>eBay has become good for the seller, mainly because there are people
>prepared to spend silly money on junk. It is nigh-on impossible to pick up
>a "bargain" on eBay these days.
Actually I've done pretty good lately at finding some bargains, it
partially depends on what you're looking for. Also, out of the last
several auctions I've participated in, I've actually used "Buy it now" in
most of them. One item, a copy of VAX/VMS V5.2 Internals and Data
Structures, was about $10 cheaper than I've ever seen it!
>I confess: I'm an eBay buyer, and I will continue (probably) to get stuff
>there. In the absence of suitable flea markets (unless: can anyone tell me
>where there are semi-regular boot sales et al in East London?), eBay
>represents the best source of old kit.
It's not just East London. Unless you're in the NE USA (and I really doubt
even then) where else are you going to find any amount of DEC documenation,
or many of the other items that you find on eBay? I've a HUGE library of
DEC documenation, and a fair amount of it came off of eBay (usually in big
chunks, the biggest being my OpenVMS V6.1 Full Doc set which I got for a
song, but shipping was murder). Same with all my OpenVMS ConDist's. In
fact I've hardly purchased any hardware on eBay, other than a couple of DEC
PCI SCSI controllers that will work with OpenVMS. Although I am starting
to buy Arcade and Video Game stuff on eBay, again I'm getting it cheaper
than I could otherwise, assuming I could even find it.
Zane
--
| Zane H. Healy | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh_at_aracnet.com (primary) | OpenVMS Enthusiast |
| | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing, |
| and Zane's Computer Museum. |
| http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/ |
Received on Sat Aug 04 2001 - 23:52:56 BST