Wow! What a month

If you are reading this than you are probably aware of the totally dysfunctional month I have undergone. A bit of sympathy and understanding is welcome.

In December I received an email from my website host that they were going to update all their equipment and put in all new modern servers that would make everything wonderful. A week or so later I received another email saying “mission accomplished.” They did recommend that I check my website to make sure that everything worked OK, which I did with fine results.  

About 24 hours later I realized that all the email addresses I have on OFS were not working. I checked my host’s website for help, and learned what to do and corrected those problems – nothing to it! 

Then came the fateful day, December 31, when I tried to put up my monthly update to OFS. Nothing worked. I mean nothing. I went to bed and tried again in the morning; still no results. 

The first email arrived late that day wondering what had happened to my update. At least I learned that a bunch of you do read my website. My website host – who incidentally is rated one of the top five in the country – apparently had so many unforeseen problems with the switch that it took me 24-48 hours to get a response from them. Gradually, things began to return, and finally on January 19, I had the site back up on line. It didn’t look right, and the header and navigation bars were missing from many of the pages. I decided that Bill Gates didn’t want anyone using his old FrontPage web program and intentionally sabotaged my program. I decided that I needed to find a new web authoring program. I am totally illiterate when it comes to html, code, CCS, and all the other terms used by web authors. I want to be an editor, not a geek, so I want a program that writes the code for me – WYSIWYG = what you see is what you get.  

I downloaded two new web authoring programs and started creating a new OFS website. A few days ago, I decided to try out the original MS program again, and lo, some of the pages came up correctly. The final weekend of January was spent correcting each page on OFS one at a time and reloading it to my site.  

Things are not perfect yet, but at least almost everything is back to normal. Total confusion. I hope that everything works tonight when I upload this site, and everyone can read what's new on OFS.

Thanks for your patience

Phil White, January 30, 2008

Disturbing eBay Trends

In June 1906 I wrote "As I compile monthly data for my eBay report I have noted a large increase in lures with very high reserves and/or starting bids. A large majority of these lures do not sell. This is very similar to the trend that appeared in quality bamboo rod offerings a couple of years ago. I'm not sure if these rod sellers just gave up and decided to wait for prices to increase, ended up conducting private sales, or were just searching for an appraisal of their collectibles, but most of them have disappeared. Lure sales now seem to be following a similar path."

The increase in high reserve and Buy It Now eBay sales has spread to reels and some types of miscellaneous tackle, and is no longer a trend it is a flood. At this very moment (December 29, 2007, 10:17 MST) there were only two items in the lure category in the first 45 listings that had a bid. The remainder consisted of 33 lures with Buy it Now and/or Best Offer sale prices. The others had so high a starting bid that they hadn't received a bid. Some of these sales can be accounted for with sellers getting into lures that have no idea what they are doing.

The same trend seems to be current in reel sales on eBay. As our hobby has evolved, it has always seemed that reel collectors have been several years behind lure collectors. When I counted the number of Buy It Now auctions in the first 50 reel sales - there were 23 listings. 

Of course you don't know how many sales of either reels or lures were sold with these Buy It Now auctions, but the number that don't sell is the disturbing part. 

This same trend first appeared in bamboo rod sale about 3 years ago, when speculators appeared to be trying to recoup their investments. These sellers either went away or put their rods in the closet hoping for an upturn in prices. Most bamboo rods now seem to sell on eBay for reasonable prices, with top quality items bringing top prices and sellers letting lesser quality rods sell for whatever the market dictates.

Hopefully, lures and reels will follow this same evolution, and we will let the eBay price be dictated by whatever a bidder feels is the true value of the item, not what an uneducated  speculator paid at some flea market or yard sale. 

Phil White - 12/07

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