Boat Selling Questions

[seedy]

I'm reluctantly ready to sell my 16' lap Melonseed, wondering what venues have worked for anyone else who has sold an oddball (it'll say Rare in the ad:) ) wooden boat. I have thought of MAIB and craigslist, but am hesitating at the idea of eBay. What I'm interested in is what has actually worked for someone.

Also, I'm not sure how to price it, all I can find by googling around are newly-made ones, mine is older.

Suggestions welcome. I'm putting one photo up, not trying for free ad here, just so you can see what it looks like for pricing help.

http://krall.org/cdk/gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=2204&g2_serialNumber=8

[Gary E]

You got a shoping center near? or a near by lake where such a boat might be used?

Make a BIG FORE SALE sign with BIG PHONE NUMBERS

Drive around town, parking in the above areas, and turn on your cell phone..

and take the boat with you EVERYWHERE you go

Got a friend that owns a gas station? or a retail store that will let you park it there?

Not to say eBay and Craigs List wont work... they do, but people are most likely to NOT drive more than 20 or so miles to even look at a little boat they only saw a picture of.

[pcford]

Boy...wish I knew...I had a very desirable Chris runabout in remarkable original condition....took three years to sell....was not pushing it that hard...

You might try www.acbs-pnw.org It's free...boats sell all over the country.

[soba]

is it desirable to misspell your signs? Sort of like a sympathy thing?

[Thorne]

Get some better photos -- preferably with the sail tensioned correctly, plain background, best in the water. Work on your description and get all the terms and materials correct. (that hullform is usually called 'lapstrake')

Try Craigslist first. eBay is better (no CL hustlers) but a lot more hassle, and fewer local shoppers.

If you are looking for top dollar and aren't in a rush, an ad in our kindly host's magazine might work best.

Good luck!

[seedy]

Hey, thanks for the ideas. I probably should tow it back up to Maine and drive around with it, more people were interested up there. Not that any of them offered to buy it.

I had thought of the WB Classifieds, but thought they were mostly larger stuff. Might just go test that preconception right now.

On the misspelled signs, a salesman told me that he did it on purpose so he could sell to the English teachers who came in to correct him. :)

Any ideas what price range might be appropriate?

[seedy]

Try Craigslist first. eBay is better (no CL hustlers) ....

Years ago I put an ad for my plastic kayak online a few places, this was before CL. Got a call from a fellow who was driving in from Phila, wanted to look at it. He met me at my storage room, looked it over (was in great condition), and announced that the only way he'd buy it was if he could try it first, so could I just help him put it on the roof of his Forerunner and if it worked out he'd be back with the money.

I hesitated. He didn't look insane. I told him that if he wanted to follow me to the lake I lived near I'd be happy to let him paddle it. He admitted that he was in a hurry and needed to return to Phila soon. I asked how he had planned to take the time for the test-paddle he had originally proposed.

He got embarrassed, and ended up giving me his card, was a bigwig (sales, I think) at a pharma company in Phila. Never heard from him again.

It did underline my previous convictions about the veracity of men in suits, even though he wasn't wearing one at the time. :)

[Stashu]

Try this site for melonseed enthusiasts:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/melonseedskiffmelonheads/

[MISS RENE]

Can anyone pass on to me the e-Mail address for SEEDY?

I am unable to obtain the e-mail address for the person posting this thread.

Many Thanks,Ed

[seedy]

Stashu,

Great idea, went over there and someone was looking for a "woodie". Thanks.

[seedy]

Can anyone pass on to me the e-Mail address for SEEDY?

I am unable to obtain the e-mail address for the person posting this thread.

Many Thanks,Ed

Ed, I sent you a PM. Also, you can click on this link (http://carl.krall.org/wordpress/?page_id=63) to send me an email without putting my email out here barenekked.

seedy

[Yeadon]

uh fore sail sine is gonna be yer ferst stepp.

How about the back of Wooden Boat? Also, keeping this thread alive for a while won't hurt.

You might also make a small website with lots of photos, plus any other info you have ... loa, lwl, draft, beam, weight, sail area.

I'd use a free service of some sort ... maybe wordpress.com, or some sort of free blog tool like that.

[seedy]

Yeadon, I agree with using Wordpress.com. I actually use the Wordpress software to run my website on my own server. Where is Lake City?

Since I asked for help and got some suggestions here, I thought I'd share some back as a result of my experience so far.

I put a post on my website with the boat info, and put together all the photos I had into an album. Found some I'd taken in Maine with it in the water, that was a good suggestion Thorne. Boats look better in the water, this one still gives me a feeling every time I look at those photos, makes me wonder if I'm doing the right thing. But I need to, I need the money and I'm doing her wrong keeping her away from water.

There is a downside to using Wordpress or a blogging platform, which is that Google filters out posts from blogs. The day after I posted the For Sale on my site, a search for lapstrake melonseed for sale (http://www.google.com/search?q=lapstrake+melonseed+for+sale) would bring my post up as number one. The next day my post didn't show up at all!

I found Google's blogsearch in the "more" menu at the top of their page and tried that, there was my post.

So Google was favoring non-blog listings and all the various online want-ad places and eliminating anything originating from a blog software. So I cut and pasted my post into an plain html document, and put a link to that page from my blog. Now I'm back up there again.

BTW, if you want to post a quick webpage, the Composer thingie that comes with Seamonkey (which is the old Netscape modernised) is perfect, it has a tab where you paste or type in whatever you want, and it adds all the code that is needed. It has a preview tab so you can see what it will look like and whether your images will show up. Type in what you want, Preview it to make sure it looks right and ftp it up to your server.

This is especially helpful for doing eBay listings. I've not sold much on eBay, but this works well and can help you avoid paying fees for using their image program if you already have the photos online.

The Composer part is available on its own, search for Nvu. Free download, perfect for people who just want to stick something up on their webpage in a short time.

Another thing about Wordpress.com; sign up and set up a blog and it will import your Blogger blog and other blogs. This is a great way to have a free backup of your blog.

So I've got that figured out, next will be Craigslist, then eBay if I have to.

I put a price of $9500 on her. I think she's worth more than one of Crawford's FG ones, although they are beautifully done. But they don' t have that wonderful soothing gurgle when they cut through the water.

[Gary E]

$9500???
You should spend some time on eBay looking at what boats actually SELL for.

[Woxbox]

Here's a small but very interested group of folks:
http://www.tsca.net/

[seedy]

Hey GaryE,

Good idea, but how many melonseeds on ebay recently? Never seen a wood one there. I was kinda joking about putting Rare in the ad, but in truth they are, I looked for quite a while to find the one I have. That's the problem, and why I asked for pricing advice in my first post.

Which brings up something else, other than eBay it's hard to know what the actual final price was, and even there the older auctions are gone (surprises me a bit that they haven't used that info as a way to make money). We see ads for boats all over, but the final deal is private.

One nice feature of this forum that I didn't notice before is that it puts a list of related or suggested threads at the bottom of a thread, and I just finished reading about Joe's trying to sell DOVE and the fellow who was selling that lovely Whitehall with a much nicer trailer than I have. That was my fault for not looking HERE more thoroughly for a possible answer, but now I have a better idea of how things work. :(

In the same way I hope that someone will get something out of this thread when they try to sell theirs, hopefully they are smarter than me and search the forum first.

One interesting thing I just learned is that lots of people sell seeds to grow melons on eBay.:) Melonseed gets nothing, melon seed gets a lot of hits.

seedy

[seedy]

Here's a small but very interested group of folks:
http://www.tsca.net/

They look like my kind of folks. Thank you, bookmarked in my overstuffed Boats folder.

[Gary E]

I put a price of $9500 on her. I think she's worth more than one of Crawford's FG ones, although they are beautifully done. But they don' t have that wonderful soothing gurgle when they cut through the water.

Boat OWNERS always think theirs is worth more than most everyone elses and as long as you think that, you will remain the owner. Rethink your mission.. and if SELLING it is what you really want to do, start thinking like a buyer, otherwise you will continue to be a boat advertiser, and remain the owner.

[Rob Stokes, N. Vancouver]

Seedy - I sold a few boats in the last year using Craigslist. They always sell fast and I try to hold one of the highest prices of comparable boats. I will never be the cheapest :)

The trick is pictures and dialogue. I use a LOT of pictures - from every angle. And I take them with either a neutral background (lawn/trees) or a desirable background (water/boat ramp etc.). Pick a bright but cloudy day to take the pics and make sure you take them in every imaginable configuration (sails up/sails down, rudder down/rudder up, covered, interior, special details etc.)

Now for the trick - most people write a small add and then dump on a bunch of pictures. Instead, write the ad as if you're talking to the prospective buyer. Write a bit, post a picture of what you're writing about. Repeat. Make sure to "admit" ALL the warts, and have pictures of them too.

What happens is buyers get to "know" the boat before they ever talk to you. You'll weed out the looky-loo's and entice the serious buyers. Rarely do I have more than 2 or 3 people come to look at a boat, and when they come, they come to buy, not to shop. And I always get my price.

Craigslist ony supports the direct upload of four lousy pictures so to have more you need to be able to upload them to a server and then link to them.. this is basic HTML (look up "img src") and using this, you can have as many pics as you want. For picture sizing I use 640x480.

Good luck!

Rob

[Yeadon]

seedy, is the site done? Could I see it?

I have no idea what a little boat like this is worth ... but generally, something is worth whatever people will pay for it. Maybe $9500 is overpriced, I don't know. But it certainly is a starting point for a negotiation.

My dad has always been good at selling things for a bit more than they were worth. A lot of this had to do with how he priced things. For instance, if you price something high on the spectrum, then that will likely lead people to believe that what you are selling is nicer than what others are selling in the same category. If you underprice, people are going to think what you have is fair to okay.

He also subscribes to the Herb Cohen method of selling (http://www.amazon.com/You-Negotiate-Anything-Herb-Cohen/dp/0553281097), in which you should "care, but not that much." In other words, put your boat up for sale ... and if it sells for an amount acceptable to you, great, but if it doesn't, well, that's okay because you already own it outright, and it's not costing you anything to not sell it.

So, anyways, maybe GaryE is right on his knee-jerk reaction to your price. But if that's the dollar amount that it would take to wrestle the boat away from you, then that's where you should start. To have one of these built, well, that would probably be twice as much, if not more.

[Thom T]

I would not use Ebay. I think wooden boats are an emotional sale. Long time Ebayer I'm laying low until prices rise. Every time I took my boat in public at least 1 person asked me if it was for sale. Same thing with a VW window bus I once owned. Surfer dudes would follow me home and make offers even if it was not for sale, finally the offer became too big to turn down. Wooden boats are like art work, an emotional bond needs to be formed with the buyer. They say there is a buyer for every painting, I'm sure thats true of wooden boats

[Nicholas Scheuer]

I found my 13-ft lapstrake cedar Melon Seed through a note on the Yahoo Crawford Melonseed web page.

Moby Nick

[Dave Thibodeau]

You might get 1/3 of the total amount of money you have invested in the boat

[seedy]

This has turned into a very interesting and helpful thread, at least for me. I've always been plagued with "buy high, sell low" disease, so Yeadon's answer was good therapy. :) Yeadon, the posting is here (http://carl.krall.org/wordpress/?p=108). The link to the photos goes to more pictures, and also I put more info there. Need to caption the photos, and need to get back to that coast and take some more.

Rob, I've seen ads like that and can do it, but I need to get over my reticence to be a promoter. The idea of just putting it out there without being strenuous is useful and door-opening, thank you. Your answer should be a Sticky thread somewhere, maybe even here. I'll probably do a Craigslist ad when I get back in proximity with it so I can show it easily.

I can understand what Gary is saying, I believe it is meant to be helpful, if slightly dutch-uncle. :) As a buyer my alternatives are to pay Atlantic Challenge to build one for 2.x times what I'm asking, pay about the same for a Crawford and have a 13', have one built at any of the other builders, or build one myself. As a buyer I looked at all those options, and waited for a considerable time before this one became available. So appreciate your perspective, but I was a buyer of this very boat, and remember it well.

C223, your reports of actual prices are very helpful, thank you. I was just emotional about an auction the other day, but fortunately my timing with my slow internet connection saved me. :) Once I get back to that coast if you want a photo of something be happy to oblige.

I'm going to reconsider my pricing, take a long walk on it, sleep on it, etc. One nice thing about selling something like this is there's not a terrible rush to my door. Thanks again to you all for the life-lessons. :)

[Rob Stokes, N. Vancouver]

Seedy - I'm very careful NOT to promote the boat, but am equally careful to tell people about it. And my attitude is that I'm not"selling" them a boat, but they're more than welcome to buy it...

If you write your ad with these in mind, you end up with an informative ad, no hooks, no "truth stretching", no one's ever disappointed and the boat always ends up going to the people it should.

Rob

[SamSam]

is it desirable to misspell your signs? Sort of like a sympathy thing?

It's not always a sympathy thing. Two of my favorites from here were "Conah Store" for a store on a corner and "Wud For Sale". Another was "Jewerly".