Postcard valuations

I am not going to sell on Ebay if I can help it. I found a postcard site on FB and they allow members to contact each other to buy & sell cards. I did go to Ebay to look at prices and I'm so confused. Here's an example. A 1921 postcard of a train station in rural Virginia. I have several rural RR stations so I'm checking. This card was listed at $9.95 and got bid up to $998! The fifth bid was $28.10. The sixth bid was $489.32 and it went up from there! Why? There was a similar card for another rural VA train station that had the same bidding war. I could not find any info on why this would happen. I guess I'll ask for the first amount listed for mine, but if I'm selling to one person off line, am I crazy not to put them on Ebay to see if I can tap into that insane market?

https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/303811055329?item=303811055329&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2565

 

All I can tell you is that the person who put in the 6th bid of $489.32 was in first place for only a little over an hour. At the time they put in the bid, nobody would have known their high bid and it would have looked like $29.10 to everybody else. Only a little over an hour later, the person who ended up winning must have put in an exceptionally high bid. But at the time, it would have looked like $30.10. That happened on Dec. 21. Then six days later, on the 27th, the 6th bidder came back and put in three more bids within less than a minute of each other, trying to outbid the person in first place. Must have been somewhat desperate to win, to put in that many bids. The person who won only put in one bid, a very high one, back on the 21st.

That's not what you're asking but I found it interesting to analyze. Also, *nobody* put in any last-minute snipe bids. That's quite unusual these days for something supposedly desirable. Makes me wonder...

 

If you don't know exactly what you have, Ebay is probably the place to be. You will at least get market value then. JMO.

 

Ebay is also one of the last places where you'll get people bidding like the price is no object. Maybe great-granddaddy was the stationmaster and there are zero images of the station. We also don't know if the high bidder actually paid up.

 

Bev, we have a member who is really into postcards - @Joe2007 ...

Joe, can you offer any insight here?

 

I can't explain a nearly $1000 postcard. I've seen plenty of railroad station postcards in the $100+ range and even a few north of $200+ but I've never seen one sell this high. The eBay seller Stinggar is a name that anybody following expensive postcards on eBay in the past few years would recognize as they have been selling an incredibly impressive array of cards, including many railroad stations. All I can say is that the town of Altavista, Virginia isn't very large at 3,400 residents and perhaps this is a very scarce postcard and thus a pair of overzealous bidders could get into a bidding war. I was talking to a stamp and postcard dealer today and he said that some postcard collectors are wealthy enough that money is no object and that they have standing want lists with him for any RPPC postcard in their particular area of need no matter the price. I think I am facing a few of those collectors in the areas I collect.