[geeks] Stupid people rant

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Tuesday, February 12, 2002 at 14:26:10 (-0600), Bill Bradford wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [geeks] Stupid people rant
>
> BTW, eBay sometimes *isnt* a good indicator of fair price; its a 
> indicator of "someone who got lucky" or "someone who paid way too
> much".
> 
> "fair price" = "the most you can get the other guy to pay without 
>  feeling guilty that you've ripped him off", or "accepting money for
>  old parts from friends so that you dont just *give* it to them.."

Well for any item that's commonly available on eBay (at least in the
computers and electronics sections! ;-), a search of past auctions will
reveal a ball-park range that is in fact a very good indication of "fair
market value".  Outside the bell curve it may also show examples of
buyers getting good deals (and usually that's because the seller did a
massively poor job at describing the item and making the sales process
obviously easy); and of course also examples sellers getting more than
they really deserve (sometimes because they did an exceptional job of
describing the item right to the point of causing a bidding war -- which
curiously I've seen happen in parallel with identical items going cheap
even when located in the same city!).  eBay is not even remotely related
to any kind of retail outlet, that much is for certain!  ;-)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;  <gwoods at acm.org>;  <g.a.woods at ieee.org>;  <woods at robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <woods at weird.com>