Ebay Altair

From: Marvin <marvin_at_rain.org>
Date: Wed May 10 13:16:13 2000

Mike Ford wrote:
>
> >Absolutely! The other side of that coin though is some people are not
> >interested in looking, and are therefore willing to pay someone else to do
> >that. Why else would something like ebay be such a success?
>
> We are talking in most cases a SERIOUS amount of value added, not only do I
> dig up the rare part, I know what it is, know how to test it, fix it, know
> it from the rev b that is worthless, etc. etc. For me, eBay has brought too
> many sellers to the market so that prices are often too low for me to buy
> and sell items at anything remotely like a profit considering my time to
> even pack, let alone find something.

Well, it depends on what the item is and who the buyers are. For instance, I
consider documentation to be almost more important than the hardware itself.
Why? Because coming up with hardware is usually trivial but coming up with
docs depends on having a good network of people available or being lucky in
finding them. Given that, I put up some fairly hard to find S-100
documentation about a year ago and it closed at $10. Was I unhappy? No, but
it did give me a good indication of who the buyers really are there.

I've heard a number of (to me) horror stories about people selling things,
but wanting to check first on ebay "to see what it is worth." I rarely deal
with that type of person since I am not interested in paying "retail" :).
Received on Wed May 10 2000 - 13:16:13 BST