----- Original Message -----
From: "Bryan Pope" <bpope at wordstock.com>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 8:00 PM
Subject: Re: What the hell -- CRAZY prices
And thusly were the wise words spake by Jeff Walther
I bid on a Fujitsu magneto-optical drive. Ah, here's the URL still
on my Snipeswipe page
<http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=8786740987> .
I was willing to go to about $16 (with shipping it would have been
closer to $30).
After the auction, the high bidder had the gall to email me to tell
me that he sells items of the type I'm interested in and that I
should visit his store. Of course, he sells MO drives for well over
$100.
So this creature outbids me and then tries to turn around and sell me
the same item at a higher price. If I had been willing to pay more,
I would have bid higher.
I can't point out some way in which this behaviour is morally wrong,
but it is certainly irritating.
Maybe he thinks he is doing you a favour? (Or if this item doesn't
come up often, he believes he can extort some money out of you
depending on how much you want it..)
Cheers,
Bryan
From what I have seen on ebay MO drives seem to go for
more money then they
are worth. I snagged a 1.3GB 5.25" MO free from somebody
who wanted his
garage space back with about 100 media discs, but before I started using
them for archives I figured I should get a 2nd drive. Ebay prices for the
older drives seemed a bit expensive to me, and only a couple sellers
bothered listing them at all. So I managed to find another compatible drive
on a google swap list real cheap and purchased it there. I figured if one
drive dies I have time to find another and can still use the archive for my
old 68K Macs as needed.
If you are going to corner the market you need an uncommon item that people
used for mission critical backup, MO drives fit the bill for this. If you
have to restore a file on MO you will pay a premium for the drive (which
either broke or was sold off for scrap a long time ago).