eBay Experiment
I imagine a lot of you are like me (better looking, though–I can see that from here), occasionally checking out eBay for cars or parts, even if you’re “just browsing.” After all, how else can you keep tabs on how much a copy of Dr. Haddock’s book is now selling for? We’re too polite to note that you’re greedily eying your own copy of the sacred tome at this moment–which was purchased for $19 not so long ago.
So, ostensibly as a public service, but mostly for my own amusement, I’ve added a tab to the left bar which pulls up pages of eBay auctions of interest to these sites’ users–both cars and parts:
[ E-Type Cars ] [ Parts ] | [ XK Cars ] [ Parts ] | [ Saloon Cars ] [ Parts ]
There are a lot of things to note:
- There is no way I formed perfect enough queries to catch everything, so if you’re seriously in the hunt for something, be sure to do your own searching on ebay. Don’t forget to try odd spellings and different categories. It’s rare to find much listed that way these days, but you never know.
- There is no endorsement here of anything other than providing a new time-waster for you, gentle reader. I’ve bought quite a bit on eBay and have only been mildly burned once, and even that turned out in the end. But use caution, educate yourself about common eBay scams, note that if something looks too good to be true it almost certainly is, and just generally have your wits about you. I’d guess 98% of the sellers are honest folk who aren’t out to get you, but watch out for the others.
- I feel pity for owners of classic machines like the original S-Type who have to filter out all of the modern stuff to try and find bits. I found it incredibly difficult to get any hits without returning tons of noise…I imagine I probably excluded a few “honest” listings in the shuffle. What a pain.
- All of the auctions and all of the listings live on eBay, including the code that runs the widget. We have nothing to do with it other than letting it appear on our page and providing it a search string. We cannot become involved in any way with your eBay transactions.
- Read the disclaimer that lives within the eBay box. Please tell me you find it as awkwardly worded as I do!
- Finally, full disclosure time: The only way to get the code widget is to become an eBay affiliate, which is what this site now is. That means we receive a financial reward if someone clicks through to an auction, bids, and wins–though I’m not sure exactly how much. Their examples were a bit breathless (to paraphrase):
…if you sign up 2,000 users a month and 2,000 of your users win eBay auctions of $$$ value you could make [a lot!] per month…
Are there even 2,000 people left in the world who aren’t already eBay members? 2,000 auctions won per month via this page? I feel like the last guy to sign up for a pyramid scheme, whose only “down-levels” are deep-sea denizens and perhaps some of the less sentient field mice in our hay field. It’s just my luck my down-levels are mostly now inside the resident red-tailed hawks.
I guess my message to you is twofold: Enjoy browsing the auctions, and if you’re going to pay $3.7M for a copy of Haddock’s book via eBay, please go there via the new page. The $3.70 we’ll get will be nice lunch money!
