Help with pricing on vintage computers?

"The `hunt' is also easier in certain locations than others, depending on what you're trying to find. In Silicon Valley, or any large built up area, I'm sure the pickings are a lot easier than in say... the northern reaches of Canada." Naw. Sellam's got the Bay Area pretty much picked clean! :) I completely agree with your premise, however. With a full-time+ job and a family at home I hardly get to play with what toys I have more or less search far and wide for new ones. eBay brings the search to me for what I consider to be a reasonable incremental cost - on most items. Auctions like: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4193&item=20… 468 continue to blow my mind while items such as http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1247&item=20… 115 give me the warm fuzzies. Erik S. Klein www.vintage-computer.com -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-admin(a)classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-admin@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Brian Chase Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 12:28 PM To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Help with pricing on vintage computers? On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Mike wrote: that offered limited expanded. number while My argument on this thread would be that Ecomonics isn't really a science in my eyes. So it's not that eBay is wrong or that the "science" is wrong; it's just that there's no reasonable model for predicting classic computer prices, yet. 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. The `hunt' is also easier in certain locations than others, depending on what you're trying to find. In Silicon Valley, or any large built up area, I'm sure the pickings are a lot easier than in say... the northern reaches of Canada. That doesn't mean won't look for bargains in my spare time--but there's not a lot of that with my other projects. I also spend a lot of time using and working with my computers, and reading the wonderful ClassicCmp mailing list! In my case, I'd rather be spending my time playing instead of collecting--but those are personal priorities. -brian.