is that if you do not go thru the official ebay process I described, you will not recover your seller's fees. So if the seller just relists it after two or three days of non payment, then sells it again, he pays the sold fees twice! I can tell you that it's a major problem for sellers on ebay. Google it, and you will find discussions on forums of ebay sellers about the problem.

So bottom line, it is very dangerous to use sold ebay prices of items as a measure of value. You will end up with a lot of artificially inflated measures of value, since many of these items were never paid for, and thus are not real market numbers. There are often legitimate bidders who would have paid, but since they are bidding in good faith with real money behind their bids, when they are outbid by deadbeats, sometimes several of them, they stop bidding at a number that reflects their estimation of market value.