Yeah, the “buy now” thing would probably save my nerves… instant gratification for the win! But on antiques like I’ve been looking at, the buy now price can be pretty steep. The fourth clock I bid on I finally won: that means three times I went through that whole build up/disappointment process. But I stuck to my target price, and hopefully I’ll end up with something I’m happy with.

It is interesting to note (but kind of obvious) that most of the antiques are sold from somewhere in Europe. I bid on four clocks, and only one of them was in North America. Two were in England, and the one I finally got is coming from Germany. Before eBay and online auctions in general, local antique shops would have probably scouted out a few items each month, bought them, and sold them for four or five times what they paid. Now you can go straight to the source… assuming you are willing to take the risk of being burned by a lack of real expert knowledge.

I’m curious to see how this all works out with shipping and so forth. Now that I’ve finally won my bidding “war” I’ll have to wait for three weeks or so to see the results. I guess, though, for something that is over 130 years old, another three weeks isn’t a very big deal 😉