Another early Tele-bass decal variant

[eb2]

I have seen the clipped off Coronado bass decals but this one is pretty fun - mid 60s Telecaster guitar with a Precision's "Bass" stuck on.  The description is peculiar, but typical Japanese seller for ebay. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Used-1967-Fender-Telecaster-Bass-W-OHC-FreeShipping-Red/163635987813?hash=item2619770565:g:CNgAAOSwXSpcp~7U&frcectupt=true

[Dave W]

That's an outrageous price even considering how ridiculously high most of the vintage prices from Japanese sellers are.

Same bass is listed by at least 3 sellers, and typically they're just listing something that's for sale at retail in another shop and marking it up, hoping for an uneducated buyer.

[eb2]

Dear Lord, I take all ebay Japanese dealer prices to be lunacy.  I am happy that the hoarding disorder is easing up enough that they actually put them up for sale in theory to come back across. For photos they are fantastic.  Kind of like that Olivia place - great photos, great stuff, daffy pricing.

As far as the one guitar/four listings vibe, there seems to have been a binge of custom shop hoarding that went on over there.  Lots of Fender custom shop stuff shows up over and over, with prices varying over and under a few hundo.  They are fishing for dumb guys with money.  Aren't we all?

[Dave W]

Olivia is only slightly high, and they actually have possession of the product they're selling. The prices from Japan that clog eBay now are usually about twice what actual sales bring. The items are owned and for sale at retail in Japan by some major retailer. The eBay sellers would buy it at retail and resell it to their American dumb guy with money. AFAIK it's still a violation of eBay rules to sell something you don't own, yet eBay does nothing about this.

I seldom look at basses on eBay any more b/c you can't blanket exclude items from Japan. You have to manually filter each search.

[doombass]

I wonder how they manage to pull those stunts off? In case someone BIN's the true owner listing, do they have an auto pull of the fake listings? Or do they rely on luck that nobody manages to BIN their auction at about the same time as the real listing? I always thought that the real listers would report the fakers, so what was happening was that the rightful owners had multiple listings, earning more money in case someone grabbed the more expensive one. Weird.

[eb2]

I suspect there are no fakers.  They are either the same person or a group that works together. The listings are all top dollar, or beyond.  They vary by amounts that are within reasonable haggling area.  If some sap impulse buys one, then the seller sends an email to the others along the lines of “I sold Frank’s overpriced Tele bass to some dope - everyone pull down the other listings now!” If somebody just had to have one of these Japanese dealer things, I would guess contacting one or more of the different sellers would start realistic off-eBay negotiations and all the ads would end anyway.