Collector madness
 

Check out the price on this NIB Venom engine!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...e=STRK:MEWA:IT

RE: Collector madness
 

Larry,

WOW ! Just when I think I have seen it all there is always something else!!!And to think I can make a darn good clone. Did you happen to see the USED Golden Bee several weeks ago that went for something like $140.00!!!!I emailed the the buyer and asked why he paided so much and was I missing something. He said he always had wanted one[X(]

Later,Tim

RE: Collector madness
 

Unbelievable. I'm a little curious. Is that thousand number right? What is the difference between the Black Widow and the Venom?

RE: Collector madness
 

John,

I am sure Larry will set me straight on this if I am wrong. Take an old(ie GOOD) Killer Bee and add a Black Widow tank. Anodize the case red instead of gold/yellow. The real only super rare piece on a Venom is the thin wall/top piston and the cylinder that blew apart when they where turned up high rpm's by the racers. As far as I can tell the current Cox "Sure Start" engines have the same bypass's as the Venom's had, just the "Sure Start" has no SPI and twin slit exhaust. I have heard from 1,000 to 2,00 were made. I have heard alot of stories from people that raced them in CL mouse 1 and blew up. Funny how you see so many NIB on e$ay. Who the heck buys an engine in the mid 90's and never ran it. Unless I could hold it in my hands I would never buy a used one. Way to easy to clone...heck I have a red anodize crankcase in my hand right now. I could slap a plastic backplate on a Black Widow tank, a TD cylinder and head, turn down a hex prop driver and have a clone just like that.

LAter,
Tim

RE: Collector madness
 

What really makes this thing so unreal is the high bidder is a very experienced E*** user, and this thing still has 4 days to go. Guess I'll have to dig out my Dragonfly and QRC and throw them out for bid. There was a Conquest six channel going for over 200 that finished yesterday. Didn't get to see the final price.

RE: Collector madness
 

I see I'm not alone in watching cox engines on theebay, what about the bidding wars for .020 teedee's!! its amazing sometimes..I know there are programs where you can out bid someone in the last few seconds by $1 or something like that ,but now there is a program where a seller can find out what your max bid is and match it (or have someone match it) that way he gets your max bid but your still the winner,,so its better to keep an eye on your prize than put a high bid in just to be sure you win...its happened to me twice,,no more(luckily I lost by $1 this last time),,,Hey Tim ,hows that choke tube killer bee mount coming?..Rog
I think I saw that golden bee you were talking about,,I've seen 3 engines go for $5 and 2 of the same thing a week later will be $50.. oh and the ever elusive rare silver bee theres one on now:),have ya seen the .15 size arf trainer its only $29 but its $20 to ship it,thats the turn off for me,

RE: Collector madness
 

I've never used *bay but I have a NIB Venom (never even loosened the twist tie retainer), looks like it might be worth the adventure. Could buy lots of little servos with the proceeds, heck, maybe even a new JR 9303 radio.[8D]

RE: Collector madness
 

"Collectors".... gotta love em......they have certainly financed a BUNCH of my projects and they continue to do so. I do wish Cox would begin production of the .020 TEE DEE again just so they wouldn't be so pricey. Yes, I have one of those (gotta love these terms) "Ultra Rare, factory packaged" tee dee .020's. But I'm not "collecting" anything.. it's gonna fly something !!!!... That is.. unless somebody REALLY wants it...LOL... funny how that happens...... I will never tell anybody when they ask how much I want for something that, "you don't have the money"...I've had too many people prove me WRONG....LOL....

Deadstik....[8D]

RE: Collector madness
 

I'd love to have a mid 60's Cox 290 or Baby Bee still in the bubble pack. I can still remember the magic of buying my first stack of balsa and the painful decision of which engine to buy from behind the glass display case. Somehow just having a box of engines that are identical isn't the same.

One day I'll have a den and perhaps I'll put in a small display case with a set of shelve in the back of it. I'll stock the shelves with a few period kit boxes and the case with a few engines in boxes and add a counter top display of Perfect accessories.

......Then I'll watch the cobwebs grow on the stuff.... You know, perhaps some things are best enjoyed as memories that form the foundation of today and leave them lay as they are.

... I'm rambling I know but it's grey and raining out today so that's OK :D

RE: Collector madness
 

My sentiments exactly, BRUCE. Life is too short to just see how much can be just merely possessed. If a guy has a talent for parlaying collectibles so he can finance his hobby, that's cool too, but there's only soo many hours in a " RC day" and I would rather think they are better spent either building or flying. After hearing ROGs' revelation about the skullduggery that goes on with the bidding at thebay, I'm amazed but I'm not surprised. The back corner of the LHS is still a good place to find deals on COX motors. I might never find a VENOM, but like TIM says, there are easy enough ways to build one.

RE: Collector madness
 

Did you notice he had a $199 starting price? $380 now. Unbefreakinglievable.

Think I should try it? The pair cost me about $200. Nice profit.

Bill.

RE: Collector madness
 

$380!!! What a crock. More $$$ than sense if you ask me. The seller is probably planning his Carribean cruise right now. At least HE isn't trying to gouge anybody on shipping. I've seen some sellers that would charge $15 to ship it priority mail on top of the selling price! OH, if only his WIFE knew!

Brian

RE: Collector madness
 

Fooey!

Brian, I thought you were coming in with a bid of $2250 for my pair of RC 05 Coxes.

Drat!

(Haw)

Bill.

RE: Collector madness
 

Dont blame the sellers for these high prices guys... I have sold probably >1000 model related things on ebay since 1999. Many a time I put up an unused engine or kit I bought (with many a good intention at the time) and ended up getting WAY more than what I had ever hoped. In some cases I even pay for the shipping since I thought the buyer paid toomuch to begin with. I felt kind of guilty!

And other times... I had two brand new, mint, unopened golden bees I barely sold for my $35 starting bid, and a few weeks later I sold a USED golden bee for $65!! Ebay is weird... it is a place that can be entertaining and fun, and on the other hand frustrating and maddening. :)

Tim, regarding unused engines... I have on many occasion bought engines and left then unused in the box for years before deciding to sell them... I doubt the Venom purchasers back in the 90's expected them to fetch so much $$ 10 yrs later. But if I knew... I would have ordered a dozen myself! :)

Its the crazy buyers that drive the prices up...not the sellers. If you dont want to pay the asking price no one forces you to bid, right?

How you guys all doing anyhow? I have been a little, well, busy lately. I miss chatting here but I hope to be back to some kind of normality soon..

AJC

RE: Collector madness
 

Hey AJ, yeah thats what I was saying, I've seen couple of .049's go for $10 one week and a week later 1 of them was $50..its the buyer/bidders.......so how's work going?:D/..Rog

RE: Collector madness
 

What program is that, that will tell you what the bidder's max bid is?
Do tell. Far as I know, no such thing exists.
But if it does, the whole world will want to know, so do tell!


And, kudos to what Andrew Coholic says. Ebay fluctuates WILDLY. Find two guys who REALLY want a Venom, and you have a bidding war like this.
And watch two things happen:
1. Next week, everybody and his brother will dig out their venom and DEMAND $400 for it on ebay. None will sell.
2. Everybody NOT on ebay, at swaps and collectos, will mark their Venoms at $450!

And next week, the price will be back to where it was, $100-$200 or so.
Count on it. And do NOT count on financing your Caribeean vacation on your drawer full of venoms. Just because ONE goes for $380 does not mean another will.

RE: Collector madness
 

Ah, two more things...
Shipping charges...
Don't complain about anybody's shipping charges, as long as they are stated ahead of time. NEVER bid on anything without knowing the shipping charge first.
But I want to explain something to you about ebay shipping charges. A lot of people will pad the shipping charge...and there is a very good reason.
You do not pay ebay fees on the shipping amount. And your ebay listing fee is less if the starting bid is less. So people do it to lower the ebay fees. Ebay is rich enough already, don't worry about that.
Just factor in the shipping and handling into what you bid, consider it part of the cost of the item and bid accordingly. It's not "ripping you off" if they state it up front. Use your head.
Tower and most other companies make a huge profit off of shipping and handling. Huge. Go order a $20 sweater from Land's End, pay $13.99 s/h, and they ship it to you UPS for $1.50 cost to them. The reality is you actually bought a $33 sweater...but they TOLD you before you bought it.
Larry R...did you send me an email in december? I lost it in a computer crash before I could read it...

RE: Collector madness
 

Easy:

Does this mean you also are not interested in my TeeDee RC 05 engine pair for $1998? I promise you I wont add more than $502 for shipping.

Haw.

Welcome back, you've been missed.

Bill.

RE: Collector madness
 

You're just saying you missed me in hopes that I will buy those 05RC lemons....
That was a dog of an engine. The norvel is everything that engine is not!
Smart money would make the minimum bid $2 and the shipping $1998...

You will see more and more sellers "jacking up" the shipping...ebay fees are getting pretty high. I put "jacking up" in quotes, because it does NOT mean people are paying more for the item...they are paying LESS, because the seller pays less to ebay.

$380, anyway...SEEMS like a lot for an engine...but in the engine collecting world, it's beans.
At the recent Christies auction of the estate of the late, great Miguel De Rancogne, plenty of engines went for $5000 or more. Lots of them. Engines that were worth $380, well...Christies bundled them into lots of 10, as that was too small a number to deal with, $380...

RE: Collector madness
 

It really is amazing what some of this stuff goes for. I have only bought a few items on the bay, and I always watch to see what one item goes for, before bidding on the next similar item that is listed. As an example, I wanted a Tee Dee .020, so I watched for a month before bidding(no sense rushing, since I didn't yet have a plane for it), and determined from that NIB or good condition TD's were going for a selling price from $45-85 shipped. I couldn't find one locally, so I had to bite the bullet and start bidding; I set a cap of $60 shipped. I was patient, and got outbid on the first 10 that came up. Took another month of watching and bidding to get what I wanted, and I still felt like I got hosed at the end of it. However, the first time I fired that li'l bugger up on the nose of my ladybug, the price became a moot point:D. Incidentally, someone said "who buys an engine in the mid '90s and doesn't run it...?". Well, I've got two norvels and an OS .10 that have been sitting on my shelf for at least two years, not because I'm collecting, but because my current crop of planes just refuse to die, and because time and fiscal constraints have thus far prevented me from building the planes those engines were intended to pull around. So...it does happen. Maybe a lot of guys do the same: buy a plane and/or engine, get too busy to build/run it, and lose interest, finally deciding to e-bay it.

RE: Collector madness
 

I still have a pair of OS Max III 15 r/c engines NIB. Brand new, more than 30 years old. As Matt said, just haven't built the plane.

Bill.

RE: Collector madness
 

Ok, let me be the first to say that I like collecting. I'm a bit of a pack-rat. heh heh Of course I don't collect to extremes mainly due to monetary constraints. Plus I do it for different reasons than most I suppose. I collect what 'I' like, not what the 'collecting community' sees or accepts as collectable. For instance I have a nice collection of plastic 1/72 and 1/48 scale kits of Polish airplanes. While a few kits are quite rare, most are fairly pedestrian. Same goes for glow engines. I think my rarest is an open rocker Saito 4 stroke but I also plan to display a Norvel .061 Revlite r/c with the Litemachines cooling head and a fluwheel/clutch setup as installed on the Bolink Nitro Legends r/c cars. Why the Norvel? Well simply because I like the way it looks with the tall cooling head and clutch setup, not because of it's $$ value. I also agree with Matt and William in that most of the engines I've bought were originally intended for a project that isn't likely to materialize because of new interests, etc. I originally acquired the Norvel pieces for instance in hopes of installing the engine in a scratch-built r/c car. But since now my interests have shifted to 1/2A planes that Norvel will become a shelf queen.