The names that I see come up the most often are
Rinkya, Celga, and Hobby Shop K. There are
others that I'm sure someone can testify about,
and there are plusses and minuses for each of
them.
Rinkya is by far the most expensive of the three
services named above (high commissions, high
fixed costs for things like the bank transfers
and shipping).
I use Rinkya anyway, in spite of the expense, for
a few reasons:
1. I'm a control freak. Rinkya lets me bid when
I want, as often as I want, however I want, even
at the last second in auctions that don't have
automatic extensions. I get to see what the
Celga and Hobby Shop K bidders have done hours
before the auction ends, and am allowed to make
my own strategy and tactics. This is worth
something to me.
2. They are credit-card based. Celga requires
use of PayPal. (I think Hobby Shop K does as
well). I loathe PayPal, so it is worth something
to me to be able to use a credit card for
everything. (My problem with PayPal is that I
have a lifetime spending limit of $2K if I won't
give them the keys to my bank account, and I
refuse to give them the keys to my bank account)
3. I can bid against other bidders on the same
deputy service; that is, I can bid against other
Rinkya people, as well as against Celga, etc.
people. With Celga, you cannot bid against
another Celga person (even if you are willing to
spend twice the money), unless that other Celga
person is outbid by a non-Celga bidder. This is
worth something to me.
4. Rinkya lets me inspect closed YJP auctions.
So that I can see, for example, that Yann won a
cel a day or two ago that I was thinking about
bidding on (but did not), which taught me that I
probably should have bid on the cel, because Yann
is a very smart guy; lesson learned for next
time from being able to do a post-mortem.
So, I spend more on commissions and costs at
Rinkya, but I'm happy. Your mileage may vary....
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