Univac on eBay

From: Mail List <mail.list_at_analog-and-digital-solutions.com>
Date: Thu Mar 6 14:06:00 2003

Hello Adrian,

> 72hrs only for payment?

This is easily doable. Certified cachier's check by FEDEX Next Day Air
gets that done, at least within the same country, or direct bank to bank
wire funds transfers. An overnight letter is only about $10.00, and a wire
transfer is only about $30.00

> Buyer to arrange *entire* shipping?

This is also doable. Immediately contact a national moving or shipping
company, show them the info, get a quote ( though they might have to survey
the equipment first ), and just tell them to get it done. I'm sure the
seller would
check the local directories for the buyer and over the phone, pass on the phone
numbers of these moving or shipping companies that were in the area where
the equipment is located. Then the buyer just starts making the phone calls.

>>It seems to me that the seller either wasn't serious about selling - or is
>>quite greedy (the latter, I think).

When it comes to the sale of large ticket items, eBay's 10 days sometimes
isn't enough time for organizations or companies to go through the proposal,
approval, and authorization process. Perhaps the seller knew that he might
need to run it more than once to make it's availability more widely known, but
not immediately have it end in a legally binding sale, in order to try to
do the
best they could with it. I once listed a Sun StorEdge Array for a company, and
had some companies that were interested, and they described how they needed
to go through a lot of "process" to get approval. With the kind of level
that bidding
on that item went to, it probably wasn't the average home user that was
involved
in it near the end. But if a museum, ( say the Smithsonian? ) wanted to
purchase
it, it would take time. The seller having a high reserve that wasn't met
can give
it that time.


Best Regards





At 07:19 PM 3/6/03 +0000, you wrote:
>At 18:22 06/03/2003, you wrote:
>
> >$11,099.99 was less than the reserve? What on EARTH was the reserve???
> >Also, who has that kind of money for a hobby - knowing that it will require
> >tremendous effort to bring the system back to life?
>
>That's if it *can* be brought back to life. It may have been kept under
>cover, but it's not had a storage life without suffering (judging by the
>front of the cabinets).
>
> >It seems to me that the seller either wasn't serious about selling - or is
> >quite greedy (the latter, I think).
>
>I personally think the latter - the whole auction seems to have been set up
>not to be seriously winnable (72hrs only for payment? Massive reserve?
>Buyer to arrange *entire* shipping?). I suspect his "better half" has said
>"sell it", and he's had what (on the surface) looks like a good crack at it.
>
>IMHO, if he was serious about selling it, he'd be auctioning it through a
>"proper" auction house (ala Christies), and be looking for $100K minimum.
>It is, after all, possibly the oldest surviving large electronic computer
>on the planet...
>
>--
>Cheers, Ade.
>Be where it's at, B-Racing!
>http://b-racing.com
Received on Thu Mar 06 2003 - 14:06:00 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:36:11 BST