In Search of an Inexpensive Sgian Dubh
October 9th 2006 22:48
My wife’s kilt making company received an inquiry for a Sgian Dubh (pronounced Skeen Doo). Now, she sells kilts, but no accessories other than Flashes. The customer was looking for a decorative design for around $25.
A Sgian Dubh is a small dagger that clips on a kilt wearer’s kilt hose. Whenever I’m looking for something rare like that, I’m not going to bother with a retail site like Amazon or Walmart. I’ll start with Ebay.
So I did a search on Ebay for “sgian dubh” and I came up with 200 results. Most were quite in inexpensive. I would have recommended several if the customer were online with me. But, as they weren’t, I needed to find a “Buy It Now” at least a day out from closing.
One item looked promising. It was only $5.99 and the seller had a positive feedback rating of 98.0% (which I’d generally consider acceptable,) but I clicked on his feedback rating to read actual feedback from Ebay buyers: and saw this note as the third down from the top:
“rec'd item.took some time to get,not the quality i had expected.ok experience”
The buyer had actually bought a Sgian Dubh. Now, the buyer could be over-exaggerating. He could have had unreasonable expectations and the seller could have done everything correctly. But if there are more than 100 other Sgian Dubh’s I could choose to buy at a similar price, it really makes no sense for me to take a risk on this seller. Now, if that feedback had not been listed in the seller’s most readily available feedback, I would have probably recommended that item. I’m not the type to go digging through a long list of feedback—particularly in the case of this seller (who had more than 29,000 feedbacks.)
So I went ahead and searched some more and found another one for $5.95, this time the seller had a 99.3% positive feedback rating and nothing negative in the past 30 days.
I also found another one whose seller had a 99.7% rating for $4.99.
Generally, auctions from foreign sources can be problematic. Obviously if you’re looking for kilt-related items, there’ll be quite a few auctions from the UK or Scotland, and if they’ve got solid feedback ratings, I would not be concerned at all. I’ve bought countless items from Scotland and they’ve all turned out quite well.
Now, not everyone’s going to be comfortable buying something on Ebay. Outside of Ebay, your best bet is Google’s website, Froogle, which searches multiple online stores.
I found this site which has a good buy on a Sgian Dubh.
I should note here that just because an item is not on Ebay, does not make the purchase safer. As I’ve detailed before, Ebay has numerous protections in place that ensure serious wrongdoing ends up punished. If you want to make a living on Ebay, you have to do it honestly.
Hope that helps my wife’s customer and all you Sgian Dubh searchers out there.
If you’d like me to find you a bargain, click here to e-mail me with the budget you’re working with, what type of item you’re looking for and what you’re looking to use it for and I'll do my best to find you a bargain.
A Sgian Dubh is a small dagger that clips on a kilt wearer’s kilt hose. Whenever I’m looking for something rare like that, I’m not going to bother with a retail site like Amazon or Walmart. I’ll start with Ebay.
So I did a search on Ebay for “sgian dubh” and I came up with 200 results. Most were quite in inexpensive. I would have recommended several if the customer were online with me. But, as they weren’t, I needed to find a “Buy It Now” at least a day out from closing.
One item looked promising. It was only $5.99 and the seller had a positive feedback rating of 98.0% (which I’d generally consider acceptable,) but I clicked on his feedback rating to read actual feedback from Ebay buyers: and saw this note as the third down from the top:
“rec'd item.took some time to get,not the quality i had expected.ok experience”
The buyer had actually bought a Sgian Dubh. Now, the buyer could be over-exaggerating. He could have had unreasonable expectations and the seller could have done everything correctly. But if there are more than 100 other Sgian Dubh’s I could choose to buy at a similar price, it really makes no sense for me to take a risk on this seller. Now, if that feedback had not been listed in the seller’s most readily available feedback, I would have probably recommended that item. I’m not the type to go digging through a long list of feedback—particularly in the case of this seller (who had more than 29,000 feedbacks.)
So I went ahead and searched some more and found another one for $5.95, this time the seller had a 99.3% positive feedback rating and nothing negative in the past 30 days.
I also found another one whose seller had a 99.7% rating for $4.99.
Generally, auctions from foreign sources can be problematic. Obviously if you’re looking for kilt-related items, there’ll be quite a few auctions from the UK or Scotland, and if they’ve got solid feedback ratings, I would not be concerned at all. I’ve bought countless items from Scotland and they’ve all turned out quite well.
Now, not everyone’s going to be comfortable buying something on Ebay. Outside of Ebay, your best bet is Google’s website, Froogle, which searches multiple online stores.
I found this site which has a good buy on a Sgian Dubh.
I should note here that just because an item is not on Ebay, does not make the purchase safer. As I’ve detailed before, Ebay has numerous protections in place that ensure serious wrongdoing ends up punished. If you want to make a living on Ebay, you have to do it honestly.
Hope that helps my wife’s customer and all you Sgian Dubh searchers out there.
If you’d like me to find you a bargain, click here to e-mail me with the budget you’re working with, what type of item you’re looking for and what you’re looking to use it for and I'll do my best to find you a bargain.
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