Help with pricing on vintage computers?

From: Marvin Johnston <marvin_at_rain.org>
Date: Tue Jan 14 15:04:00 2003

Brian Chase wrote:
>
> Mostly, I feel it comes down to personal decisions based on any number
> of factors, some of which include: amount of expendible income, the
> amount of free time, location, and interest in the item in question.
>
> If I didn't have a job and instead had plenty of free time, I'd
> certainly be inclined to spend a lot more of that free time hunting down
> bargains. But I don't have that sort of free time because I'm employed
> full time. What I do get instead is a decent income in trade for that
> time, and I can spend that income on equipment made available through
> eBay. I'm willing to pay more money for items on eBay because it saves
> me the time of hunting down the equipment on my own. When I look at the
> opportunity cost of doing my own hunting, the cost of aggressively
> hunting doesn't make any sense for me. I'd actually be losing lots of
> money by doing it. Time is money. Great, so I find a $10 computer in
> the wild that would've cost me $50 on eBay, but I spent two hours
> finding it at an opportunity cost of $100 of lost wages. By doing
> this, I've just shot myself in the foot. Instead of paying $50 for it
> on eBay, I've effectively spent $110 for it.

I think your point of opportunity costs is a great one that is missed by
a lot of people in all lines of work, not just ebay. For example, some
things are more common in certain geographical regions than in others.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a small fortune in travel costs
to save a relatively smaller amount of money ... at least if money is
the concern :). Some people knock the ebay prices without knowing the
background or motivation of the buyer. Your post starts to put some
perspective on that!
Received on Tue Jan 14 2003 - 15:04:00 GMT