Record price for a RAF 32 pattern Mae West

RECORD PRICES

I’’m glad I’ve kept all my records, unfortunately there’s no room to play them these days. The Beatles White Album is doing well, and ‘Argus’ by Wishbone Ash and ‘Rory Gallagher Live in Europe’ of course is an evergreen while Zappa’s ‘Hot Rats’ and ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’ by KC still sounds good for ‘69.

On the subject of record prices re aviation kit, one seller was charging £600 even 5 years ago for certain aircraft parts and when I inquired to see how it was all evolving, the seller then thought it was worth even more and invited me to make an offer – I baled out on seeing the chancing involved but wanted to see if it was true, having bought an identical item some time before for £120. Silly prices are ultimately silly, but most tellingly, damaging to what we try to do in preservation.

The businesses concerned might be regarded by some as ‘nice’ people (ideally they would need to be at such prices) and not hateful which may be true for all I know, but what has been done over too many years now in helping make our hobby in heritage recess further in unaffordability, IS hateful. A few commentators have recorded that some concerns have been known to ‘help’ out with prices as if that excuses them, but that is the least they can do after the overall damage caused by their driving up of prices universally, to established collectors and preservationists in the market, along with people who don’t, wont, or can’t attend aeroboots and are unaware of realistic prices.

For many years people like Nev Martin, Mike Shaw and others charged sensible prices like we get (in general) at boots/marts today still, and always made a profit over many years, but the online seller and its spin-off effects have been very damaging for preservation and is stifling our successors in the years to come – and those businesses don’t care, even when such silly prices come back to bite them during fluctuating economic times as they struggle to shift loudly-proclaimed items that don’t fool the grass-rooters – but whenever they get lucky with whatever individual or country they succeed with on a sale, then its another nail in the collecting/preservation coffin while making aviation preservation and heritage unviable to people it otherwise might have reached.

How many kids these days, many struggling to find jobs (or not) want to shell out £25+pp for a standard guage that can often be found at a bot for £5, that will help towards buying instead a digital game that they can kill people with over and over on, or who are more into downloading music tracks of their own choosing? Why would they feel obliged to enter into aviation collecting? Many of us are still in a general on-going recession ourselves anyway along with being stiffed by energy and utility providers, motoring and rail costs, hiked service charges, government cuts and others, regardless of the external relentless advances and other trumpeted benefits, of the digital age.

And preservationists have copied many high online prices too, to judge by some prices that are being asked for instruments alone that have been bought at boots for reasonable sums, when they are encouraged to do a ‘Buy It Now’ hike attempt without even considering what it might fetch as an auction post. Part of this is understandable human nature however, for many who see businesses selling items (albeit often after many re-lists) converting such attempts become encouraged, or they might HAVE to pay a dealers high price for one part of a project, and so will want to try to get some of what is regarded as over-the-odds expense back.

Finances for many these days dictate that they feel obliged to apply such prices themselves then, regardless of joining with commercial concerns in driving up price expectation in the process – while remembering or hearing stories of the days before online selling when things were more affordable in a general sense, before pure commercial concerns began such online hikes.

Maybe business concerns who originally drove up and encouraged high prices will at least have to accept their own hiking of the market in certain instances, or they may be delayed in completing their next ‘rare’ or deliberately niche-priced item, that they have conceived for a special pay day. Spares and items that they might need themselves to complete such sales projects before the inevitable invitation to make offers for it, now extend in some cases to trying to sell them away from online sources to avoid the many fees involved, a possible trend I wrote about on the V.A. Forum last year.

If people can’t/won’t get out of bed and go to a boot (and yes I know there’s not so much kit about now) then they won’t see real prices and make valuable contacts, but we’re also concerned with heritage, and that heritage will not be seeing the kind of people that are in it now, coming into it in the future – that’s if the market dosen’t collapse back a bit, because the dealers and copyists causing these prices don’t care if it comes back to bite them. It is very of-the-moment and for small sellers/collectors in particular, many can’t, rather than don’t care, as it is driven by financial necessity. In the case of businesses and in times of austerity, if they can’t flog their wares and certainly larger items, they will reduce prices only if they are desperate and willing to risk any precedent-setting that might encourage on-going lower price expectation from buyers, than those previously offered online.

Higher prices mean stagnation – the dealer dosen’t flog stuff anything like as quick, and the buyer holds onto his money to watch and wait, or because he/she simply can’t/won’t pay it, and certainly for many of us, not during austerity times as mentioned. Yes there will be well-off buyers if any new blood (young or old) become interested, but its still a niche market and the majority will have to accept holes in their collections. The other problem for high prices is that if concerns start off with REALLY untra-silly prices (and some large lumps in recent years come to mind), then despite the exhortations and exclamation marks extolling the virtues of these rare and apparently historic items, people immediately see through the bull and know its too high – but the seller has then painted himself into a corner which can often take too long to dry.

As the initial price starts to be reduced, it erodes not just the sellers’ profit margin, but also confirms an accompanying loss of credibility for all to see, at the original high valuation that was first demanded. Such things don’t get forgotten in the aviation world in general and one senior at a well-known aviation museum last year publicly stated that they won’t deal with many online concerns, preferring traditional swops and private deals.

One concern even offered to store a large item if it was bought by a contact recently in the eagerness to get shot of part of a job lot that has not fetched the original price demanded – the concern must have caught a cold and perhaps a further drop in unit price will still evolve. I have no objection to making a profit on anything that both businesses and preservationists/private sellers might have, and we all wish for that when things get passed on – its the degree of valuation however that has caused the problems, and certainly online selling has been largely responsible for this, notwthstanding the decline of the golden days of classic RAF aircraft in particular, and of aeromart spares and events down the years.

I accept that there are still bargains to be had online – though I personally find the time involved unaffordable while I don’t care for many of the terms – but if people are prepared to buy online because it is more convenient and offers more all-year-round and they don’t have the time for boots while regarding dealer chancing prices as the norm (because they are not in touch with grass-roots preservation), then its up to them. That dosen’t stop people in the know decrying it and championing boots because one-to-one contact alone is vital.

The crux however is that ultimately dealer high prices and copyists are killing the hobby which is a niche one, but all hope to ensnare enough people via the web’s reach, which in itself has contributed towards high-price stagnation via its obvious universal linking of people.

Many of us pass knowing comments on e-mails about the latest recession-get-rich-overnight price that some known commercial interests have been chancing on for many years now, and those that deliberately describe something as ‘rare’ or ‘probably rare’ or indeed, is even something that it is not – the Forum Hurri-Harvard grip debate alone last year was most enlightening, in which a selling concern admitted it KNEW the item was wrongly described – so much for effective online policing then, in which buyers in disputes are favoured when many legit sellers get ripped off.

It makes too many feel ill in particular when some selling concerns paying media lip-service say how much they are into their particular business when their prices prove to many buyers and observers that they are clearly only into quick large-scale profit that is wrecking and distorting the preservation market – not just now and for the future as we have witnessed, but for the potential collectors of the future – aside from Max Blood and excluding any Air Cadets at NAM and elsewhere, how many young people do we see at boots these days? It was warned and predicted by many of us soon after silly prices came along by exploiters of online sellings, around 9-10 years ago, and it has come true.

I don’t care about business interests and their supporters who try to justify such prices; nor those who say it is inevitable; nor those who shrill that it is what the ‘market will stand’; nor those preservationists who shrug it off while saying its a good laugh and who carry on with their own projects (and good luck to them by the way) while rightly doing their own deals at aeroboots and through private deals which ARE sensible – they pay what they know is a fair price and not the inflated ones. All I can see is that such prices are generally unpopular and they have made a mockery of aviation collecting and preservation today.

If dealers of high prices want to carry on stagnating the market while hoping to sell off large/small size items of high unit price (as opposed to grass-roots values) then they are obviously not in love with the business they are concerned with as some might profess, and simply hope to pick their way through difficult times while hoping to get lucky by increasing niche-selling to targeted customers of higher financial worth, thanks to the net’s reach and built-up buyer lists.

To end on a happy note, if you want a laugh then quote an item to an interested online dealer at their own online price and observe the facial droop – or the pleading/questioning tone resulting, if quoted over the phone. One old-time dealer told me of doing just that to an online concern some years ago which had gathered together a pile of instrumentation in obvious expectation of what it considered would be a lower lot price – but unhappily choked on, when reaping its own whirlwind. I doubt if any would begrudge preservationists tempted by charging online prices in this instance and would regard them as justified – its a shame that it has come to this however.

Onwards and downwards.

Should I have a Mae West…..how would I know if it was a ‘rare’ RAF 32 Pattern?

One or two ‘new’ stallholders booked for Shoreham; disposing of collections etc. That is always good for exciting finds. You never know, a bargain ’32 Pattern might yet turn up there. I gather there are some big chunks of Lancaster, Stirling and a B-17 ball turret that are due to make an appearance.

I’ve discussed this with a couple of militaria collectors they went through the same thing some years ago the prices rose until they were no longer sustainable then collapsed.

This situation isn’t really great for people with established collections because they will need to fill gaps and to grow their collections. They will already have the “mundane” items so it will hit them disproportionately harder. It definitely does put off new entrants to the collecting/preservation area. I know this from conversations I’ve had with some potential newbies.

Part of the problem is well known ebay dealers demanding high prices for items that don’t sell and keep reappearing at the same prices. The dealers don’t take the hint and the prices raise expectations of other sellers to unrealistic levels. They sometimes claim that they need to do this to make a living. I’d dispute that – if they really wanted to make a living they’d need cash not stock sitting on shelves due to high prices. Part of my previous job was dealing with liquidations and around 90% of them were making a profit but had no cash so couldn’t pay creditors. Tesco and others “pile it high and sell it cheap” to make lots of livings. I accept that this stuff can’t be piled high but it could be turned over more quickly if it was much cheaper and demand would increase. The stock is out there as anyone who attended the Newark Aeroboot at the end of last year could have seen.