Posted by Atame on July 12, 2001 at 12:50:12:
In Reply to: Re: Auctions, and the hazzards of buying&selling collectables posted by Steve Santini on July 12, 2001 at 09:29:32:
Hello Steve,
speaking of the values in your book: you call it a "somewhat conservative price guide", but could it be that some values are estimated too low? I ask because I recently had a discussion with a well known eBay handcuff dealer who wanted to sell me some Bean Cobb Leg Irons for a little bit more than US$ 200.00 (without shipping). I told him that on page 92 (Appentix A - Valuation Table) of your book the value of a Bean Cobb Leg Iron is listed as "$80 - $125). And the author (you) says "the higher end of the price price range listed for a given item represents the possible maximum for a vintage restraint in mint or near mint condition and accompanied by the original key". He was somewhat upset, almost insulted, because I only wanted to pay US$ 180.00 incl. shipping after reading your price guide. Now I ask myself (and you) if the prices that are currently paid at eBay for vintage handcuffs are simply a bid to high?
Regards from Bavaria,
Guenter
PS: I updated my handcuff-collection site. There you can also find values for the different cuff-models. Those values are estimated for the German market and they are in D-Mark (just divide by 2.3 to get US$)