Well, I finally have to put in my two cents worth in regards to eBay
auctions and other roll auctions after James Jelinek put in his words
on March 16th.

In regards to eBay, I have to report that all the dealings that I have
had have been very good, with one exception. The person took his sweet
time in shipping the item and it was poorly packed. Looking at the
large number of bad feedback, that he had,  I can see why. All the
people I have dealt with have been very honest and I have not had any
problems.  Every other item I won, was shipped very quickly and was
well packed.

What you have to look at when you buy at eBay is:

  a.  Is the seller new?  If the seller does not have any feedback,
I would be cautious in my dealing with him or her.

  b.  What kind of feedback does the seller have?  Set up a red flag
if there is any negative feedback at all.

  c.  Is there good pictures of the item?

  d.  A picture is not always necessary if a good description of the
item is given.

  e.  How is the item described?  Accurately?  Or is he calling a
piano roll a scroll?

  f.  You can pretty much tell from the description whether or not
the person knows what they are selling.  Some people buy junk at a yard
sale and try to sell it on eBay and they have not a clue as to what
they are selling.

  g.  I have found a lot of inaccuracies in the description, but very
little fraud.  If you know what you are buying, you cannot be fooled.

Sometimes the descriptions that people give on items are quite humorous
and I do get my daily laughs reading about the rare, very valuable copy
of "The Rosary" that the person has for sale.

During my own last roll auction, as a humorous joke I put up a few
rolls and described them as "Rare and Well Done," sort of the way you
like your steaks.  Since I had seen a 65-note copy of "The Rosary" a
few weeks before, described as a very rare roll and highly desirable
for anyone's collection, I could not resist the temptation.  I primarily
put the rolls on eBay, hoping to attract new customers to my own roll
auction.  I don't know if it succeeded or not, but I do hope someone
got a few laughs from my snide humor.

Antique stores selling rolls:

This anecdote probably sums it up.  I once went into an antique store
and they had some torn up ragged rolls in a corner for sale at $10
each.  I inquired if they thought they could ever get that price?
The owner of the shop summed it up this way:

  "Naturally, no collector is going to pay that price for those torn up
  rolls, but we have decorators who decorate restaurants in different
  themes.  They will buy a lot of junk simply to nail it up on the
  walls, or put on shelves, and they don't care what condition it is or
  what it is as long as it looks old.  So they will pay $10 gladly for
  an old junk roll."

It makes perfectly good sense to me -- what do you think?

"Big Time" roll auctions:

Well, James Jelinek said:

> Then there are the big time rolls auctions -- if you think eBay is
> high priced, you haven't been around one of these or bid on rolls.
> Ragtime rolls bringing hundreds of dollars and on occasion a thousand
> dollars or more.  eBay has it's problems but it has its good side
> as well.

If you go to Bennett Leedy's roll auction, at http://www.leedyrolls.com ,
you will find that the results of his last roll auction that the
highest priced roll sold for $30.50, certainly not in the hundreds or
thousands!  Also, while you are there, you will find some rather nice
rolls left that are still for sale and he also has some rather nice
recut rolls too for sale.

I guess my roll auction is not big time either, as I have never gotten
more than, at the most, maybe $200 for a roll in all the years that I
have auctioned rolls.  Note: I have had several people place a bid up to
$300 for a roll, but generally they get the roll for around the minimum
bid as no one else makes a bid on the roll.  My latest roll auction,
the highest roll price was $72.23.

At the last roll auction I did have two bidders who drove the bids of
one ragtime roll up to $165.00, the highest I ever got for a ragtime
roll.  I had quite a number of ragtime and blues rolls on that auction
and most of them went for a lot less.  "Crazy Bone Rag" went for only
$15.00, "Down Home Rag" only $10.53, "Lonesome Mama Blues", only $7.00,
"Profiteering Blues" only $7.00, "Tishomingo Blues" only $4.00.  This
was a fantastic performance.

So, Jim, if you know some people who are willing to pay hundreds or
thousands of dollars for rolls, I would appreciate it immensely if you
told them about our roll auctions.  The prices are very low.  Sometimes
they have even been lower than eBay's prices.  Also, a lot of rolls
don't even get a bid!

And while I am talking about it, please do go to my web site at
http://home.earthlink.net/~rollertunes as there are still quite a few
very nice rolls that have not been bid on and they are just waiting for
a nice home and loving roll collectors to enjoy listening too!  I also
have some recut ragtime and blues rolls at some very attractive prices.
You can listen to a sample of the MIDI files and I think you may want a
copy.  You are really missing out on some really great bargains by not
looking at all of the roll auctions, because we are really not big
time...

Musically

Larry Norman
http://home.earthlink.net/~rollertunes