And $500 gets you...

On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 01:12 -0500, Patrick Finnegan wrote: A while ago I was discussing EBay-like prices with people (for old computer stuff). Their argument was that EBay prices reflect the true state of the market and the true worth of classic computer items. I can see their side of it I suppose; I was just amazed that - coming existed outside of EBay. Which is fine by me if they want to keep on paying EBay prices for things (whether they believe they're being ripped off or not) - I'll just carry on using my brain and getting hold of things via other routes. The notion of over-inflated EBay (& co) prices doesn't bother me *that* much, because in my view the things that turn up on EBay and the like *aren't* the things that have much interest from a preservation / coolness / hacker perspective. *usually* things like service manuals, documentation sets or custom bits of hardware never make it to EBay etc. because the current owner either is clued-up and knows that their 'value' isn't in monetary terms, or they've come by this stuff from elsewhere and deem it such junk that they can't be bothered to list it in the first place. In the former case, it tends to pass from collector to collector for free / trade / peanuts anyway. The latter case is a little more tricky and the only way items that someone (wrongly) might consider to be junk get saved is through museums or word of mouth / visibility of the 'target' collector. So, much of what ends up on EBay are things that the resourceful amongst us can find anyway - the really rare/useful stuff tends to have a habit of looking after itself and ending up in good hands. There are exceptions of course and that's a shame... but providing someone's stupid enough to keep on paying huge prices at least the things aren't ending up as landfill. cheers Jules