Just bought a new bike on Ebay!

[emily_in_nc]

For real? My uncle & aunt live in Prairie Village.

I'm really interested in your ebay experience. I'm a bit intimidated by ebay. Once I bid on something, but I didn't get it.

Cool -- how do they like Prairie Village? I'm not sure it's really our kind of town (and the cold winters and hot summers not much to my liking) -- but they would be giving us a fantastic deal on rent on a very nice house, furnished down to the forks and spoons, so it's very tempting. Plus, we always enjoy new places -- for awhile. They just never seem to stick.

You shouldn't let ebay intimidate you, but it is old hat to me. I started buying there in 2003/2004 and have bought 100s of things, from bike parts to clothes to you name it. A few years later I started selling, and that's how we got rid of tons of our stuff before moving to Belize. I've both bought and sold bikes there in the past as well. It's a great place to buy used stuff. Some great deals, some not so good. Most people wait until the very end of the auction to bid, so if you bid early on, it's easy to get outbid. In this case, there were no other bids on this auction, so I got lucky! Good advice I've often read is:

1) Bid only once
2) Bid your maximum (so that if you get outbid, you won't be tooooo upset, since you weren't willing to pay that much)
3) Bid late in the auction.

There are a lot more advanced techniques (sniping services and the like), but for the most part, it's not that complicated. Go for it!