Ebay Hats: Victories, Defeats, Gripes & Items of Interest

[mayserwegener]

I don't know if this is technically the right place for this question, but...am I the only one having a tremendous amount of difficulty searching for hats on eBay? By which I mean: searching for "homburg", I get a bazillion results for other fedoras, whose listings frequently don't even include the word homburg. Is there some secret to finding things on this website? Is it just to watch this thread?

Many times Homburgs are mislabeled on eBay. You often see them listed as Bowler or Derbies. You just have to be on the look out. The eBay auctions listed on this thread in most cases are closed. There isn't a board rule about posting live auctions but it's something that we agree not to do.

 

[Walt]

I don't know if this is technically the right place for this question, but...am I the only one having a tremendous amount of difficulty searching for hats on eBay? By which I mean: searching for "homburg", I get a bazillion results for other fedoras, whose listings frequently don't even include the word homburg. Is there some secret to finding things on this website? Is it just to watch this thread?

The web interface into the search engine on ebay stinks! But it seems to have gotten worse lately. I just did a search on the string "homburg hat" and it also returned hats not flagged anywhere in the description or any other field for that matter as a "homburg" so I appear to be seeing the same problem as you. Ebay has been rolling out some new changes over the last few weeks or so to the web interface so it might be connected to that. They do have a record of rolling out some annoying changes and introducing annoying bugs.

I need to spend more time on the ebay forums to see if there are any announcements about impending changes in advance as I sure hate changes that appear out of nowhere.

It's true that often hats are wrongly identified by the seller but that doesn't appear to be the issue here. Half the battle is getting sellers to correctly list things and the other half is getting ebay's site to work!

I am curious to find out if bypassing the web interface and using their XML API's to query the database directly will yield different and perhaps more usable or helpful results. That's high on my TODO list. The web interface has too many limitations and for me the only way around that is to write my own code to pull data out....

 

[The Wiser Hatter]

It is how the seller tag's the hat. Like Steve said a Homburg may be a bowler to someone. I search by company names or hat size so you can at least filter out stuff. This will still leave the mislabeled hats out there going for cheap thou. When you post a live link to a auction going on it let's everyone know about a item and then you will have even more people watching a hat.

 

[Captain Lex]

From a tact and practicality standpoint, I totally understand why one wouldn't post active auctions.

@Walt, that's an interesting project idea! As a programmer myself, I'd love to see your results! You could turn into a special Fedora Lounge hat-finding app! We'd control the market! Muahahahahaha!

 

[The Wiser Hatter]

You can always use this.
mens-hat auctions most-watched

 

[Captain Lex]

You can always use this.
mens-hat auctions most-watched

Well, I gotta hand it to you, Wiser Hatter, that link really separates the wheat from the chaff -- but it also separates the boys from the men, so to speak. The most watched hats are the most in contention, and my budget isn't quite as contendible as many others! Bidding wars will have to wait for my post-student days. One might easily advise me to give eBay a miss until then, I suppose

But I've already promising leads, so thanks! I'll definitely be keeping the link around.

 

[m0nk]

Well, I gotta hand it to you, Wiser Hatter, that link really separates the wheat from the chaff -- but it also separates the boys from the men, so to speak. The most watched hats are the most in contention, and my budget isn't quite as contendible as many others! Bidding wars will have to wait for my post-student days. One might easily advise me to give eBay a miss until then, I suppose

Yeah, I just search on all sorts of different item names until I find something that doesn't come up so easily, then watch that. The less-watched items are more likely to go for a lower price. And often, the mis-labeled/categorized items are less watched, and often better deals.

 

[EggHead]

I bid on this hat several days ago, but yesterday I checked and the seller is located in New Jersey. Today I was overbid. I think I will not bid on this hat.

 

[CaramelSmoothie]

I bid on this hat several days ago, but yesterday I checked and the seller is located in New Jersey. Today I was overbid. I think I will not bid on this hat.

I'm still surprised that people don't wait until the last few seconds to place their bids. Bidding early just encourages more bids and can ultimately lead to bidding wars that will artificially inflate the price. I use a bidding service and set my bid and it sends it through 5 seconds before the auction ends.

 

[JonnyO]

Here is one of two that I've won the past week:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/230869354894?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

and here is the other which will be more of a 'project' hat for me:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/121008583407?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

I will post pictures once I reveive them.

 

[jlee562]

Here is one of two that I've won the past week:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/230869354894?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

I was watching this one too, nice lid. The mode/Cavanagh edge is such a classy feature. It's too bad it can't be done anymore.

 

[EggHead]

I'm still surprised that people don't wait until the last few seconds to place their bids. Bidding early just encourages more bids and can ultimately lead to bidding wars that will artificially inflate the price. I use a bidding service and set my bid and it sends it through 5 seconds before the auction ends.

It depends, I rarely bid early, but it was $10 and I was the first one. Sometimes my mind works in weird ways.

 

[alanfgag]

Sometimes an early opening bid will discourage a seller from ending the auction early for an offer.

Otherwise, early bidding serves only to increase awareness of and activity on the auction. The Collector's Weekly site posted earlier seems to find auctions to list only after bidding has begun.

 

[Mystic]

I bid on this hat several days ago, but yesterday I checked and the seller is located in New Jersey. Today I was overbid. I think I will not bid on this hat.

If a hat was listed before Monday from N.J. I think I would email the seller and ask if the hat is still in the same condition.

Some places in N.J. and N.Y. you may not get an answer for a while.

 

[Captain Lex]

Handed even further to Wiser Hatter, as his link led me right to a hat that I have just purchased!

I'll have to recrease it, of course, because it looks ridiculous as a fedora crown, but it's the color and style I was looking for, otherwise, at basically just the right price!

 

[mayserwegener]

Pre WWI PH. Möckel, Homburg v.d. Höhe Melone that measures around 59cm. I picked this up on a German eBay BIN. Möckel made the original Homburg hat (named after the town) for King Edward VII of England. It has some sweatband issues but I have only encounter two other old Möckel's (a Top Hat and Melone) and they were both in very poor condition. Looking forward to receiving this rare one. My Holy Grail hat would be a pre WWI Möckel Homburg.

Hoflieferant Sr. Maj. d. Kaisers u. Königs und Sr. Maj. d. Königs v. England

 

[Landman]

You can always use this.
mens-hat auctions most-watched

Ed, that's a great link. Thanks.

Is there some way to see how many watcher's there are for an item by looking at the eBay site? I can see the number of bidders but not watchers. Maybe I'm missing something because I normally use the mobile version on an iPad.

 

[Chepstow]

Steve, fantastic find, my congrats! Looks really good!

 

[mikespens]

Ed, that's a great link. Thanks.

Is there some way to see how many watcher's there are for an item by looking at the eBay site? I can see the number of bidders but not watchers. Maybe I'm missing something because I normally use the mobile version on an iPad.

Mike, ebay removed the watch counters quite a while back. I do believe the seller can see the numbers though but not sure. Seems like every time I look at listings ebay is changing the format.

 

[Walt]

I assume the watch counter is based on viewers adding the item to their watch list rather than being page hits which is why some listings have a counter added to their listing's html to track page views.