Heads-Up Hexanon 60/1.2 LTM

foto_fool said:
Well I'm glad that's over and done. The winning bidder sniped in in the last two seconds of the auction, and $1,900 is probably a deal. With only 800 of this lens produced, at least there probably is NOT a next time.
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I hate ePrey snipers.
 
CameraQuest said:
get a used Noctilux for about the same price
faster & a better performer.
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I'd love to get my hands on a Noctilux for $1800! Where can we get some?

Dang it, that was one nice deal, and seemingly a good lens; I haven't seen an image rendition taken with the Konica RF lenses that hasn't pleased me...as far as the lens is concerned.
 
ebay bidding is like being at a Casino. Sometimes I get very busy at work and I forget about a super deal that I bid on, to find it having sold for a very low price. It has happened many times to me.
 
On ebay if you don't snipe you don't buy anything, sad reality, if you bid before the bitter end you just give a target price to the snipers.
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I apologize to those who have read my thoughts on this before, but if you think it through very carefully you will realize that an early proxy bid will always beat a 'snipe' bid -- provided that the proxy bidder is willing to pay more.

If the snipe bidder matches your high proxy bid, you will still get the buy because on eBay, ties go to the bid that was placed first.

Your proxy bid doesn't get upped until somebody tops it, so entering an early bid does not 'give a target price to the snipers.' They have no way of knowing what maximum bid you entered except by bidding more and more until they top it -- in which case you wouldn't have wanted to buy anyway, because the price would have exceeded the amount you were willing to pay.

In other words, the only way to "win" an eBay sniping fight is to pay more than you had intended -- and that's not my idea of winning!

Buying sensibly on eBay is really very simple: Decide what is the absolute most you'd be willing to pay for the item you want, then enter that amount immediately at the very beginning of the auction. The proxy bid system will assure that you're the high bidder until your limit is reached (at which point, remember, you wouldn't have wanted to buy the item because it's over your price limit.) You will automatically beat any tying 'snipe' bids because your bid was placed first.

Don't be deceived when you see auctions in which your maximum bid was, say, $50 and you read that the item sold for $51. Non-sensible bidders will read this and think, "Drat, if I had just sniped at the last minute with a $52 bid, I would have gotten the item."

This is a fallacy that eBay promotes because it's good for sellers. In fact, in this scenario, you have absolutely no way of knowing how much you would have needed to bid to buy the item. The bidder who got the item for $51 might well have entered a maximum bid of $100, and then you would have needed to spend $101 (twice your intended maximum) to get the item.

For those who still believe sniping works, I always invite them to consider what I call the "Bill Gates scenario": Suppose that Bill Gates decides to make people's lives miserable on eBay by buying every item in some coveted category.

So during a period of one week, he does a search and finds all the new auctions for, oh, I don't know, let's say Kardon lens caps. He gets in at the very beginning of each auction and enters a maximum bid of one million dollars for each cap.

Well, you can follow whatever sniping strategy you want, but during this week there is going to be no way you are going to be able to buy a Kardon lens cap on eBay... not unless you are willing to pay more than one million dollars for it, which would be nuts. Bill will get all of them, and probably in every case he will pay much, much less than his maximum bid. And none of the other bidders will ever know how much it would have taken for them to get a Kardon lens cap, because his maximum bids will never be revealed.

I realize that in spite of this seemingly obvious logic, there are a lot of people out there who believe with almost religious intensity that sniping CAN work, at least in some tortuously-reasoned hypothetical scenarios. All I'll say in response to that is that I don't get into religious arguments on RFF any more, so don't bother to post a reply. Just think about it instead, okay?

As you think, keep in mind these basic principles:

-- Whatever else happens, the item will be sold to the person who enters the highest bid before time expires.

-- In case of ties, the sale goes to the person whose bid was entered first. (Proxy bids are timed from the moment they were entered, even if they're automatically upped later.)

-- An auction's closing price tells you nothing about how high a bid it would have taken to top it, because you have no way of knowing the winning bidder's maximum price.


If you think I'm completely off-base on this, you're free to get on eBay and follow your own logic and we'll see who comes out ahead at the end of the day. In fact, I'm thinking of selling several items on eBay soon, so the smart thing probably would have been for me NOT to post this, and instead promote the fallacy that "sniping works." It DOES work -- but for the seller, by promoting "auction fever" and a mentality that the goal is to "beat" the other bidders, rather than simply to buy an item you want for a sensible market price.
 
I am focusing on BUY NOW items mainly due to the hassles of bidding. Quite often, there are great bargains for items that can be bought directly.
 
I bought the lens, so let me explain the way I bid on it.

I think jlw is right in what he says, if ebay bidding were always rational, but at least in my case I know I can't be counted on to adhere to a rational strategy. So, like jlw's rational bidder, I figure out what price I am willing to pay long before the auction is over. The difference is I put the bid in (by hand, not using sniping software) just before the auction ends.

That way I may win the item, or may not - but I am never drawn into bidding more than I think the item is worth (and I can afford), because if someone else has bid more, it's too late for me to enter a higher bid. I know if I enter it even one minute before the end, I may be confronted with a higher price, and I will inevitably succumb and bid more than I decided (in cold blood) that I would bid up to.

Having said that, I also have watched my own early bid on something like a filter (when I couldn't be there at auction's end) beaten by someone who "walked" their own bid up $20 by a dollar at a time. Again, not rational bidding, but I think irrational bidding is the rule on auction sites rather than the exception. I'm not an economist, but I think the study of online auctions is currently a hot topic of study (for instance, whether to set a reserve bid or not) - which it wouldn't be if bidding were always rational.

Fred B.
 
Congrats on the lens, Fred, and please post some pictures ...
Also, please consider posting some results in the flickr M-mount
forum, this is such a rare lens.

Thanks,

Roland.
 
Congratulations, Fred. I emailed you via ebay! I hope that I can test this lens when I will be doing "A test of 60mm lenses" soon!


Raid
 
fgb2 said:
Raid, any time you need it, it practically has the stamps on it ... I just don't know what other 60's there are around?

Fred B.
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Fred,

I am joking with you; I don't think there exists any other 60mm lens in LTM. One day, and when you don't mind it, I would love to try it out. I hope that your two lenses made it back to you.


Raid
 
I've never seen a lens diagram of the Konica 60/1.2. Seeing how long the lens is, I wonder whether it's just a remake of their 57/1.2 SLR lens of the seventies optically...

The 57-58mm focus length was very common since the Zeiss Biotar 2/58 in early SLR history, because many 50mm's weren't long enough for mirror clearance in these days. The difference between a 57 or 58 and 60mm would be hard to evaluate.

regards, Frank
 
Raid - the lenses made it back in perfect shape. I don't know how you keep track of all the lens caps and hoods.

In Visoflex mount there's the 65/3.5 Elmar, then the 73/1.9 LTM Hektor ... How about 58-75's?

Fred B.
 
fgb2 said:
Raid - the lenses made it back in perfect shape. I don't know how you keep track of all the lens caps and hoods.

In Visoflex mount there's the 65/3.5 Elmar, then the 73/1.9 LTM Hektor ... How about 58-75's?

Fred B.
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Fred,

I am glad that the lenses made it abck well to you. As for the 58mm-75mm lenses, they are rare and it would be great to find donors for such lenses for a test sometimes during the early fall. With fewer lenses, I can do better testing. It was a very difficult task to keep track of 26 lenses in the 35mm-40mm focal range and it was even tougher to keep track who gets back which lens hood or lens shade or lens rear cover. I wrote down each accessory for each loaner lens with name of owner beside it. I also kept the original parcels.

Greetings,

Raid
 
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