eBay Advice?

[MacLowlife]

Having recently listed and sold three jackets at very very good prices, I was a little surprised to see no mention of them here. I may have missed it, but I did look. There was surprisingly little bidding action, too. Two of them were wool PCs in average sizes. One sold for $52 plus shipping and one sold for $86. My listings are pretty obviously the work of someone who has a day job. Had someone discovered one of my listings and clicked " see seller's other items" they would have seen the rest and they could have seen that I am not running some cheap goods factory outlet.

I agree with Tulloch- proceed with caution. But, if you have done a little research and educated yourself a little bit, don't be afraid to risk $50 or so.

One more thing: for you younger members, inflation is likely to be a lifelong condition. That is, we are not likely to see the return of the nickel Coca-cola, or the $2 kilt hose. If you do make a long term purchase, no matter how big the ticket is, you will probably live long enough to marvel at how little it cost when you were just a lad.*






* unfortunately, you may also have occasion to marvel at how much it shrank in your closet.

[Kilted Cole]

Hey, sorry for getting to this thread a little late. School keeps me busy, I started the Ebay Stalking thread primarily to see what people have won in the past or recently won. I would advise you to keep what your bidding on to yourself until you have either won or lost the bidding wars, to which after that feel free to brag or lament depending upon your outcome. lol. But there are a few tricks to the ebay buying of Highland Attire. I usually start my searches with ether "Used" or "Vintage" and then what I'm looking for. I've had better luck with that. As a veteran ebayer I'm sure you know always look at the sellers reputation, as well as where they are located. Are you looking for just kilts currently, or are you looking for pretty much Highland Attire related, sporran, kilt, kilt jacket, doublets, ect? I'm kind of a habitual ebay stalker now.....;)
Good luck and happy hunting!

And I completely agree with the Gentleman above me in this post, Pay a little more now, because it will cost more further down the road.

And I've found (in most cases) that in Highland Attire it seems that the more you pay for a product, the better quality it tends to be, and will save you from having to buy more and more of the lower end items down the road. This seems to be esspesialy the case with sporrans! I'd advise honestly ether keeping an eye out for a vintage sporran on ebay, or saving up and getting one from either Artificer or Fergusson Britt sporrans.

[OC Richard]

I'm late coming to this thread too, but here goes!

First, welcome!

Second, Ebay has extremely interesting rare vintage stuff all the time, but this is far outnumbered by what the Scots call "tat" (junk as we would call it). It takes an experienced eye to tell what is what. But all of us experienced Ebay-ers were Ebay newbies once! And this thread is a great way for you to start your Ebay kiltwatching.

About the items you posted links to:

1) This is typical Pakistani/Indian 'tat'. It has the telltale label. Good that the seller showed us all the label, which removes all doubt.

2) Hard to tell just what this is from the one poor photo. You really need to see photos of the pleats to tell what sort of kilt you're dealing with. However I do notice that the binding around the top isn't matched to the kilt, is misaligned, which you wouldn't see with a legitimate kilt. With items like this, potential buyers need to ask the seller to post more photos.

3) Higgins is a legitimate maker but this is a woman's skirt, not a kilt, which you can see because it buckles on the wrong side. But! oftentimes women's skirts buckle on the same side as kilts, and are slightly more difficult to tell apart. You can usually tell from the sort of straps & buckles used, the size of the sett, the way the pleats look, etc.

I'm a huge Ebay fan. My green tweed kilt jacket, my black barathea kilt jacket, all of my sporrans, and my ghillies all were got cheaply, used, on Ebay. All of these things are very high quality Scottish-made items, but got for less than Pakistani tat.

My hose and flashes were got on Ebay too, but new.

One thing that plagues our Ebay kiltshopping is that many (perhaps most) of the sellers are honest but ignorant.

They list things wrongly all the time. Women's skirts and purses are listed as kilts and sporrans, vintage sporrans sized for children and youths are listed as if they're for adults, and everything, everything, women's things, children's things, civilian things, are listed all the time as being "military" or "officer's military" or "Boer War officer's military". (Ebay sellers all seem to have heard about the Boer War for some unknown reason.)

Here are three kilts listed as "military" but I don't think any of them are, and I told the seller so

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Scottish-Mil...item2338f7bf7c

One thing I do all the time is tell sellers how to determine the waist size of kilts. They're clueless and will say stuff like "the kilt looks to be about medium". And I or other XMarkers will tell them what tartan it is; they usually don't know.

So keep them coming! I'm happy to look at any of your 'finds' on Ebay and put in my two cents.