e-bay item

From: Derek Peschel <dpeschel_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Wed Mar 3 03:22:05 1999

> [ah, the flame burns on due to digest readers]

And due to the fact that you missed the last message I admonished you with.

(It was under a different subject. I should have learned my lesson the last
time I did the same thing. And you were even *expecting* me to comment this
time!)

Since you (and the others involved in this debate) apparently didn't see it,
I'll summarize it.

This debate has the potential to go on forever. I'm skeptical about whether
the two sides can agree. So can you at least keep the amount of traffic
down? The day I wrote the previous comment, I got 56 messages in my
mailbox. Of those, 15 -- more than one quarter -- were on this subject.

Evidently Ye Othere Auncient & Secrete Auctionne Liste is not working very
well. Oh well.

> me directly. But they're like stray bullets. You never know when one of
> these completely ARBITRARY picks is going to cost you money and waste the
> time you spent hunting down some obscurity that somebody else happens to
> think is "neat" when he crossed it by accident.
[...]
> But what irks me most about this "service" is that there are literally
> 100's if not 1000's of interesting collectible computer items on any given
> day. I easily find *many* of them by spending just a few minutes a day
> using my patented semi-automatic techniques :-) So it makes absolutely no
> sense to me, and looks like pure noise to me, when I see somebody pick one
> or two or 10 of them at random here (with the side-effects described
> above).

In other words, you're attempting to beat the odds. So far you have
succeeded pretty well. I'm not trying to be sarcastic. I'm just boiling
the situation down.

> So, sure, I'm selfish and cheap. But am I wrong to expect to save a few
> bucks in exchange for the small effort I expend compared to those who say
> they want to do nothing but have these finds fed to them?

No. I too have been annoyed at seeing bids go up. (They were hardly
"hidden" transactions, though.)

But I would also take the pragmatic view that it's hard to win all the time
when you try to beat the odds. If more and more people get involved in eBay
auctions, my view will become more (depressingly) realistic.

About on-topic-ness (is that a word?) -- I think this subject (eBay, eBay
tips, eBay prices) is on topic. When it deals directly with classic
computers it's very on-topic. When it turns into an "eBay prices are so
high!" session, it's less on-topic. When it turns into a finger-pointing
session, it's still on-topic, but only barely. It's also VERY monotonous
for a LOT of people, I think.

There is an alternative. If I actually screened all the messages on the
list, I would weed out all the spam and junk, but I would get first pick at
all the auction tip-offs! That's nice but it's hardly fair. And then
people would stop posting them. You'd say that would be a relief, but it
might also be a disservice.

-- Derek
Received on Wed Mar 03 1999 - 03:22:05 GMT