Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

J.R. wrote:Going back to Kerren's last post, I don't recall exactly where the ink actually came from. I notice she refers to QUINK, but I DO remember in my primary school in Farnham, Surrey, circa around 1956, the ink monitor had to MAKE the ink by mixing some dubious blue powder with water.

Thankfully, I never had to do it, but I do remember it was almost impossible without ending up with blue hands !!

In Arthur Rider's class, if you wanted more ink, he would always ask "Smink ink or smorink?" Apparently one was Quink and the other, the stuff made up from powder. I either never knew or couldn't remember what the difference was, so I never dared ask.
Dennis Childs, in Barnes B when I was there, discovered that Quink would make any colour ink if you bought a pint. He wrote in brown ink for quite some time.

kerrensimmonds wrote:Have you seen how that desk is going? Stands at £175, with six bids - all from the same person. And there are still four days to go.
a) Isn't that a lot more than any of the others fetched?
b) How come the same person is bidding against themselves? Feels dodgy....

Didn't one of the previous desks go for between £50 and £60?
eBay now hides the bidders ID for expensive items and it is unlikely that the bids are all from the same person.

Have you seen the Railway Locomotive at:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... &rd=1&rd=1

John.

The bids are from the same person.. 'Bidder 1'. When a price goes over £100, eBay hides the details. But there is always a Bidder 1, a Bidder 2, etc. etc.
And if you click on the bid history of this item, it's always been just 'Bidder 1'.
I wonder what they : 'Bidder 1' : are playing at?! And who are they?!
This has gone way out of my league, anyway... more's the pity.

PS.. re the model train. If you look at the bidders, with the possible exception of Rosemary0000 (who has not purchased much in recent months), all the other bidders are collectors of model railway trains etc.. (one of them specific to the 'Schools Class'). These are not Old Blues, and they are not collecting CH specific memorabilia.

kerrensimmonds wrote:The bids are from the same person.. 'Bidder 1'.

Ah, Yes - I see what you mean....
Sorry, I did not notice that it was 'Bidder 1' all the time.
Re. the locomotive, perhaps it will be cheap seeing that no CH collectors are bidding at the moment...
John.

kerrensimmonds wrote:Have you seen how that desk is going? Stands at £175, with six bids - all from the same person. And there are still four days to go.
a) Isn't that a lot more than any of the others fetched?
b) How come the same person is bidding against themselves? Feels dodgy....

Not from Dublin, by any chance ??

I didn`t think it was possible to bid against yourself on ebay. From what I understand, if you`re the highest bidder and then top up your bid, the amount shown remains the same but it will be counted as another bid - just means you have decided on a higher maximum bid., and highest bids aren`t revealed until end of auction.
So i imagine that this new system automatically "ignores" the other bids once over £100 and only shows the higher bids in each case, so bidder 2, 3 etc won`t appear until they bid more than bidder 1, even though there may be several people bidding. Whoever bidder 1 is certainly wants this desk!

One of the original nameplates for that locomotive currently hangs in the model railway room at CH

Just as a matter of interest, I have a model of the "Christ's Hospital" locomotive which was produced by a company called TMC about five years ago. It was basically the Hornby OO-gauge "Schools-class" model (as in the e-bay sale) but was then painted, named and numbered by TMC according to the buyer's preferences. I opted for Christ's Hospital in the old Southern Railway green colours, which is a beautiful model, but cost £100, which made my eyes water a bit at the time. So, anything under about £80 is a good bargain for the e-bay model.
Foureyes

Re the desk. Bloomin'eck! Bidder 1 clearly went up to £210 in a series of bids placed on 26 April. But he/she has now been overtaken on 29 April by Bidder 2 coming in at £211.
I can't wait for the end of this auction.. some time away, yet.
And why on earth should this desk go for so much more than any of the predecessors on eBay?
Curioser and Curioser...

Could the vendor not be trying to inflate the price himself in the hope of attracting a bigger price ?

Seems a bit silly when you realise that we can see that it's the seller bidding, though !

eBay does not let you bid on your own items, so Bidder 1 (or even Bidder 2) can't be the seller.....
When the sale goes down, the profile of the successful bidder will be revealed (I think...) so we should be able to see if it's someone who is collecting CH memorabilia.

Could be in the States then !

I seem to remember someone telling me there is a buyer of CH stuff over the pond, prepared to pay 'silly-money' for 'Housey' stuff.

kerrensimmonds wrote:eBay does not let you bid on your own items,

But you could have a "friend" who does it for you.

Would that be a flexible friend ?