rgatijnet1 wrote:
If you want to get an idea of REAL selling prices, rather than NADA guesses or "asking" prices, go to eBay and find a coach similar to what you would consider. Then look at COMPLETED auctions. Those with the price in green will give the dollar figure that someone was actually willing to pay. You will find that most coaches do not sell at their asking prices and those that do sell are sold at well below the NADA guide values.
That's one way to try to determine the market on items, and I use the method myself, but very carefully and with a grain of salt. There is one caveat in using this method that makes it very difficult to determine if those green numbers are "real sales", that is, completed auctions that were actually paid for. If the high bidder never paid for the item, then that sold sale number is meaningless.
Ebay goes very easy on deadbeat bidders who are the winning bidders on items, but then don't pay for the item. If you look for it in the current items for sale, you will often find that the same "sold item" has been relisted. And often the same item may be "sold" more than once to deadbeat bidders, then re-listed in search of a real money bidder! This is further complicated by the fact that there is a time lag between when the item shows as sold, and when the item is usually re-listed. This delay is due to the fact that if the seller wants his sale fees refunded from Ebay, the required process of allowing the high bidder the required time to pay, then the process his non-payment so that Ebay will refund seller fees, will take an absolute minimum of a week to two weeks.
As a long time Ebay seller myself, I found that the auction style sale attracts the most deadbeat bidders. Fixed price sales don't attract near as many deadbeat bidders, so I very seldom sell items via auction method, instead determining what I feel the market will bear for the item, then selling it at a fixed price.
