Ebay Heartbreak (was: ebay shenanigans)

Yesterday I ran across three PDP11/84's in parts at a scrappers (one day too late). I sorted through the pile of boards and made up a collection including a lot of heavy backplane sections. The chief arrived back from lunch and immediately found me to announce that his was prime material and I'd have to pay at least $5.00 lb. I re-organized my collection throwing back what turned out to be PMI memory boards :-( and a lot of unidentifiable third party items (made by Megadata, Bohemia NY) to reduce the hit but held onto the somewhat strange 11/84 backplane with the combination Qbus / Unibus sections. When I got to the scales, he saw the backplanes and said they were full of palladium and for a little he'd take $5 lb, but for a larger quantity, they'd be more money per lb. I abandoned all of the backplanes at that point. He then pointed out two 11/44's that I'd missed in my search. "What's your offer", he said, "I was going to list them on Ebay and I expect $400 each". I suggested that probably wouldn't happen and offered that I'd bid if he did put them up for auction rather than make an offer here that was far from his dream. His response was that he'd scrap them for not much less than that. I'm not sure what will happen because there's clearly some serious bargaining going on, however, he's quite adamant about the scrap value and prepared to throw stuff in the scrap that I won't pay this price for. His claim is that he actually sends stuff out for custom refining and gets the recovery value of what he sends.

These valuations really scare me because it'll put the value beyond what I'm interested in except for a few exceptional pieces. Dan