Periodic rants on eBay

From: SUPRDAVE_at_aol.com <(SUPRDAVE_at_aol.com)>
Date: Thu Oct 25 14:25:47 2001

In a message dated 10/25/2001 2:12:40 PM Central Daylight Time,
ernestls_at_home.com writes:

<< -----Original Message-----
 From: owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
 [mailto:owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of Mike Ford
 Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 10:09 AM
 To: classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
 Subject: Periodic rants on eBay
 
 
 Love it or hate it, eBay is the most credible source of pricing or value
 that I know of. Last night, really the past week, I have been digging
 deeply into the purchases I have made in the last few months, and I found a
 really cool looking box, HP SureStore 12000e. 10 minutes on the HP site,
 and I knew all about the buttons on the front, but not what the damn thing
 WAS. 2 minutes on eBay and I knew I had a nice 48 GB DDS tape array storage
 thing worth $175 or so, that had drivers for windows etc. that I could
 download for free (and had the links to do so in the eBay ad).
 
 
 
 
 Yes, I agree about ebay being a knowledge base as well as a place to sell.
 I've learned a lot from browsing through the ads, and it's also a good place
 to see pictures of items that I'm curious about. Sure, most of the photos
 are terrible but if all you want to do is see what something looks like,
 then it's helpful.
 
 About pricing though, it gives you a general idea of what something is worth
 on the open market but it's also very much a hit and miss kind of thing. For
 example, a while back I saw an Apple 3.5 unidisk drive sell for about
 $100.00. Suddenly, five more drives appear from various sellers who see that
 they have a hot item, and in essence the market is then flooded. That causes
 the price to fall on drives offered after that. So what is the value of one
 of those drives? Also, the more an items is listed (like an Apple IIe) the
 better the statistical data becomes. Some will say that the value of an item
 is exactly what someone will pay for it at a particular time, and that's
 true but you can also say that generally speaking, an item's approximate
 value is what people will likely pay for it. An Altair will likely sell for
 more than $1000 but how much more? If I try to sell an Apple II clone on
 ebay, one day it will go for $30 and the next it might go for $70.00
 depending on who sees it. What is it's approximate value? If I start the
 auction a $1.00, the bidding might end at $100.00 but if I start it at
 $30.00, the auction might end at $32.00. >>

blech, can we not go into ebay arguments again? If anyone wants to rehash it,
go back and reread the archives. All I can say is prices vary widely. I've
sold similar junk only have something sell for a high price and then
something else go for much lower. People get ebay stupid and will overbid on
many things.
Received on Thu Oct 25 2001 - 14:25:47 BST