A Great Find & A Defense of E-Bay

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Thu Jun 15 07:19:07 2000

Good morning, all...

The subject line above might be a bit misleading.
In the short time I've been subscribed to the list,
I've seen a lot of negative criticism of E-Bay, or
rather, of trying to buy things found on E-Bay.

The criticisms all seem to concern how much an
item on E-Bay ends up costing. What I guess I
haven't seen said here is an acknowledgement
that the high prices are a result of parties
bidding against each other. I realize that in
some cases, some shill bidding may be going on,
but most of the time, I think I'm just seeing
prices go high because people really want an
item.

Now, as to why an original IMSAI will go for
$1200 when you can take about $800 and buy a
brand new one with a Z-80-descended processor
and a meg of bank-switched RAM, is beyond me.
OTOH, I see SOLs going for for high prices,
and they don't make those anymore.

But I've been able to find great buys on items
that aren't quite so popular, like TI Silent700
terminals, older wide-carriage printers, and so
on.

Having said that, one item I'd been trying to
buy for a while is a Wyse 50 terminal, with a
preferences for an amber screen. The ambers seem
to be more rare, and command a higher price on
E-Bay. Everytime one is for sale, someone goes
over my max price, and I don't get a terminal.

So, I decided to surf the web more broadly one
day (and not specifically looking at other auction
sites), when lo and behold, I find a guy up in
Michigan who has an amber Wyse 50 for sale; he
threw in a modem and a serial cable and shipped
it to me for a mere $25.00. It's a clean unit
with no visible screen burn. The F13 keycap
comes off easily; other than that, it's a fine
example of what became my favorite computer
terminal.

In closing, I'd say no one should limit themselves
to searching only at *any* auction site, but I wouldn't
avoid E-Bay just because prices sometimes range too
high.

regards,
-doug quebbeman
Received on Thu Jun 15 2000 - 07:19:07 BST