MG vs Triumph rilvary...

[Mathew]

48 minutes ago, Pete Lewis said:

Membership    its hovered around the 4 - 4,5k  for a number of years now 

Pete

Never get back to the early to mid nineties high! 

[Colin Lindsay]

20 hours ago, Mathew said:

Never get back to the early to mid nineties high! 

The Internet was the end of that. Parts for sale everywhere and advice online for free, no need to go to autojumbles or club meets for help. Technology moved on and spoiled all the fun.

[Mathew]

1 minute ago, Colin Lindsay said:

The Internet was the end of that. Parts for sale everywhere and advice online for free, no need to go to autojumbles or club meets for help. Technology moved on and spoiled all the fun.

I love a good rummage through old parts. Stop it!! Been having to just go through my own! Although the bay is ok its not like the real thing.

[Colin Lindsay]

1 hour ago, Mathew said:

Although the bay is ok its not like the real thing.

Finding something online that has been overlooked and is selling for pennies is almost - but not quite - as good as rummaging through a parts bin and finding rare goodies in the depths that no-one else has seen. I miss that fun!

Roll on the next good autojumble. Here's hoping Gt Malvern has a few.

 

[DVD3500]

Gosh... when I started this thread I didn't expect it to go in this direction but I am glad it did!

Being not yet 50 I grew up with computers and my first job after high school was actually Internet -based. So I played a lot of video games and I actually watched the whole online world evolve.

There are many points I could make here about whether or not the Internet is killing off interest in classic cars (I personally don't think so, at least, not directly), low membership as well as thing such as swap meets etc. but I need time to gather my thoughts...

 

[Dick Twitchen]

26 minutes ago, DVD3500 said:

but I need time to gather my thoughts

Worrying "being not yet 50"!

[Colin Lindsay]

36 minutes ago, DVD3500 said:

There are many points I could make here about whether or not the Internet is killing off interest in classic cars (I personally don't think so, at least, not directly), low membership as well as thing such as swap meets etc. but I need time to gather my thoughts...

 

I don't think it's killing off interest in classics; if anything it's promoted them - you can see at a glance what cars are like, read generally accurate reviews, see the differences between models, good points and bad points, even buy them online and you know more or less what to pay; but what it has done is kill Clubs in the physical sense. Back in the day you had to go to Club meets to talk to like minded people or find spare parts, now you just go online and get it all for free.

[Mathew]

Its is in some ways promoting classics but,,, misinformation gets circulated quicker, knowledge from older members gets lost . 

Have you seen some of the youtube clips of our cars, presented as if they have knowledge of the car when clearly they don't to those who do.

[Iain T]

3 hours ago, Colin Lindsay said:

I don't think it's killing off interest in classics; if anything it's promoted them

I agree, I've been to Jaguar and Alfa Romeo meets in the 80s and 90s that were positively unfriendly! 

Apart from virtually instant answers to questions on forums the Internet does let the uninitiated peruse cars to see what's out there and tickles your wallet! 

Iain 

[Colin Lindsay]

1 hour ago, Mathew said:

misinformation gets circulated quicker, knowledge from older members gets lost . 

Have you seen some of the youtube clips of our cars, presented as if they have knowledge of the car when clearly they don't to those who do.

Well there's the other angle; information gets circulated and older member's knowledge is preserved for younger members, and doesn't pass away when they do but comes up in search engines for years....

I don't often watch Youtube videos - too many treat them like a fashion channel with loud music and long intros that even they tell you to skip - my short attention span gives up by that stage - but I do also keep away from sites like 'Honest John' which are inaccurate in many areas, and almost laughable in others.

[daverclasper]

7 hours ago, Colin Lindsay said:

Finding something online that has been overlooked and is selling for pennies

Any tips on that Colin?, I've had a few bargains over the years, mainly something, just listed, at "Buy it now" or the occasional bidding one that has none of the usual interest.   

Edited April 19, 2021 by daverclasper

[Mathew]

6 minutes ago, daverclasper said:

Any tips on that Colin?, I've had a few bargains over the years, mainly something cheap, just listed, at "Buy it now" or the occasional bidding one that has none of the usual interest.   

They are getting rare now.

[daverclasper]

1 minute ago, Mathew said:

They are getting rare now.

I reckon. A lot of trawling for hardly any catch. Maybe like real trawling nowadays!.

[Colin Lindsay]

1 hour ago, daverclasper said:

Any tips on that Colin?, I've had a few bargains over the years, mainly something, just listed, at "Buy it now" or the occasional bidding one that has none of the usual interest.   

Lots of coffee, spare time, and a diabolical mind....  If you do crosswords you'll do well.

I'll give away a couple of tips...  Don't use all the words you need. I'm looking at metalwork hammers at present. Ball pein hammers are aplenty, but so are ball pin, ball peen, ball peane etc. Search for ball pein and you may miss one, and therefore so does everyone else, but search for 'ball hammer' and it adds all the spelling variations of the more difficult word. Same thing with Carb, because you're then getting all of the variations of spelling of carburettor.

If you want, for example, hub caps, don't specify the vehicle. Search for 'hub cap'. You'll soon see which ones are a close match for, say, Herald ones - title says 'Chrome Hub caps', description says 'I think they came off a Herald'...

Don't search solely in 'Car Parts' - some great items come up under 'Automobilia' 'Collectables' or 'Wholesale and job lots' especially if you want a dozen oil filters...

Watch for damaged items that are easily repairable. I bought a stainless steel Lumax spotlamp, NOS 1960s for £6.50 earlier in the week, with a cracked glass. Another seller is selling NOS glass for £5, and other rusty or dented complete versions, with good glass, come up for around the same. Add the two together and it's far short of the £50 or £60 sellers want for good items. I've seen Herald steering wheels selling cheap as 'they're missing the centre badge'...

I watch a lot of items, don't bid once they get too high, miss a lot through forgetting to bid, but still get the odd bargain even these days. As Meghan would say: you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get your handsome Prince...

 

[Badwolf]

12 hours ago, Colin Lindsay said:

..... As Meghan would say: you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get your handsome Prince...

Yes, and dare I say, look what she ended up with....... Goes to prove that you can't win 'em all.

As for missed fleabay bids... (see several other threads), snipe it and wait to see if you win, then pay up.. simples. Never start a bidding war, every time you get outbid you have to pay more.  Said it so many times, decide what its worth to you, bid by snipe site, even the free sites put the bid in 8 seconds before close. If you loose, then it was too expensive... next! Got £1500 worth of PA kit for something like £175. My top snipe bid was £950. It works well, its not for everyone but certainly for me.

 

[Iain T]

28 minutes ago, Badwolf said:

bid by snipe site,

Excuse my ignorance but what's a snipe site? I only use Ebay occasionally. 

Iain 

[68vitesse]

Puts your bid in very close to auction closing, hopefully before others can out bid you.

Something I find useful is to add words in search with a minus sign to limit the search.

Regards

Paul

[Badwolf]

Iain - Apologies for not explaining. A snipe site is one that you join up to and give them the details of the item you want to bid for, along with your maximum bid. The free site that I use puts the bid in 8 seconds before the end of the listing (you can pay to upgrade to a paid version which can put your bid in up to 2 seconds before the close). Fleabay then accepts your bid, compares it with others that are going through and if your bid turns out to be the best, you win and pay up. If, in the case of my example previously, I put in a maximum snipe bid of £950 which was what I was prepared to pay, however as the other bidders only went up to (say) £170, I got it for £175. It's like preloading a bid on fleabay, but with the advantage that nobody can up the bidding until the last few seconds, when hopefully it is too late. The site that I use is...

https://justsnipe.com/

Hope that this helps.

[DVD3500]

It's a site that will bid on your behalf in very last half a millisecond before an auction ends.

While, in theory, they shouldn't work because if everyone puts in the highest bid they are willing to spend then the "highest bidder" would always win but in reality by "sniping" people can "undercut" other bidders.

The sites give you tools like by how much to increase if your initial bid doesn't win etc.

In my experience at least here in Germany not many parts go up for auction and when they do they usually are asking sky-high prices.

When you ask they claim the item is "worth" that much but it is hard to accept that when a brand new item is sometimes within 10% of their asking price and sometimes lower. Granted, the glut of sub-par "OEM" or "Original" parts could mean that a good used bit of kit is better than something "new" but in a lot of cases I doubt it.

As I only recently joined a few clubs I can't really speak to whether the internet has made things better or worse.

I can speak for my other hobby slot car racing (Scalextric to most of you) and that while it has seen a massive upswing in recent times 99.76% of the questions asked are the same ones over and over and over again and they usually get asked on platforms with no or poor search functions meaning the "longevity" of any responses is lost in the ether like so much methane from a group of cows in a pasture.

I went on a rant online recently berating people for not using two synapses to try to figure things out for themselves. The backlash made me laugh. I was accused of being "elitist" because I told people how to help themselves. I tried eventually to try to get banned on purpose but it never happened. In fact, a few days later a few people contacted me privately and thanked me because they could figure things out on their own. 

There has always been a disproportion of "take" to "give" on any platform but when people show absolutely no interest in trying to figure things out themselves (and especially if things are so poorly worded I can't understand what they are saying) I get very grumpy.

There are parallels in the two past times in that you have to have a modicum of an interest in  cars and there are lots of ways to resolve the same problem. Real cars though tend to do more damage than a slot car when it comes off the track though....

I personally don't think it's an either or situation. My Mom is in charge of the public relations for a Jazz Club and she spends most of her time promoting things on social media. Where I think clubs fail is they only post about events or the odd question. Most clubs have newsletter or magazine and the same type of editorial process has to go into your social media presence. 

The advantage of the online world is interaction and I think this gets overlooked a lot. Each printed article should have a link or QR code to a place where the topic can be discussed online. Will people discuss ? Not every time. But when they do it gives you a "pulse" of what that chat is about.

An online presence can also be used to promote or inform things that happen adhoc.

We seem to have drifted far from the MG / Triumph topic...

 

 

 

[Badwolf]

2 minutes ago, 68vitesse said:

Puts your bid in very close to auction closing, hopefully before others can out bid you.

Something I find useful is to add words in search with a minus sign to limit the search.

Regards

Paul

If you search on say... Triumph Spitfire -(red, blue, green) it should list all the Spitfire (including parts, planes etc) listings except those colours including parts . If you leave out the minus sign it should list only those colours.

[Colin Lindsay]

29 minutes ago, Iain T said:

Excuse my ignorance but what's a snipe site? I only use Ebay occasionally. 

Iain 

It's something that helps you win things that you've forgotten about, as you're out in the garage when the bid ends and you forgot to bid on it at the last minute, as intended. It bids for you but at the last minute so that all of the manual bidders, like me, sit back thinking they've won then someone else 'snipes' in with a higher bid but too late for you to counter.

We have a local weekly auction three doors away from me, you can bid online but their idea of online bidding is the opposite of eBay. Starting bid £10, I'll put in a maximum of forty expecting it to jump to £11 or £12, then the site announces: "We have a bid of £40". NO YOU DON'T! 

Some interesting stuff, though:

https://www.scarvaauctions.com/catalogue/lots/D9A6CF00C39248B6439D1076EB341D698C1190C110808F21C851E3147E68DEBD/6A1DB9E1888E53196321A50D81044772/general-auction-including-antiques-collectables-lot-14/?d

[Badwolf]

5 minutes ago, DVD3500 said:

We seem to have drifted far from the MG / Triumph topic...

This is the value of the search function. So many threads drift off onto other very interesting things. This is why I always have a quick look on most new posting. A thread on say Vitesses doesn't really do much for me, but when it drifts onto tyres or led lights, then it does. This is one of the reasons that I keep most of my appeals for help in one place on my restoration thread, so that I can, hopefully, refer back. In fact it's a bit like Colin's comments about listings on fleabay. You never know what is going to turn up on a particular listing.

[Iain T]

Isn't this forum wonderful, ask a question and the answers just keep comin'. 

Ta lads! 

Iain 

[Colin Lindsay]

1 minute ago, Badwolf said:

In fact it's a bit like Colin's comments about listings on fleabay. You never know what is going to turn up on a particular listing.

I'm actually getting a bit peed off with Google or Bing searches... you either find a lot of stuff from years ago (I recently replied to a post on another forum that was 13 years old, thinking I was being helpful...) or else you see some great stuff, photos of things I need for reference, then you get the same stock message for 90% of them:

Why do they continue to list out of date items or pages that appear in searches but the link is long gone?

 

 

 

[Bfg]

On 16/04/2021 at 10:09, Pete Lewis said:

i've found most Classic owners give you a wave /recognition nod, most MG owners don't nor Morgans 

me  I wave at anyone out for a drive ,

pete

Likewise.  When driving slowly through town the Triumph yesterday I waved to a chap in a Mk.1 Cavalier.  By the look on his face he seem surprised to have been noticed let alone acknowledged ..but was delighted and so waved back.  I think it made his day.  And I'm happy because he's happy.

But I wonder how many TR owners wave to an older saloon car ..other than those from the Triumph marque.?   Might it be that Triumph sports-car owners are similarly tarnished as stuck-up snobs because of the attitude of some  in our own clubs ?  ..not those in the TSSC of course !  

Pete.