eBay Win Restarts Beagle Project

You'll find the average selling price for a regular Mamoli kit of the HMS Beagle on eBay sells for over $150 when you include the shipping cost, but as far as I could find out, it was the only source for the broken and lost parts (Plans included) for the wrecked model I wanted to rebuild.

Scratchbuilding and buying from a "pieces-parts" vendor were the only option I could come up with as a solution. This is the HMS Beagle, a kit I began in 1977 which sustained a fall to the floor making a shambles of everything above deck.

It also has some rigging errors I want to correct.

You can't imagine my joy at finding an eBay auction for Vintage 1977 Mamoli H.M.S. Beagle Wood Ship Kit Parts, with a bid price of $9.95. Yup, complete with all 5 sheets of plans and the only thing apparently missing was the bulkheads and the lemon wood planking material (the first course of planking).

Apparently someone had started it.

With two days to go, it was obvious a $15 bid wasn’t going to win this one. Sure enough another new bidder joined the fray.

I really wanted this one and until the price went north of $75, to me it would still be a bargain. But maybe there was someone else out there with a wrecked Beagle model.

How to maximize my bid…I didn’t want to lose this one, no telling when another match would show up, specially at such a low price.

It’s time for a snipe.

Snipping is accomplished by software programs that automatically enter a last minute (actually closing seconds) for a winning bid; Welcome to HarvEX & TurboSniper! HarvEX is the complete eBay harvesting machine and provides superior information, bid sniping & automation in eBay™ auctions - no matter if you are a bidder or a seller. Far beyond the capabilities of simple sniper tools, this software offers a unique bandwidth of benefits. The software can even grow with your future needs. True eBay auction professionals use this solid state-of-the-art software every day to obtain substantial advantages on the eBay market place. HarvEX can be tested free during a 14-day trial period:

To make a long story, I setup a SNIPE for this auction with a maximum price of $89.83 to be placed in the last 10 seconds of the auction.

Normal bidding increased the price to $29.56. The Snipe acted in the last 10 seconds and I won for a price of $30.56 through the proxy bidding capability of the software and eBay which means my final bid was only the amount needed to comply with ebay’s bidding increment, in this case $1.00.

To be truly effective, the bidder using a sniping program needs to have some idea of the market price for the object being bid on and set a maximum price somewhere near that amount.Once again, it worked for me. Sniping is a good strategy, for those with the time to do it, it does provide you with an assurance of a win on items that rise to a “must have” status.