value of classic DEC machines?

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Thu Oct 25 07:51:06 2001

At 07:40 PM 10/24/01 -0700, Sellam Ismail wrote:
>Everything has some value to some person. What has bugged me, and this
>community as a whole, for the past several years is the inflation in
>pricing caused by eBay.

Wow, now you're speaking for the "community as a whole".

A quick review of the archives would reveal a number of
people who aren't "bugged" by eBay.

This is like blaming the Internet for societal woes.
The market spoke, and it said, "We need a sanfordandson.com,
for there isn't a nation-wide market for the salt-and-pepper
shaker collections we were unable to unload at the
rummage sale last Saturday." And the market saw that it
was good, and that it was one of the few Internet plays
where a single site made the most sense.

And never mind the Beanie Baby collectors or the baseball
card traders, as it turns out there was pent-up unmet
demand for national and worldwide trading of old computer bits.

And prices crested, and more old crap came out of the closet,
and nerds were fulfilled, and prices dropped. All Econ 101
and nothing to lose sleep about. You might as well blame
this mailing list or VCF 1.0 for inflated prices due to increased
awareness - which leads to demand, which leads to higher prices,
which leads to more people searching, which leads to a glut,
which leads to lower prices than before.

Don't fret about Altair prices - tell me why it's nearly
impossible to sell an old 486, but hoo-boy, you can probably
rip the old 2x CD-ROM out of it and get $10 on eBay.
To me, that's *interesting.*

>I'm sure everyone here at least once heard the words, "...but I can get $X
>for it on eBay".
>Luckily, some manner of salvation is on its way in the form of a price
>guide. No, I'm not writing it, but the person who is will make it known
>very soon.

A price guide to eBay prices? Neat!

As an aside, I'm now writing a book about pottery. After
writing for and editing computer magazines for years, and
contributing to a number of computer books, I'm pleasantly
surprised that my first self-published book will be about
clay. One of my e-commerce clients, a pottery, has a large
following of collectors who've never had a guidebook, so
I'm going to write it.

Yet even in this backwater collector's realm of one particular
company's line of reproduction salt glaze pottery, you can
go to eBay and there will be 100 to 200 of their pieces online at
any given time. At first, prices changed dramatically.
One little ten-year-old 5-inch Santa figurine went for $485.
Go figure. But now prices have fallen, and for many pieces,
they tend not to be much more than the price you'd find in
a dealer's shop.

- John
Received on Thu Oct 25 2001 - 07:51:06 BST