Posted by Steve Santini on July 12, 2001 at 19:18:57:
In Reply to: Your price guide posted by Atame on July 12, 2001 at 12:50:12:
Hello,
It has been my experience that Ebay is A VERY UNRELIABLE vehicle when it comes to the establishing of prices for practically ANY vintage or collectible restraint. One week you will see one restraint sell for $200.00, and then the next week you will see the SAME restraint, in a much less perfect condition sell for possibly even more. In my book, you will notice that a "price range" has been assigned to many vintage or collectible restraints. This price range is based upon my own experience in collecting restraints for over 20 years. I felt it was only logical (and fair) to assign a range to collectible restraints rather than try to "lock down" a particular value for a particular restraint. If you talk to other collectors, I imagine they will have the same opinion of Ebay sales that I have. I am indeed sorry that the seller of one restraint was offended by the value I had assigned in my book, but, it is a matter of course for most dealers of antiques to believe they possess an item which is worth far more than the market will actually bear. I make no apologies for the price range in my book. On the contrary, I only wish more sellers would be as realistic as my price range guide tends to be. Kind Regards, Steve Santini. : Hello Steve,
: speaking of the values in your book: you call it a "somewhat conservative price guide", but could it be that some values are estimated too low? I ask because I recently had a discussion with a well known eBay handcuff dealer who wanted to sell me some Bean Cobb Leg Irons for a little bit more than US$ 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$)