Another Altiar up for Auction

From: Doug Yowza <yowza_at_yowza.com>
Date: Tue Aug 18 23:06:42 1998

On Tue, 18 Aug 1998, Bob Wood wrote:

> out of this temple. And some probably even think that I
> am the anti-christ who came in on a black helicopter.

No, that would be Sam.

> But please try to help me understand something. If I
> put something up for auction on Ebay I have not held
> a gun to anyone's head and forced them to buy anything.
> If, by their own free will, they make the decision to
> bid an amount that is more than the accepted value
> of that item then what have I done that is unethical?

I don't see it as a matter of ethics, I see it as a matter of setting
expectations. Ebay used to be a useful guide to "market" prices, but as
far as I can tell, a single bidder came in and caused the high bids to
increase from 4x to 10x from what they had been. This is clearly an
anamoly, and I don't understand why the few sellers that know about this
guy don't simply sell their entire inventory to him now and forget all
about the ebay game.

Why do I care? Because now anybody that has seen the action on ebay
actually thinks that an Altair might be worth $10K or more. This causes
three things to happen:

1) It actually does artifically raise the price.

2) It brings more people like you into the game to seek out the supply,
and unlike the members of this temple, those with money as their
motivation have no qualms with extremely obnoxious behavior like spamming
usenet with "bring me your Altairs."

3) Those who would have gladly donated a machine to a good home now think
there's $10K to be made, so they keep them until they get a $10K offer
(i.e., they keep them until they die).

-- Doug
Received on Tue Aug 18 1998 - 23:06:42 BST

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