PennyMachines Auction ended early

[aristomatic]

There is of course always the possibility the seller has not sold the machines to anyone on this forum, as he has not stated so or responded, so a lot of assumptions may being made.
My post started with, "maybe it was pulled by the seller", which of course by default he/she would have had to do if either:

changed their mind/decided to keep/been stolen, lost etc

[ii] thought in the end ebay or another avenue a better sales route

[iii] sold locally or to family member, e.g. not a forum member

[iv] or sell to a forum member

The OP post was about where the machine on the site auction had gone. The other option was that mods had pulled or the site experienced technical issues.
I suppose if the seller has pulled it, then they had access to the site to do that, at that time, so it's a fairly simple task to add to one of the posts they have asked for detailed info and assistance on, to update, particularly those people who had bid on their item that they have decided to keep or sold elsewhere or an other etc., which would have negated where has the auction gone..... .........................
However, it may just have been replaced with a thread with a different title then?!?!?

We may find out what happened, we may not, but I can see how frustrating it can be, especially to those (unlike me) who did bid on the item in the auction. I still remember losing out to a Dutch dealer (well the seller told me it was a Dutch dealer) on a batch of Jennings Sun Chief and Buckaroo cabinets and mechs. The seller agreed a price and a collection date, I had hired a van the previous night for the mid morning meet-up, to get a text just as I was about to leave to say that "the Dutch dealer" had offered him a bit more, so not only did I not get the bits, I had the cost of the van hire and the day wasted too. Now that was frustrating.....and that hurt for a long time. These days, I just see as swings & roundabouts, so these days it's still frustrating but it doesn't hurt. It's the arthritis that hurts me now.

GP

[rebelmc]

Hi,
Just thought I would post a message in reply to the comments posted. And really the comments posted have just re-emphasized the reasons why I pulled the auction. The machine has been sold to no-one on the forum (infact it has sold to nobody at all). And the current highest bidder was contacted before ending to say sorry its now not for sale.

Treefrog, who has been one of the most helpfull people on this forum has NOT purchased any machine from me. Just to make that clear!!

I had the intention of trying to value and possibly sell some machines. I was advised ebay was a no go (by members), but I have seen machines sell without issue, which leads me to believe that ebay can be used. And ebay is just a better/wider audience. Hense me pulling the auction.

Essentially I don't thinks the auction forum is as good as ebay for the following reasons.
On the auction site, I personally can see no evidence of anyone selling items. (If someone could correct me on this please, as It would have be great to go over other peoples listings to see what worked and what did not). This really worried me, mine being the only item listed!! And I cant see anything else that has sold. And theres not that much on the market for sale either.
Also, when attempting to setup my listing on the auction site, i found it very frustrating as the web page just did not work as intended. And my listing had to be manually added by the administrator.

So, I will be attempting to sell two machines via ebay, and listing them as incomplete. If they get pulled I would suspect it was because of a member of this forum. As so many people have seemed to mention the "mystery troll" informing ebay.

To cap it off, cant believe some members double standards. Your quick to make assumptions about the seller, but I have been contacted throughout the auction by members making offers...

Looking forward to other member comments.

[coppinpr]

only two comments on your post above,
1. the auction is not a pricing guide
2. NO member of this forum would inform to ebay , if you had any experience of this forum you would know that is impossible, the members of this forum have done more to get the selling of machines legalised than any other group in the history of the hobby. The troll,whoever he is, almost certainly scans this and all other sites involved and will try and get your machines removed, if they conform to the law Ebay will not pull them, good luck on Ebay, its a nice machine but its not headliner,its not going to be bought by a casual collector for his living room ,its a serious rebuild project,almost all the potential buyers are here,Im not mad because I has a bidder and lost out,Id reached my limit well before you pulled it.

[jonesthegarage]

Well, for me, I couldn't care less who sells what to who, but I would certainly share the frustration of being a bidder on an item that mysteriously disappeared, and it has to be said that the lister should have perhaps considered his chosen auction route more judiciously for such serious concerns to arise after the event, especially as the last time I looked it seemed to be going along quite nicely with a few bids against it.

Hopefully these items will appear on ebay or somewhere else and be open for all. I strongly suspect that for the rarer machines, particularly those needing restoration, the only people likely to bid in any auction format in any location are probably members of this forum anyway so the issue is not one of audience but of fees.

[aristomatic]

well seller has confirmed they did pull the auction to sell items through
a different route and i thank them for confirming that see post below

And ebay is just a better/wider audience. Hense me pulling the auction.

as i previously posted, as options that they could have taken.

maybe it was pulled by the seller

[ii] thought in the end ebay or other avenue a better sales route

the seller confirms that they contacted the high bidder when it was pulled
which i applaud, however, it had attracted a number of bids from a number
of people, including i believe the OP of this thread, who presumably had not
been contacted, as if he too had been contacted, he would have known and
as i said in my previous post, the thread would not have been started with his
opening post of course.

seller had a couple of threads but in their opening thread i think my first reply was this

If you have pix of the others, or a group style pix, then people could give relative values of the bandits and you may be surprised that ones you don't value as high as another, may surprise you. Either way...... you may be tempted by offers you receive directly, and you are free to accept any offer at anytime but it may be beneficial to gain a broader view, be that placing machine(s) in the Market here or at an auction house locally with online bidding, or alternate option.

and as you have confirmed you did receive offers directly and have not been tempted to sell to any of those but have decided to offer the machines to a route that gives that broader view and audience and you have decided ebay as that route.

which is your decision to make of course as they are your machines and you are free to do whatever you wish.


well good luck with ebay as your preferred option, although its seem strange that further in your post you allude

that the items may be removed by ebay and that if your listings are removed then you would suspect that it would

be because of the actions of a forum member from your previous post.

"If they get pulled I would suspect it was because of a member of this forum"


members including myself have given advice that it would be very difficult to sell on ebay.

i myself have sold a number of machines and lots of parts on ebay however i am currently

in ebay special measures sin bin for breaching slot machine policy, [and that was for an incomplete

machine with no coin entry parts and no payout mechanism parts but ebay still pulled it though].

i do have a single machine permit for my next machine, which took x3 weeks and an email trail

as long as this thread to achieve, so hopefully they will not remove my next listing, so i have personal

experience of the ebay situation.

however, you are correct that sometimes incomplete machines & even sometimes working machines

have reached their scheduled end date without a permit, however its a very small percentage indeed.

but the only way to guarantee that the machine listing will not be removed is to get a permit for each

machine and as you had stated you wanted to clear some space before xmas other options the ebay

route with a permit wasnt an option, so other options were discussed/offered/advised.


so good luck with your ebay listings, if you need any advice on listing stuff fire away but as i am in

special measures you may wish to ignore any advice given by me.


feel sure site owners will add their response regarding the site issues you feel you have experienced


of course you could list both incomplete machines on ebay at £99 each BIN [buyitnow] and they would

sell before ebay police could remove the listing...only joking of course. [although i am aware of at least

one instance where ebay removed the listing AFTER it had been sold on the site, yep AFTER it had been

sold but before payment and collection]

GP

[youngerap]

I wish you well with the ebay route but it would be an unsafe (not to mention unpleasant or, even, unnecessary) assumption to suggest that a member of this forum would be the cause of any listing being removed. I understand your wanting to gain as wide an audience as possible for your auction lots, but you must appreciate that ebay will almost certainly remove them if they do not comply with their requirements (i.e. be listed in accordance with the current Law as regards the selling of gaming machines).

PennyMachines is a site frequented by folk who freely give of their time and knowledge to those of us who have taken an interest in this hobby but have much to learn. Personally, I could not see such people being interested in the sort of malicious activities that you suggest.

[jonesthegarage]

in the spirit of what usually happens on our beloved forum, I am now going off on a tangent that came up in a previous post. I was actually victim of Ebay pulling a "Buy It Now" listing after I had bought it! As it happens because it was extremely early one morning I had already emailed the seller after committing to buy as I wanted to pick it up that afternoon, so we ended up doing the deal and Ebay lost out on their fees.

It was the first, and sadly, the only time I had met Harold English although I was aware of his name and reputation even though I was a newcomer to the hobby. He had listed the machine cheaply as "complete but with fault" and it might not surprise those of you who who knew him that over the few hours I ended up with him he actually fixed the fault before I left! I spent a very enjoyable afternoon with him and although he was in advanced stages of his cancer by then I ended up helping him have a sort out and coming away with another 3 "projects" and a fantastic Rialto.

Don't know if it's his family selling them but there was an Ebay listing for a Rotamint that bore his stamp a week or two ago and there is a Finale NSM currently on there for £500. The last thing I need is another Rotamint and I've no idea if the Finale is worth £500 but I can't justify it.

[aristomatic]

a final thought with regard to ebay,

it is of course true that just by listing the machines you will have option of possibly reaching

a wider audience and if they are not removed within first x12 hours then you may of course

reach a highish % of those that would have been interested & they would of course have by default

have all your contact details, whether they bid or offer whilst item is listed or post removal [if item

is removed].

so whilst you may not get to the scheduled end with possibility of those classic last minute bids

you may by default get those bids off ebay and if the item[s] are removed as previous poster says,

you would not have to pay the ebay fees for that wider exposure gained.....................................


but it/they may be pulled after 20 mins of course....

GP

[pennymachines]

The auction was closed by the seller sometime after 9 PM Wednesday evening.
The listing can be found from the Closed Auctions link.
The winning bid was £229 from Widget2k4.
This means that Rebelmc opted to end the auction at that bid and sell to Widget2k4.

By doing so, he has not contravened the auction rules. Next to the Ending Time on each listing it says * This may change with a link to this notice:

This auction may end before the stated end time:

The vendor may end the auction at any time if there are no bids.

If there are bids, the vendor may end the auction early and sell to the highest bidder.

The auction may be cancelled at our discretion if in violation of our policies.

This auction may end after the stated end time:

Any bids placed in the final minute of the auction will automatically extend the closing time by 5 minutes from the time the bid was placed. The auction will only close once a final minute has elapsed without bids.

I was surprised the vendor chose to do this and can only conjecture that his eagerness to convert the machine to cash before Christmas outweighed a desire to maximize the selling price. The choice of a five day auction was indicative of a desire to sell quickly. Whatever the reason, it was the seller's choice and right to do so, within the auction rules.

On the other hand, if Widget2k4 asked Rebelmc to pull the auction in exchange for cash on this machine and the Roman Head which Rebelmc had already effectively advertised via the Forum, I would accuse both of abusing my efforts to provide a venue on this website where collectors can trade fairly. I would also accuse them of disrespecting the slot machine community - a small, close-networking group; ageing perhaps, but with long memories. Finally, if Rebelmc did enter into such a deal, he has only himself to blame for throwing money away. Whereas using the auction currently costs nothing, accepting offers outside of it would almost certainly be a costly mistake. A bidder who asks you to withdraw from an auction and sell privately, does so for one reason - to save money by removing the competition.

Perhaps, Rebelmc or Widget2k4 would care to comment?

[coppinpr]

The winning bid was £229 from Widget2k4.
This means that Rebelmc opted to end the auction at that bid and sell to Widget2k4.

not true mr p ,or so the seller said in a post

The machine has been sold to no-one on the forum (infact it has sold to nobody at all

[pennymachines]

I'm sorry - I did not have time to read rebelmc's defence of his behaviour.
I'm also sorry that he is not telling the truth. He forgets perhaps that all data sent via this website can be accessed by mods. Perhaps now he may choose to save face and abandon the deal he has made with Widget2k4 and put both machines on ebay. That's up to him.
In the circumstances I've decided to remove both offending accounts from this site.

[jonesthegarage]

Bravo the mods, immediate removal a bit North Korean but I think probably justified.

[pennymachines]

It's not the sort of imperious approach I wanted to take, but I think rebelmc's disingenuous defence forced my hand. I'm afraid that bemoaning this site's unsuitability for selling his wares, while surreptitiously using it to do just that, and in a way that was guaranteed to upset other bidders, was bound to bring out the Kim Jong-un in me.

Furthermore, had I accepted his claim that he had not sold the Firmans, this would also have been a breach of the Auction User Agreement:

Once a bid has exceeded your reserve price, you are placed in a binding contract to sell your item to whoever is the highest bidder at the end of your auction. Failure to do so will be treated as a serious offence and will result in cancellation of your account here.

[aristomatic]

and what of your illusive mystery troll...............they must be gutted!

watching and waiting for a revamped firmans

and an incomplete castle front to appear........

alas no

GP

[coppinpr]

a great pity that harsh action was needed ,but very nesercery to maintain the creditability of the market,the forum auction and indeed the forum itself , Full marks to Mr P for taking swift and strong action.
As I said before, I was never angry at being a bidder let down in the auction,I really had dropped out by then, but the misuse of the forum really bugged me.

Do you think that the great uncle's execution in North Korea was the result of him breaking the rules on Kim Jong-un's nuclear weapon auction page

[harvey73]

Would just like to say its a disgrace how 2 members got banned from this forum regarding the auction, and for copper to say what he said about it when he was in fact the first member to pm the seller of the machine to sell him it, then with treefrog hot on his heels making offers as well as several others including hutto and other well established members who should have known better.
But the 2 new members got the ban hammer.

[slotalot]

The Mods have made their decision, This is the best site on the internet for our hobby and normally has no problems,maybe we should just let the matter rest and move on?

[treefrog]

I wonder if Harvey used to be a Rebel

[slotalot]

I wonder if Harvey used to be a Rebel

If he is, then Dave will know from his IP address

[harvey73]

Point is almost all collectors on here made contact to try and buy the machines so where was their loyalty to penny machines then ?
Hiding ip addresses is really easy so that's not a worry
But admin should look into all private messages so he can see exactly who's playing fair in this forum I think he will get a big shock