I was bored at work today and decided to surf eBay to waste some time. I started to look for rod blanks when low and behold there was a listing for Genuine Tonkin Bamboo Fly Rod Blanks in various lengths and weights. Apparently these are new listings as all of them have a starting bid of $75 and the auctions don't end for another 5 days. I realize that there must be a huge quality difference from the bamboo blanks being offered from custom rod shops at 10x the price. I've been thinking about building a bamboo rod as my next rod and these blanks seem like a pretty cheap way of getting started (assuming that the bids don't sky rocket).

OK so now my questions...have any of you folks heard of these bamboo blanks before? What kind of quality are they? What are these blanks worth? How high should I bid?


If you want to see the blanks yourselves see below:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWA:IT&ih=017