Ken Slusser

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Wed Oct 24 13:49:40 2001

At 07:32 AM 10/24/01, Bill responded:
>On Tue, Oct 23, 2001 at 05:49:58PM -0700, Al Kossow wrote:
> > I talked to Ken this afternoon.
> > He needs 3-4K to cover the back rent on the storage
> > and is looking for someone to take all this stuff and
> > sell it on eBay for him. He thinks it's worth $100000
>
>If I'd known that, I wouldnt have even forwarded the message.
>sigh. This is NOT 1984, its not worth 100K.

When I hear this sentence, "... old computer stuff
worth $x, help me sell it on ebay." All sorts of bells
go off. If it really is "worth" $100K US, and he only
owe 3-4K in back rent, then selling it $10K/week on Ebay
would not only pay off his rent but be a good living
for the next two or three months.

However, as most people who haunt Ebay are aware, it
has done its job of finding both the sellers and buyers
and the market forces have significantly dropped the
price of things you can buy. It used to be a MicroVAX 3100
could get you $50 - $100, now they regularly go unbid at $9.99.

A VAX 4000/400 that would have brought $500 - $1000 a
year ago sat unbid at $300.

The only thing to have held its value are Qbus/Unibus SCSI
controllers.

So when I read messages like the one Bill originally
forwarded, the natural cynic in me suspects a person
who wants someone else to invest all the sweat and
pain for selling a bunch of stuff on Ebay and getting
a cut of the profits.

My practical side, wonders why he just wouldn't sell
them to another dealer that had space/time/willingness
to stock them or whatever.

--Chuck
Received on Wed Oct 24 2001 - 13:49:40 BST