Author: Jack Kissinger
Date: 2010-11-03 17:06
A number of years ago, a Leblanc D clarinet came up on eBay. I had absolutely no need for a D at the time (and never have since). Still, mostly out of curiosity, I followed the auction. As the end approached, the clarinet had attracted almost no interest and the high bid was somewhere in the $300 - $500 range. I decided I couldn't let someone steal a D at that price so, with less than 10 seconds left in the auction, I sniped in a bid of $600. I figured that, even though I wasn't really all that interested in the clarinet, if I could get the it at that price, it would be a good deal. Immediately, I saw the "you have been outbid" notice that signified the previous high bidder's maximum bid was higher than the one I had just submitted. That bidder got the instrument for $608. Because the minimum incremental bid at that level was $10, I know the other bidder's maximum bid was $608. If I had bid $610, I almost certainly would have won the instrument because there is no way the other bidder would have had time to place another bid and probably not even enough time for a bid from an automated bidding program. For a long time, I couldn't decide whether I was disappointed or relieved that I hadn't bid just a few dollars more. Then, a few years later, a similar Leblanc D came up and sold for around $1,200.
Another time, when I was looking for a cheap oboe to play around with, I came on an old plastic Linton that the seller had mistakenly identified as a clarinet. The item didn't come up in a search for oboes and, unless one actually viewed the pictures in the auction listing, there was no way to know that the instrument wasn't a clarinet. As I recall, there were no bids. The auction was set to end at 3:00 in the morning! So I stayed up late that night. Again, with about 10 seconds left, I put in a bid only to learn that, about 10 seconds before I clicked on the button to enter my bid, the seller withdrew the item.
Finally, many years ago, someone started auctioning old Russian clarinet sheet music. By the time I discovered this, one item was already sold. I was able to buy the first one I found, Boris Tchaikovsky's Clarinet Concert[in]o for $15 - $20. From then on, though, a new bidder started going after these items. He would place a bid early in the auction and his maximum bid always beat my last-minute bid. After losing a few items, I began to wonder just how much he was actually bidding so I started gradually upping the ante, $30, $40, $50... I think I was up to around $60 when the last item sold and I never did outbid him. (The good news for me, though, is that most of the pieces I wanted showed up again later and I was able to buy them, mostly for less than $10.) It really does only take two bidders to drive up a price.
Best regards,
jnk
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The Clarinet BBoard
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