Sometimes this technique actually works for bigger ticket items. Most people have a hard time making a choice and bidding on a big number item, with such short notice, as is with Ebay. They often need to think, ask questions, ask the wife, check the bank, ask the boss, and so forth. And then time runs out, and the item unsold - but the seller might have a bite or two. You people do not know this. You people have no idea the depth of interest the bites have. No idea of any of the interaction between the seller and some of the potential buyers. Those ebay idiots may be laughing all the way to the bank. And there is nothing wrong with it at all. No foul play. Honestly, guys, unless you are eight feet deep in the Ebay surplus selling business - your probably not really qualified to pass judgments. -- Will

Mike Loewen wrote: I bought an M-1000 Documation punch from him in about 2003. His card punch / reader business imploded with the Fla 2000 debacle and the push by a lot of his money clients to get out of cards just because of the stigma from that. He had a lot of nice Documation readers he sold out at the time. Jim

On Thu, 15 Jan 2009, Mike Loewen wrote: I bet the bidder doesn't know that. If they win it, you might want to email them. :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.

In article <e1d20d630901151524v222be31fo10984bc0213ae285 at mail.gmail.com>, "William Donzelli" <wdonzelli at gmail.com> writes: Well, in this particular case I doubt the guy is going to be laughing all the way to the bank. Being the terminal/graphics freak that I am, I keep a close eye on HP2648A and other terminals in that line. So I am pretty well informed on what people are willing to pay, based on past sales and based on past listings that have expired with no bids. I don't consider myself an expert on the surplus business, but I would consider myself pretty well informed on what terminals have been doing. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

In article <e1d20d630901151744r7a086540sd4ec7af166392aaf at mail.gmail.com>, "William Donzelli" <wdonzelli at gmail.com> writes: All true. When I emailed him, I introduced myself as a collector of serial terminals. On ebay I have written guides for collecting serial terminals. I think I also edited my personal profile there to say that I am a collector of serial terminals. When you browse my buying feedback, you'll see that pretty much all I buy are terminals :-). In this particular case, I told the guy that when he gets tired of trying to sell this particular terminal for a high price to contact me about selling me just the boards and then scrapping the tube and enclosure. (The 2647A has BASIC in ROM, so having the boards is not an unreasonable proposition; I could put the boards into a 264x enclosure that I already have with a reasonable tube and get an "upgrade". All the 264x terminals are essentially interchangeable as far as the power supply, tube and enclosure are concerned; what's different are the board sets and possibly slight variations on the keyboard. For this particular item, the guy doesn't have the keyboard either, and they are custom made for this particular terminal with a funky connector that's not standard either.) Yep, that's understood. But its ebay. I expect a little haggling as part of the transaction. Of course, ebay has set up the haggling to pretty much work in one direction only: increasing prices. There was one of these 2648As for sale by a surplus dealer based out of Boise. He listed it twice, the second time reducing the price. It was still a little pricey for me. After it didn't sell the second time, I contacted him privately and said "hey, I'll drive up to Boise and pick it up from you on a Saturday for $XX cash." (He had regular business hours on Saturday, so this was not me asking him to open up just for me.) I don't know what he had planned on doing with it after listing it twice and having it fail, but I drove up there and met him in person and put the cash in his palms and took home a nice 2648A. He was a reasonable guy about it. I understand the "surplus dealer" pricing mentality. There's that guy we've talked about before (he keeps changing his ebay handle recently, so I don't know what he's going by now) that is located in upstate NY. You can always tell his listings because they always include the same boiler plate text "This item will look good in your vintage computer collection.". Now that guy does have some rare stuff and he does move items at his price point, so from a business perspective he's not an idiot. However, the Visual Technology terminal that I bought from him was so poorly packaged for shipment that it arrived as a smashed pile of plastic. That tells me that he is still an idiot, particularly since he is obviously trying to appeal to collectors. Nobody collects smashed and damaged goods. Based on that experience, I won't be buying from him again, no matter how rare it is, nor will I recommend him to anyone else and in fact, just the opposite, I will caution people in buying from him. Since I'm a vocal member of the community he's trying to market his goods towards, that's just plain stupid. Again, its the idiocy. There seems to be a recent trend on ebay for places that collect electronics for recycling to have someone who picks out the "old" items for sale on ebay. I don't begrudge them wanting to make a buck off something collectible, but they seem to have nothing but dollar signs in their heads when it comes to pricing. $800 for an HP2621A *without* the keyboard, and the keyboard listed separately for another $200? I watch these items that have "buy it now or best offer" and make a best offer each time the listing expires. They, of course, refuse my best offer because they want an order of magnitude more than what these items have sold for in the past (I save off completed listings to build a price history). But hey, maybe eventually a sucker will come in and buy it, or maybe they'll eventually realize that they're charging more than the market will bear. Serial terminals are a bit odd in that they are not irreplaceable one-of-a-kind units. You can easily replace them with a commodity PC and a serial port running a terminal emulation program. When serial terminals break down in a working vintage computer setup, they don't need to spend $800 on a vintage replacement when $20 from the local used computer store will do the job. Sometimes its different with Tektronix graphics terminals, though, because they *do* have a specialized function and at least for the raster based terminals, there isn't a readily available terminal emulation program for a PC. (The 401x series is such a standard protocol that it *is* readily emulatable by almost any terminal emulator program.) I've bought many terminals from surplus dealers on ebay, most of the time I'm the only bidder. There's a few dealers that have been a joy to buy clueless and those are the ones I would say are idiots. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>

On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:32:50 +0000, Gordon JC Pearce MM3YEQ wrote: Dont forget a case of Bawls and mabe a second pizza. Bob

On Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:08:21 -0500, John Floren wrote: As for Bowls, you may be correct, I have never tasted the stuff. I do know they sell it by the case at Microcenter, and the current generation like it. Programmers choose their own lubricants. I have always found Hunter S. Thompson's choice tends to lead to circular logic. I switch between a Ginsing Green Tea mix and a dark local brewed Rootbeer myself ... The problem is, some of the early graphic terminals were mated to their applications at a very low level. A lot of assumptions were made in the low level communications with the "terminal smarts". It was common for service people to come across compatibility issues swapping out monitors..... oh! if you want to be able to run ...... then you have to have ....... roms installed or it will never work right! It is more than a weekends task, even with, as the origional poster commented, "a bag of weed". We are drifting far from "ebay idiots". Back under my rock ..... The other Bob