Bidding On Gunbroker: A Cautionary Tale! 

yeah but legacy collectibles' guns are so expensive!

Most not few. Stop being ridiculous

@@mattchoppers1you should proofread your comment before posting. I can’t even understand who the “kid” is. Your friend? Or the OCD guy?

So true

I've seen a lot of unscrupulous dealers get scammed them selves and pass things off to another sucker when they know it isn't real. One of these d-bags even appears on TV as an "expert". His only qualification is being an over self promoting tribe member... Who happens to deal in ww2 German items... Among other items.

Are you that guy that makes stuff up and then thinks he’s that smart guy?

@@SGTDuckButter yeah 100%, isn't that how it works?

That is an old lie going around forever. Vets brought back guns with worn finishes and had them "customized" with plating.

@@tomsherwood4650 absolutely agree, I've heard the lies of the nickle plated ones were issued to officers only with lugers, p38s, 1911s in a few shops including 2 right here in my own city

So very true and I’ve heard several other stupid and untrue comments of the like heavily used as well.

Consider yourself lucky. I dread the unexpected "Congratulations you won" gunbroker emails.

@@owllymannstein7113 Haha! Man I can relate. There has been... more than one occasion where I wound up with two of the same gun. Sometimes you just get those impossible wins, and usually when you don't want it that much.

Same here

I think this is how auctions should work. I bid the same way. I've yet to win, but I'm also refusing to overpay the price in my head.

@@LaxinPhilly how i do stuff on ebay. Only time i bid high is on something i really really want, and that means its worth alot to me. Tho i only bid mostly on axes. But there have been times when i feel like someone is bidding it up just to bid it up.

Hopefully Legacy Collectibles is based a bit on profit. Otherwise, unless Tom is independently wealthy and enjoys losing money, the business will eventually fail.

@@Chiller01 well I thought that was obvious but I’ll adjust my comment especially for you just in case you are slow. Don’t get too upset we can all see you are trying

@@mattsmith3118 You must be fun at parties there Matt. I’ll be more respectful of your obviously sensitive nature next time.

@@Chiller01 right lol he’s mad over a simple comment.

@@mattsmith3118 cry

That would be worth a lot of money

Yeah but which 3rd cousin? We all know how Hans can be a little sketchy at times.

That's exactly how I got mine. Got the bayonet and grenade launcher that came brand new with the pistol too. Now, for a few bucks more I could have bought the original case it all came in. Just that I wasn't sure if the case was authentic. I'm cautious that when it comes to originals, so many shysters out there.

@@larryspiller6633 If it was gold plated ,it had to be original

@@robertsr.249 Another dead give away is if the firing pin is diamond encrusted, that's a well kept secret.

On eBay they used to be a tactic to win auctions by waiting to the very end before placing your bid. In the hope that the other bidders wouldn’t notice or would be too late to counter it. There was even 3rd party software that you could set up in advance to automatically place the bid for you in the last 5 seconds.

@@notmenotme614 thats the way to bid on ebay tho, sniping.

I have a friend who is a .32 collector. He has several. Even one 327 magnum.

@@painmt651 why does he have so many? Is he an octopus ?

​@@notmenotme614the problem with that is gun broker has a counter bid timeframe. Its like 10 minutes or something, so if someone bids on an item in the last 5 seconds it will increase the auction time by 10 minutes allowing people to bid again. I tried that Ebay tactic on my first auction bidding for a 32 cal revolver.

Why would anyone use a .22 in WW2?

@@buyerenogurlfwendo2106 They were used for training our troops, 30.06 was too expensive shell.

Auctions are a interesting way to try getting a good deal. Sometimes you get lucky!

"boughten" is NOT A WORD. Stop saying it. Don't use "boughtened" either. Use "bought" instead. That's correct. You're welcome.

@@notmyname3883 Thanks, to the grammar police. My mom would have corrected me also.

@@notmyname3883 Oi. We ought wanta be able tah spake and spell as we like it.

I saw this copycat fraud recently on a boat for sale on Craigslist (otherwise known as fraudslist). Super nice RHIB, yamaha powered, great price. The guys ad said it was near seattle wa. In one of the photos you could see the boat was in a brokers yard and on another boat was a brokerage sign and you could just make out the phone number. Turns out the boat is in BC Canada at a brokers, and the price was twice what the CL guy was asking. Guess he thought he could scam a deposit and run. I hate people.

That is just proxy bidding, the other bidder was bumping the bid to see how far his proxy bid was up.

@@jerryw6699 I was hoping someone would say this. Its not automatically a red flag depending on how the system is set up. Many online auctions allow a seller to put multiple bids in against another bidder. What youre seeing is one bidder incrementally increasing their bid against another bidder who presumably put in a much higher bid. They keep putting a bid in until they beat the other persons, which might take several tries. This is very very common on Ebay for example. Its totally legit in that circumstance. Im not saying these arent shill accounts I mean 99% sure they totally are, but this itself isn't the red flag you think it is...

Those are automatic bids you 1diot.

GB won't ban that, as they make money every transaction and the more the transaction, the more they make.

are soon parted

"Collectors" have ruined a ton of good markets in recent years. They will pay any price necessary (without even blinking) to fill a hole in their collection. Also just as absurd are the people who try to get a certain serial number or odd feature. Because it's "collectible". The way I see it, yes, they are indeed fools.

Not necessarily connected to the seller... sometimes I just drop my highest bid and move on as do others. As a network engineer, I have done digital forensics for a few different systems. While I have seen a substantial amount of organized crime in these spaces, it would likely surprise you how often people just have odd bidding habits/mentalities. I have planned to do a primer on understanding auction systems, but more importantly the ratio of weirdness to criminal behavior. Good luck out there.

@TheRealMrBlackCat ya I could see just placing one bid if it had a "Buy Now" button. But it showed my bid and the alleged second bidder only had to bid a few dollars above it to be the top bidder. Instead the alleged individual comes in and bids hundreds of dollars over the current bid. Seemed really fishy.

This is pretty common actually. If I see something on an online auction, I will frequently just place the max amount that I would be willing to pay as the first bid. That doesn't mean that I will pay that much, because if no one else bids, it stays at the starting amount. Consider reading up on how proxy bids work. Imagine if you were going on vacation for a week and didn't want to stare at the auction the whole time, or didn't have internet. Just plop down your best price and find out later if you won or not. Subsequent bids bump your bid by a set small amount, keeping you in the lead until you top out your max bid. I hope this makes sense.

The way GunBroker works is they encourage you to put your max bid then they’ll use what’s necessary. Like I bid on a lot of penny auctions for used pistols and if you’re the first bidder you can bet whatever but it’ll only count as a penny at first. Then whenever someone counter bids the first person it raises the price (usually the winning bid has to be $2 higher but it changes as it gets a bigger price tag). So if I seen a pistol I like at a penny auction and I’m first I could put $300 and only be charged a penny if no one else bets. But if people counter bet then I’ll still win if no one goes over $300; I’ll just be charged more. If someone puts $250 then I’ll be charged $252. Basically it’s designed to give you the best deal possible but if someone else counters then you’re going to pay more (or even lose the auction). A lot of people like to bet last minute as well because if you bid with less than 15 minutes remaining then it resets the timer back to 15 minutes.

Without knowing the other bidders rating and feedback history it’s hard to say your competition was connected to the seller. Maybe he just thought the piece was worth $1000 and you clearly didn’t. Did you receive an email saying he fell through would you like to buy this for $900 (or whatever your last bid was). If he didn’t end up paying for it and you got offered to buy it for your last bid then you could say oh he’s connected to the seller. But considering you didn’t mention that he probably actually bought the piece.

So pretty much an uneducated dumb ass robbed you of it 😂

Amen. Sellers running up their own auctions. Gunbroker does little to prevent this

They do that so people can’t last second snipe

If it was eBay they would want a commission regardless if it was a real buyer or not 😂 I can’t remember what the it was but there was this video where the content creator was selling something real trolly, the buyer ended up being a troll, then eBay still billed his PayPal like 10% of the sale even though nothing was made.