I agree, dear friend.

But... you wrote: "The seven bids in a row, was someone who wanted to know what the Person above him bid"...
Yes, but if you really want to win and buy the item and if you are expert (and I think that he was, since he has more than 400 feedback...) you would NEVER do that!!!!
Am I wrong?

no Claudio, you are perfectly right. It´s certainly not the way you or I would have done it.
It is rather strange!
Regards

Anytime there is an auction with a large number of bids from a small number of bidders that result in a selling price that is far beyond the market value I believe there is one of two things going on:

1) Two or more people have 'auction fever' and start bidding against each other in a way that their emotions take control and it becomes a case of personal desire to beat the other person rather than a case of either of them believing the item is actually worth that amount of money. In such a case the selling price has no meaning in determining the value of a clock;

or,

2) There is shill bidding going on, sometimes where one or two of the bidders who are bidding it up over the time of the auction are actually the seller himself and he is trying to trick a real bidder to enter by creating a false image of other people who believe the item is actually worth a record amount of money. I have no idea whether this is the case with this seller and I am not saying that is what happened, but I have seen this selling tactic far too many times to believe it is rare in high sales price items on Ebay. I have even seen some sellers re-auction the same items (same serial numbers) that they had 'sold' several months earlier. This can be true even when the bidders have high feedback ratings since some people who make a business on Ebay are buying and selling often. It does not take much effort to register for two or ten or twenty Ebay names and do business under them building up high ratings with them. As I said, I am not accusing this seller of this since I have no facts, but anytime I see such an unrealistically high price and especially when there are many bids by a small number of the bidders I become very suspicious. I ignore such a sales price for future purchases.

I agree...
I am 1001% sure that this is not the case: this seller is good and only very lucky, of course, but I wouldn't have been surprised to see the same items sold and re-sold many times here and there, in very similar occasions...
I wonder how many times I have been the victim of these manouvres...
I would like to be wrong, but I'm afraid that sometimes I bought items at prices that sadly were "pumped up" in those or in similar ways. It happens...
This is one of the reasons because I say... "yes... the trend could maybe be upward, but
1) how much of this upward trend is caused or influenced by those big or small honey traps? Don't we let this become the new trend!
2) upward yes, ok, but... not as... upward... as this auction seems to tell us!"
Those dials could make those clocks a little more desiderable and valuable, but they maybe can add not much more than 100€ of value... Not € 700!!
This cannot be considered the rule, for future!

The only way to avoid falling into either of these traps is to be knowledgable as to the current market value, decide how much money you are willing to pay for the exact one in the auction you are bidding in, and then stop bidding when your maximum is reached. Do not be temped to make 'just one more bid' because that will quickly turn into 3 or 5 or 10 more bids and you will quickly wind up paying far more than the item is worth. Keep in mind that for almost all timepieces, you will not need to wait very long before another comes up for auction on Ebay or somewhere else, and if you do not win that next one, there will be more and more as time goes by. One day you will win a nice example for a fair price.

You're right!! Wise worlds!! This is the only way to avoid fake upward trends!

I don't buy a lot of stuff on flea bay these days.But when I did I would use the complete price guide to watches and used that to set the price I was willing to pay 75% of the time some one would pay more than what it was worth and it was not me.

Someone I know from another Forum has started a Database for these clocks, and very well done too!
Borduhren

He´s also starting on a database for Fliegeruhren Fliegeruhren

Wow, Werner: it has very few infos about the two rarest borduhren (Fl 22601 and Fl 23889), as usual, but... you're always one of the very best sources!!
Very useful!

quote:

Fl 22601 and Fl 23889

Hi Claudio,
I´ll tell him you complained

Regards Werner

Oh, no! Why?
That is, first of all and above all, a wonderful work: he seems to me one of the very first authors who enclose a study about the planes that mounted each timepieces and this makes his work very interesting.
Then... I don't want to be misunderstood and to make anybody nervous...
It's always dangerous, as we know... ...!

Even I ,though I don't per se collect military clocks, read the reports and was intrigued,particularly with the details on which planes the units were mounted. Great interesting information to me. Please tell your friend "Well done" Werner

Don´t worry, Claudio and Tom, I was only joking.
He has just finished the chapter Tutima Cal 59.

This is his objective;
War-Timers II - dt. Fliegerchronographen aus dem 2.WK,
War-Timers III - Beobachtungsuhren FL 23883,
War-Timers IV - dt. Stationsuhren aus dem 2. WK.
So still a long way to go...but he´s well on his way!

You can tell him that he has some fans...!

Hi Claudio, do you have this reference page?
Cockpit instruments