|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Activities
Nor'easter News
Car Care
Membership
Other Cool Stuff
Sponsors & Advertisers
|
Porsche
Club of America
The
Driver's Window
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
You know as a 944 owner I don't have all the other cool stuff that 911 and even Boxster owner are privy to. I am referring to all of the aftermarket models, diecasts, clothing, and other stuff made for other more excepted cars. A couple years ago Sean Houlihan and I were desperately looking for a cool 944 diecast. Even after hours of web searching the closest thing Sean found was a Welly S2 Cabriolet in close to 1/43rd scale. Not a top of the line diecast that you might find at Auto Fanatics or Exoticar but it was a 944. It is kind of cool though because it has a spring on the rear wheels that shoots the car forwards when rolled backwards. Well, recently I found a veritable feast of 944 stuff. It actually happened by accident while searching the web for different air intake solutions for my turbo. By searching for Porsche 944 Turbo I found the usual tuners and parts houses but I also found a line for EBay. Like everyone else I have been to Ebay looking for stuff but I never had the need to open an account and try my hand at online bidding, an art form in itself. But once I saw some of the items available I decided to start an Ebay account and go bidding. There is still not a lot of stuff but every once in a while something cool comes up for sale. As I write this article I am doing a quick check to see what is there. As expected there are tons of parts for sale. Everything from wheels and factory manuals to performance chips and header systems. I even found a rather unique Momo Turbo horn button. But I also found a couple of neat items like art prints and a generic Porsche watch that was nice. Not many good diecast for sale right now but a couple of cute smaller Matchbox 944s and 1 German made diecast that looked pretty nice. I also found a 944 Turbo/S2 clock, not bad looking! I found an ad from 1989 suggesting you feed your Turbo a strict diet of Corvettes and some factory brochures. The coolest thing I found tonight is a large 30" x 41" poster form the 944 Turbo Cup race series that I just may bid on. The strangest thing I found was a set of 10 CD-R/CD-RW discs that had illustrated 944 images all over them. They had been up for sale for 4 days and no one has bid yet. I just bet everyone is waiting for the last minute to scoop up these future collectibles. I mentioned that I had set-up an account and started bidding. Well, there is definitely a strategy involved here that wasn't apparent to me the first time I bid, or the second time for that matter. I found a 1/24 scale plastic model of a 944 Turbo Racecar complete with its pink decorative decals, rollbar, harnesses and more. This was a racecar model not just a decaled up streetcar. Since I have always loved building models (even though its been a while since my last one) I bid $25 on a current bid of $18.50. For a while it looked as if it were mine for $19.00, yeah right. The bidding ended on a Friday night that I happened to be out on. When I checked the next day I had lost by a buck. Slightly disappointed I emailed the seller to tell him that if he ever comes across another to let me know and he said he would. A few weeks later I was on Ebay again and found another one for sale by another seller. I was determined to own that model. That is not really the right attitude to have on Ebay. I started with my opening bid of $35 (that'll show them that I mean business). Boy was I mistaken! As before I was the top dog for a couple of days heading into the last few minutes. Since the auction ended on Sunday night at 7:00 PM it was an easy one to be available for. With about 5 minutes to go I notice my $35 was no longer top bid. So I entered $40, no good! $50 no good! $75 no good! By this time my competitive nature has completely over-powered all reasonable thought processes and I was frothing at the mouth. Oh this guy is going to pay for trying to take that model away from me. Finally at $100 I had top bid again with still a minute left. All of a sudden the top bid award disappears and I blindly start adding more bids. Totally oblivious to the fact that this was $5.00 plastic model that I still had to put together when the smoke (and red haze) cleared I was the proud owner of a $125 (plus $9.95 for shipping from Hong Kong) plastic model that I still had to put together. What the hell did I just do? Don't get me wrong I am glad I have it but... The quality isn't even that good but it is a 944 Turbo Racecar that I can paint to match mine someday. Now I know a few of you know that I am not the shiniest car on the lot and I proved it on this one but I have a history of not being the smartest bidder in the audience. Several years ago while in high school I belong to Christian Science Adventure Unlimited youth group and we did a junk drive for a fund raising auction. Well, after doing a lot of pre auction set-up and was relaxing in the audience when a very cool 3-piece American flag (kind of different with an American flag in between two specialty flags that I can't remember) came up for bidding. Hey I was in high school and only had a couple of bucks in my pocket so I had to be a really smart bidder. So I start the bidding off with a big $5 bid. Well at this point I get kind of excited and with the auctioneer ranting and raving with that special language designed to confuse you, I jumped up and out bid myself by $5. At this point the place went silent and I saw my mother holding her head over in the corner. After a couple of seconds of this the auctioneer slams his gavel down and lets me have it for $10. They made me go outside so the rest of the bidders could bid without worrying about me double bidding again. So you see why I hesitated on opening up an Ebay account for so long. It occurred to me that I was set-up by the seller. All these spam emails that everyone gets about making money on Ebay are specially designed for selling to people like me. I can only assume the seller has a partner that keeps bidding and if he wins it is just a wash. I am sure I will give bidding another shot and try to out think the selling team. Perhaps tomorrow night I'll bid on the Turbo Cup poster. I figure they will give up somewhere around $300. I'll show them that I am nobody's fool. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright
1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 PCA/NER
Year 2000 Web Site Design by www.sitesofboston.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
