eBay = Mkt Value? (was: my objection to recent postings)

From: Aaron Christopher Finney <aaron_at_wfi-inc.com>
Date: Fri Apr 10 14:13:32 1998

Man, was I excited when I discovered ebay. I have wasted *waaaayyyyy* too
much money there, in both good and bad deals. The problem is, Southern
California (San Gabriel Valley, specifically) is not a nice place to be a
computer collector. Everyone's feces is made of pure gold, and they all
think it should go for $100 an ounce. And there's plenty of it. Thrift
stores charge $50 for *each component* of an XT system, auctions are
ruined by people who know nothing about what they're bidding on, and
virtually nothing goes for free. So ebay was a blessing. In the beginning
I got caught up in the emotion of it all and overbid atrociously. But here
are some "classics" I bought, judge for yourselves whether they are good
deals or no.

Atari 600XL, 1010 tape drive, some carts .... $22
Atari 1200XL, a bunch of carts .... $57
Numeric keypads for Atari 8-bit .... $3
VAXStation 3100 w/mono monitor,drives,VMS 5.5 .... $51
Archive 150meg tape drive .... $25
2 Fujitsu SCSI drives (600m & 400m) .... $17
DB50 to Centronics I SCSI cable .... $2
DEC line printer .... $2
About 15 Pascal and Cobol books .... $1
IBM line printer .... $0.10
VIC 20 original manual and 2 catalogs .... $2
3 Z80 assembler books .... $5

note: I bought the VS from Gil Jasmin on this list - great to deal with

And some non-classics:

32megs EDO ram .... $34
Ensoniq wavetable card .... $26
ESS 1868 Audiodrive card .... $17
Emulex print server (nice!) .... $55
Adaptec PCI UW SCSI card .... $105


I have only sold 2 things on Ebay:

Packard Bell Spectria Pentium 75 (monitor built-in model) .... $280
Sun 3/50 w/19" mono monitor .... $55


I haven't been ripped-off and everything I've ordered came in a reasonable
amount of time and was packaged well. Some was even sent by UPS and made
it in one piece. My two sales were flawless, and I received payment 3 or 4
days after the auction ended.


Aaron
Received on Fri Apr 10 1998 - 14:13:32 BST