Holly Crap! $178 for a shift knob?

There was one in an issue of Sport Compact Car or one of those "ricer" magazines. 30,000.....yeah that's right, more then your car and mine combined.
 
yeah but i bet it was made of platinum and diamonds....

this one is just some ordinary leather shift knob. nothin special.

i guess if you put a price on something, some idiots bound to buy it.
 
No, you're not crazy, or a retard, BUT, I have to admit I bid $175 and LOST. Why did I bid that much? Well, I have an 89 that I'm restoring and I want an original shift knob. I bid $102.50, and I was high bidder for a week, and then I was outbid at the last minute. I quickly bid $175 knowing no one would ever bid that much for a shift knob and I would easily come out the winner. WRONG!!! He outbid me with 3 seconds to go I think. Needless to say, I was pissed off because I lost the auction. The next day I was emailed with an offer to buy a second shift knob the guy had for my losing bid of $175. I offered $100 but the guy declined and asked why I wouldn't spend the $175. I responded saying that I had been screwed over before- more than once I have bid on an item, only to have a friend of the person running the auction jack the bidding price up so my max bid is reached, or I'm outbid, just to have 'an identical item' offered to me for my high bid a day after the auction ended. He replied quite irked at me, saying he wouldn't sell me the other one at any price, and wished me luck at finding another one.

I'm quite sure I was quilty of 'speaking before I think' when I sent that second email to him, but thats how I see things. Maybe when he puts the second shift knob up for auction, he'll sell it to my wife:)
 
89FORCEFED95 said:
I'm quite sure I was quilty of 'speaking before I think' when I sent that second email to him, but thats how I see things. Maybe when he puts the second shift knob up for auction, he'll sell it to my wife:)

Hi,

There was no 'Second Knob'.
You were right, he was just pushing your bid up under a different username.
Those sleaze buckets have been using that trick forever.
They then make a 'last chance offer' cuz there was no other bidder, quite brazen of these guys... I would have told him to put it where the sun don't shine...
I would stay away from that seller if I were you.

paul
 
Hi,

There was no 'Second Knob'.
You were right, he was just pushing your bid up under a different username.
Those sleaze buckets have been using that trick forever.
They then make a 'last chance offer' cuz there was no other bidder, quite brazen of these guys... I would have told him to put it where the sun don't shine...
I would stay away from that seller if I were you.

paul
__________________

Actually the person that won is a member here. Chances are whoever has that knob has a few of them and figured it was worth gold because of the bididng war.

Is it worth it?.....a NOS shifter knob which you can no longer buy?..The choice is yours
 
DamonSlowpokeBaumann said:
Actually the person that won is a member here. Chances are whoever has that knob has a few of them and figured it was worth gold because of the bididng war.

Is it worth it?.....a NOS shifter knob which you can no longer buy?..The choice is yours

I am curious as to the final tally of restoring an old car and making the numbers match.
 
Still Kinda crazy!.....But I understand when it comes to a restoration and having your goal in place.


But if anyone is interested. I have a factory cigarette lighter never used for $300................
 
Caveat eBay Emptor

89FORCEFED95 said:
The next day I was emailed with an offer to buy a second shift knob the guy had for my losing bid of $175.

Shill Bidding is ILLEGAL by E-bay rules. If you suspect anybody of shill bidding, you should report them to E-bay immediately. That is exactly what happened to you. The seller probably has 2 E-bay ID's & used the second one to bid $5000 for the shift knob. Then offer it to you, for your max. bid. E-bay will ban a seller for that practice.

Here's more information on that practice.

April 5, 2006
Caveat eBay Emptor
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Young/?p=18&tag=nl.e550
Posted by Jeffrey S. Young @ 1:08 pm

I’m never going to use eBay again.

Now this is no material issue to the billion dollar company, since I’ve only bought a couple of things on it over the life of the company. The real eBayer in our family is our eldest daughter, a college student on a tight budget with a heightened interest in getting the best deal on everything. But even she agrees that something is rotten in Denmark. Especially with a “feature” called Second Chance, an official eBay method of bid shilling that might not be illegal, It didn't have to be this way if eBay had kept focusing on its core product, instead of chasing the grail of growth at all costs. but it sure subverts the original promise of the company.

The real issue here is for shareholders. eBay looks like another Internet company—see this musing on Google—that has taken its eyes off a core business by buying Skype to satisfy Wall Street’s demand for growth at all costs. My evidence? A tale of damaged expectations, misleading descriptions, manipulated bids, colluding sellers, meaningless “feedback ratings”, and financial shenanigans, all of which is part of a recent eBay experience.

It all started when I tried to buy a handbag for my wife’s birthday. She wanted a particular “Prada” one, but since the designer has no store in northern California, we took a look on eBay. I’ve since realized that even used handbags with this marque cost upwards of a thousand dollars, but I naively assumed that a $300 handbag (palpitations!) on eBay was pricey enough to be legitimate. When I saw several dozen “authentic” “guaranteed” “brand new” bags, festooned with glowing descriptions and lots of fancy sounding guarantees—stamped metal and lining logos, “controllata” card certificates of authenticity, etc.– all being auctioned by a bevy of “power sellers” and eBay members with hundreds of positive feedback ratings and their own online “stores”, I figured we had found a great source. After all, eBay, great brand name that it has promoted itself to become, wouldn’t let pirates and scamsters take over their service would they?

So we bid on a bag. As usual (as counseled by our daughter), nothing much happened until the very last half hour, when one bidder pushed up the bid price until it exceeded our “maximum” (the price we had shared with eBay as our limit.) We were disappointed, but philosophical. There were several others on offer after all. One would be ours.

The next morning I was surprised to find an official email from eBay informing me that although I had lost the auction, the winner had backed out and I now had a “Second Chance” to buy the bag for my bid “limit” amount. I was a bit nonplussed that what I had thought was a private amount was now being publicly revealed, and I wondered how the buyer could have decided to back out between Sunday night and Monday morning when the email was sent to me, but no matter. I went ahead and agreed to the “Second Chance” deal. After all, I had been willing to pay that much so what was the problem?

It wasn’t until the handbag arrived a week later that things started to come unraveled. While the bag was well made, and was of genuine leather, the handle was a mishmash , didn’t match the rest of the bag and signaled a high quality knockoff. My wife claimed that she knew all along that it was going to be a copy—I was reeling at the price for a fake and wasn’t so easily mollified—and that if the handle had matched she would have kept it. We returned it.

That was when I started to look a little more closely at the sales environment at eBay. Here’s my list of problems.

1. The Second Chance idea is simply a way for sellers to smoke out your maximum bid, then offer to sell you the item at your limit. An associate bids up the item until you drop out, signaling that your maximum has been reached. The next day the associate backs out, and eBay offers you the item for your limit price. This makes the idea that you’re actually able to get a “deal” for anything, a fiction—the best you’ll ever do is pay whatever limit you’ve set. And it is particularly ironic since eBay makes a big deal out of policing “bid shilling” (what it calls the practice of enlisting a fake bidder to up the price) and then offers an official way to do the same thing…

2. The profusion of resellers of fake luxury goods makes eBay more like a Chinese side street market than an American flea market. Worse, because you have no way to know that the picture of the item has anything to do with the thing you’ll eventually receive, it is actually worse. At least in a market you can handle the goods before buying them.You also have to read every word of the return policy carefully—many “power sellers” say that all sales are final. In this case if what you receive isn’t what you thought was described, there is very little recourse. While this is a tough issue, eBay needs to police itself somehow.

3. There is massive collusion among sellers. After I returned the original bag, I started looking carefully at other sellers. It was then that I realized that there was another “power seller” with the same picture, very similar description, same shipping charges, and similar price operating out of the same mid-sized Oregon town. This seemed too coincidental to be chance alone at work, especially since the two of them were the only sellers in the eBay world with this particular handbag. Was one of their associates also the bidder against me in the auction? Who knows…eBay should be able to figure it out if they put some of the brilliant guys who keep Skype alive on the issue.

4. The “feedback” ratings are meaningless. My daughter explained to me that if you try to say something negative about a seller, they simply threaten to post nasty comments about you in return, thus tarnishing your “rating” and ensuring that you’ll never get your money back. This is why there are so few negative comments. Essentially eBay pretends to be a buyer friendly place, but in actuality it is skewed to the sellers. This is probably good for business—since people who sell lots of things on the service generate the most profits—but it is ultimately going to be bad for eBay as more and more buyers give up on this unfriendly, unpoliced environment.

5. PayPal, while providing some assurance that a completely fraudulent transaction can be rescinded, is playing the “float” in a way that might be expected from an old-line bank, not from a new-generation Internet financial institution. Within minutes of my agreement to take the Second Chance offer, I noticed that the money was electronically sucked out of my bank account. However, the transaction was not officially completed (i.e. money credited to the seller as evidenced by an email) for two days, or 48 hours. PayPal charged me a fee, and used my money for 48 hours. Nothing illegal about this, just another example of a customer-last attitude that augurs danger for the future of eBay.


So, enough of this screed. Many of you are probably whispering "Caveat Emptor" under your breath. I agree. And I’ll be much more caveat in the future. The sad thing is that a great idea, which was well implemented at first, has degenerated into another den of human venality where the honest citizen has no chance against the sharpies and the scamsters.

But it didn’t have to be this way if eBay had kept focusing on its core product, instead of chasing the grail of growth at all costs. I won’t be shopping at eBay again.

Jeffrey S. Young is the co-author of iCon Steve Jobs. He currently tends a vineyard in Northern California.
 
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BOSS 429 battery caps

DamonSlowpokeBaumann said:
Is it worth it?.....a NOS shifter knob which you can no longer buy?..The choice is yours
You probably wouldn't pay $1,200.00 for NOS BOSS 429 battery caps either. BUT the guy restoreing a BOSS 429 with all NOS parts, would jump at those batt. caps. @ that price!!! It's all about supply & demand.

68COUGAR
 
Re: Numbers Matching

JStudrawa said:
I am curious as to the final tally of restoring an old car and making the numbers match.
"Matching Numbers" is a phrase that's thrown around very loosly in automotive circles. Ford stopped the practice in the early '60's (except for a few specialty cars like BOSS 429 & then it wasn't Ford, but Car Craft that did it). Today "numbers matching", as it applys to Fords, only means that the casting dates of all the cast parts, fall within 60 days of the cars ACTUAL build date. The "build date" of the car has nothing to do with the date the car was actually built. It ONLY tells when the car was SCHEDULED to be built, based on production schedules, at the time the car was ordered.

So next time somebody tells you that they have a "numbers matching" car, Ask them which numbers they think match, & where they are located!!!

68COUGAR
 
68COUGAR said:
You probably wouldn't pay $1,200.00 for NOS BOSS 429 battery caps either. BUT the guy restoreing a BOSS 429 with all NOS parts, would jump at those batt. caps. @ that price!!! It's all about supply & demand.

68COUGAR

I agree completely, but I would stake a check on it that if a NOS knob was available. It wouldn't draw that kind of price. Its a shame, because it goes back to your statement. If the want and need is there. You will pay it.


I have some what of the same problem now. There are things I need and want for this SC. I have the ability, not necessariliy the skills. But without the proper tools. You end up buying from someone else.

Fore xample....Gears. No one I talk to wants to touch an IRS gear install. So I buy all of the needed supplies and take it and the center section to a Ford dealer and find a mechanic that will charge me $200 for just the gear install. I still have to put the center section in........SUPPLY & DEMAND!
 
IRS vs. Solid Axle

Dahoopd said:
Fore xample....Gears. No one I talk to wants to touch an IRS gear install. So I buy all of the needed supplies and take it and the center section to a Ford dealer and find a mechanic that will charge me $200 for just the gear install.
Any Nimrod with a TQ Wrench can bolt a ring gear on. What's difficult is knowing how to set up the diff. in the car. Pinion Depth? Crush Sleeve? Coast pattern? Heel Pattern? Side shims?

What's so special about an IRS 8.8"? If the shop doesn't want to do an IRS 8.8, then they don't know how to do a solid axle 8.8 either!!! Run Away, RUN AWAY!!!

68COUGAR

(apologies to Monty Python ;) )
 
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Dahoopd said:
But if anyone is interested. I have a factory cigarette lighter never used for $300................

LMAO ROTF
Thanks!
:D :D :D
Heck, I have about $12,000 of spare parts from my 92!
Funny......
 
DamonSlowpokeBaumann said:
Is it worth it?.....a NOS shifter knob which you can no longer buy?..The choice is yours

Nope. Not to me.
I have a spare one where the leather had fallen off long ago, I plan on making a new cover for it. Should cost a little under $4 for the material I'll need...
To each his own though:)

paul
 
Hell in a Handbag!

68COUGAR said:
Shill Bidding is ILLEGAL by E-bay rules. If you suspect anybody of shill bidding, you should report them to E-bay immediately. That is exactly what happened to you. The seller probably has 2 E-bay ID's & used the second one to bid $5000 for the shift knob. Then offer it to you, for your max. bid. E-bay will ban a seller for that practice.

Ya, its too bad those folks have endless possibility for user id's!
Another scam I had fallen pery to ONCE was a seller with an astronomical positive feedback number. I later deduced from reading this 'positive fedback' that it was Manufactured to a moderate degree, most likely to offset the nasty negatives the seller had.
For me as a rule of thumb, if they have more than 2 negs from other buyers in a 3 month period, I stay away.
Another thing I noticed is that eBay will slander you to potential Buyers/sellers if you fail to pay PayPals Disgustingly high fees.
I won't sell there ever again after that.
>Shameless promo<<
Use Craigslist! Its free, and theres plenty of stuff in your area you could just go and look at it!:D

paul
 
sorta off topic

The new Focus ST shift knob fits... I know it is not 'factory original' but it is a Ford part, leather, cheap and a direct bolt on.
 
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