Gentlemen are we our own worst enemy?

[Charles uk]

I watched on Sunday an 8 page 1944 “SEAGULL OBM MANUAL FOR ROYAL ENGINEERS” ,sell for £49, are we losing the plot?

There is a member of this site that owns a 1942 version of this document, who I’m sure would let you read it if anyone asked, he made me a cup of tea while I sat & read it. I couldn’t see more than £10 value after reading.

2 or 3 weeks ago I watched 2 Marston OA’s sell for almost £300 & £500, neither of which ran properly & both required quite major expenditure to bring them back from the brink.
Fortunately for the purchaser of the £300 one, the Marston registry was able to supply almost all the parts he requires to restore back to a running unpolished original condition.

My concern is that this gives a complete running OA a value almost twice as much as it should be in the league table of the World’s most collectable outboards, are Seagull genes that desirable?
Ask the chap, trying in vain to sell the Ferrier for less than £100.

I admit that the OA is the prettiest of all the Marstons & possibly the most valuable, though I feel the OJ comes a close second & is a lot rarer, I still can’t see any justification for the inflated prices as the OJ is only an SD with a couple of very minor differences.

The only people benefitting from this Seagull bubble apart from the vendors with their dubious descriptions & flattering photographs are Ebay, remember this is an auction we set the prices!

All I’m trying to say is, don’t let our desire for Seagull memorabilia get too stupid, as it will only end in tears.

Ps does anyone want to buy a new 1901 Seagull okicoki 2000 only 1 in existence & never been run, selling because I want to buy a 1943 Spitfire!

[livewire]

Charles,

I can honestly say it's not me, as i've said before i have short arms and long pockets. But seriously i will only spend a maximum of £30 on an engine to do up, i'm not intrested if they are all up and running.

Unfortunately it is very difficult to find good prices or bargin's on Ebay. There is the odd thing that is supplied at a good price but whenever an item is local i think 'every' time i'll get this it'll be a bargin and it's not. There are so many people who want to spend much more than me.

Did anyone see the fuel cock that was offered at a bargin price of £39.99?

Personally i reccomend to others and get my parts from John.

On the positive side i have sold some right old 'crap' for good money on Ebay in the past.

Andy

[Buzzook]

You've just been spoiled for choice and variety, mate!

Now the world is catching up, and the auction format is well known for driving prices of scarce items higher.

An Aston Martin 'in need of work' (ahem) but once owned by some Pommy rock musician recently was bid to GBP100,000 over its already massive reserve. Bought by some git with more money than sense, apparently.

Sign of the times I'm afraid.

Back when, there was loads of stuff coming up regularly, which helped keep prices down, but now as all the good stuff has been snavelled (probably by you Charles!!) there isn't much left, it doesn't come up as often, and so there is 'pent up' demand.

It's all very well to say an early Marston should only be 500 quid max, but the same thing made by Evinrude commands prices in excess of US$1000, and Marstons are a shed load rarer than 30's Evinrudes!

The problem is, once the price rises - or is 'perceived to have risen' - every Tom, Dick, and Harold with a bit of tat like those last two will expect to make a mint on them, and when they don't, will retire them in a huff to the shed, and there they'll stay for another 20 years.

By which time you'll probably be wanting to get rid of yours, as well, to fund the move into the care home and......oh....I see.....

Cunning plan, Baldrick! Very cunning plan.......

[Keith.P]

This sort of thing is happening all over the place, like vintage engines, a WD was about £50, about three years ago and now they go for £150, not that I would want one.
Lets say you wanted a genuine spark plug cap, are they available?
I did see one on Ebay go for £16, I wouldn't pay that but someone did.
As far as the paper work is concerned, it wouldn't have sold for that price if two or more people were not prepared to pay that kind of money for it and its not the first time, is it?
It will just end up, that the desirable motor will be over priced and the standard motors will not be wanted so much and end up being parted out for spares, to make more money.
Its not nice to see, but it seems the collectable motors are more of an investment item.
When was the last time anyone saw a Marston run on the water?
Like most things its just pricing the small enthusiastic collector like myself out of the market. (whats new)
Qestion :Would you sell your most prized motor?
And there is not that many that do come up for sale, so prices will only go up.

[Horsley-Anarak]

When was the last time anyone saw a Marston run on the water?

Cholsey, we had two going at once

In the world of auctions and collecting, it only takes two people who want something for it to go for silly money.

It would appear that people are asking silly money for all seagull now, starting price well over £100 on some.
Most are not rare or in good condition.

H-A

[charlesp]

I was lucky enough to be invited for lunch a few weeks ago at an Italian Restaurnt in East Molesley - the Veccio Roma. We had grouse for lunch (it was the 12th of August, the start of the season) and luckily I wasn't paying. I didn't see the bill this time but last time we went it came to £370 including wine for four of us. I wasn't paying that time, too, which is lucky because as a Yorkshireman y heart just wouldn't have withstood the wallet strain.

Both meals were really great, but I would rather have acquired a decent Marston OA at less money.

The instruction booklet was me. Both times. I'll hold my hand up to it, I'll freely admit my profligacy. I had the last one too, because the two of us both wanted it badly; it was just that I wanted it a little more than the other guy. It wasn't the paper, the material thing that I wanted, it was the knowledge that it may impart. If anyone else had bought it I may never learn what the Ministry had to say about the military Seagulls.

It did actually teach me a lot about the military mind, the equipment the engines were propelling, how they were attached, what spares they carried, and how they may be used. That's seen in the light of not one single other wartime document relating to Seagulls in military service having ever surfaced. As the other Charles has pointed out, I haven't kept that knowledge entirely to myself. Paper is ephemeral stuff; it's much more likely to be chucked out by ignorant stepdaughters 'helping' you to tidy up, it's more likely to be binned by the casual observer clearing out Dad's possessions, so it's important that these documents are scanned and preserved. I feel the same way about a small collection of Way-Hope's exchange of correspondence with a client in 1939. They told me a tremendous amount. Where the firm was, where its assembly shed was, what services they offered, what other things they sold, and the size of the concern. You can read between the lines of letters, and you can glean a lot. Paper doesn't forget, it hasn't had forty years of other experiences to clod its mind, it doesn't have to strain to remember.

That's why the British Seagull's ledgers would be such a fabulous prize. They contained handwritten details of every motor. What it was, who bought it, through which dealer, when, where, had it been back for repair. They were all discarded by new management demonstrating to the workforce that the old ways were gone and everything was to be done the new way. They went into a skip decades ago

If you're going to research something properly you develop a huge respect for primary sources like those, they are hard information. They are in no way related to the stories about Seagulls on D-Day, or stuff about the bronze bits on an SD being for use on a minesweeper.

The motors themselves, well I personally am not surprised the prices have risen. As the other Charles implies, maybe we do it to ourselves. He mentioned the Ferrier that's up for sale at the moment, and I've been mulling that one over. The British Seagull enthusiast has this forum to ask for help, opinions, advice; he has British Seagull to supply spares and John to do the same, and he has a network of enthusiasts that he can ask for the rare bits and bobs. This makes the British Seagull range - even the old ones - more accessible. It's easier to join the owners' club, as it were. When did you last see a forum going for years dedicated to the Ferrier? Or a source of spares as convenient and helpful as our John?

It's a British product, too, and national pride has something to do with it. Artefacts tend to do well at auction in the country of their birth, and our cousins from the Colonies, bless 'em, tend to be a little bit proud of the mother country. Surprising after the way we have treated them but there it is.

False, misleading, or downright dishonest Ebay traders are an increasing irritant, of course. One on the South Coast insists on using the same photo for each example of a particular spare part. One a bit further up towards the smoke sells ordinary spares at ruinous prices, assuming his customers don't know British Seagull still sell these things for far less. There are a couple of 102s with incredibly hopeful starting prices up there on Ebay at the moment - 'collectors item' - 'rare' - 'vintage' - 'antique' - are words bandied about freely. Those recent

And there's a guy up country who routinely 'improves' Seagulls or rather modifies them. I've had some of them in my workshop. The paint dissolves (or at least did) in petrol, and the 'incredibly rare Century (rare 'cos it has an exhaust where the chrome has been buffed off to a shiny brass finish) that was supplied with a forty series bracket. And the prices there just make you weep.

People who - as a routine - break perfectly operable motors for parts are another minor irritant, but I can understand why they do it. The bits are worth more than the whole, and anyway, they may think, there are a lot of Seagulls around. True enough, for the Centuries and the Forties, but perhaps you will recall the chap up country (called something like Cressford or Cresswell?) who broke a Marston. That was awful, and it made me very sad. I classed that with people melting war memorials for the scrap bronze. (Not that I'm implying the bloke ever stole anything)

So yes it's getting expensive, but it's not long ago that I bought my SNP (just an ordinary SD with extra muck and corrosion, I know) for £12.50 on the Bay. It's not much of a motor but it's the only survivor of the first attempt at wartime batch production. For the record I can detect no difference whatsoever between that one and an SDP save, perhaps for the crude finish of the former.

I am still routinely given old Seagulls, and frequently pay very little for others, when I sell them it's for way less than the guys that advertise on FaceBook or wherever, and I don't let them out of the workshop if they have been customised or whatever it's called. I don't do 'Bitsas'.

But if I look from a distance my hobby (obsession, passion, call it what you will), is still a cheap one. Have a look at a Football season ticket, take a look at keeping a boat in the water (in Britain at any rate), and you'll see we're not actually spending vast sums in comparison.

And as hobby you have to be very very extravagant if it costs you more than having a woman in tow....

[skyetoyman]

You cannot see the bridge in this picture but the pontoons could have been moved into postion by seagull outboards
The RSM on the left is my grandfather and "Wigan Pier" is a bridge across the Rhine in 1945.
He was in REME and sadly died just before I bought my first seagull in 1984.

[Collector Inspector]

YES Charles's!

"Gentlemen are we our own worst enemy?"

Sums things up very nicely.

B

[electrosys]

I'll admit that the 'Seagull price bubble' slightly irritates me on a good day, and seriously annoys me on a bad one, but all-in-all I'm not exactly surprised at it's development.

Like many, I employ Seagull engines for their motive power in preference to more modern outboards, and don't honestly care what they look like as long as they're reasonably tidy and run reliably.
For myself, 'authentic antiquity' is for the museums of this world, not working boats, and it's for that reason that I'd never want to clamp an early Seagull to my transom, or indeed a Ferrier, for to do so would be an act of sacrilege.

But some folk it would appear are into 'bling' - polishing-up common-or-garden Seagulls to look like display items - to look brighter and sharper than brand new Seagulls did when coming out of the factory in their heyday.
Well, if that's what you're into - fine - everyone to their own ... but by doing this you're effectively creating 'a valuable collector's item', for which inflated prices for spare parts must reasonably follow. In this limited sense, I do indeed think Seagull Owners are their own worst enemy.

With regard to a Seagull military manual fetching a high price at auction - well, such items command a high price, not because of any information they may contain, but because of their scarcity value. Such an item is like any other - it is worth what someone will pay for it.
If Ebay was flooded with such items, their value would be minimal. De Beers have a long history of controlling the world price of diamonds by limiting their supply - by creating scarcity value - Seagull parts and memorabilia are essentially no different.

[charlesp]

Elctrosys I'm sure you have expressed it perfectly. I can't help feeling a little uncomfortable with De Beers and diamonds!

I've had a few quid's worth of enjoyment out of the debate here - so effectively I can discount the price of the manual....

[electrosys]

Ah - but then, scarcity value has some merit ...

Presumably the bloke who was selling the manual didn't want it. What then would have happened if no-one had bid for it ? Given enough time, and enough fruitless auctions, at some point it may well have found it's way onto the refuse tip.

And as for De Beers - well, you won't find too many diamonds going for landfill !

[charlesp]

You're right of course.

Like the original ledgers I mentioned earlier. It's important that any documentation is safely gathered in, and preserved.

I have often pondered about the perceived value of things. In my earlier years I worked as an apprentice gunsmith, then for an auction house specialising in antique weapons. I really did appreciate why people would spend lots of money on a pair of duelling pistols or a Joseph Manton flintlock sporting gun or half decent Japanese sword, but I never got my head round the large amounts that people would shell out for a Colt Navy revolver that was produced in the thousands. Even so I realised that the constant quest for a 'better' or 'mint' example was in play.

It left me completely bewildered when Nazi militaria - so fashionable at the time (early seventies) wnt under the hammer for enormous sums.

And I remember a conversation with Roy Butler (late of Antiques Roadshow - it was his Auction House I was working for at the time) where both of us professed astonishment at the whole world of what we called 'Modern Art'.

I still watch Antiques Roadshow, and frequently my eyes pop open at the apparently vast value of sometimes utterly ghastly objects, and I'm frequently surprised that something of beauty and craftsmanship can be worth so little.

[Charles uk]

What I was trying to say, was that at the current auction valuations early Seagulls are fetching far more in the Seagull community than more collectable outboards in the outboard collectors market place.

A running 1950s full on racing motor is selling for less than half the money that an early Seagull that might need considerable expenditure to bring it back to original condition & even more to bring it to a condition where you could confidently hang it on the back of a boat, makes.
There are 2 outboard motors on display in the Science Museum one of which is an Anzani class B racer, when they infrequently turn up, they cost less than half a Marston, & we're talking Formula 1 technology of it's day.

We are creating a situation where the finder of a Marston in a rubbish skip, will not sell it for less than £500 as "that's what the last one sold for, look at this one on Ebay" even though it's seized needs a replacement gearbox, carb, transom clamp thumb screws & cylinder, just to look cosmetically right.

I admit the Marston Register did bid on the cheaper of the 2 OA's but only up to a level where we felt our members would have been happy to pay for spares after breaking, we also bought the 3 dead ignitions & the 2 extremely dead gearboxes, most of which have gone on to members that were looking for those parts, the 3 dead 1030x16 coils will be sent off for rewinding if the first 2 prototypes turn out acceptable, when I pick them up tomorrow.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

[skyetoyman]

I would be intereseted in getting my dead 1030 x 16 rewound . I assume the more that can be done at one time the cheaper it would be

[skyetoyman]

ps . it also makes the £25 I paid for a very little used wartime SD102 a bit of a bargain (ebay)
Start putting it all back together next week. Will take more pictures