[rescue] w00t!

[Mike Parson]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2004 at 09:32:35AM -0400, Kevin wrote:
> Why the hell are people bidding on this?

Never underestimate the power and depths of human stupidity.

It's just like the dot-bomb auctions a few years ago.  Once upon a
time, they were a good place to make a few good deals and get some gear
for cheap.  Then the unwashed masses found out.  The Deja.com auction
was the last one that I got anything decent out of (two boxes of hard
drives, $75 each, turned out to be ~20 random Seagate SCSI drives,
2-9 gigs, most still under warranty, resold them for $10/gig, made a
killing).  But, after about 5:30 pm, the others showed up.  People that
hadn't been to the inspection the day before. p75 laptops with 16 megs
of RAM and 300 meg HDs went in excess of $500.  This was when PII and
PIII laptops were the standards.  $150 ink-jet printers went for $300.

There was also tons of Cisco gear there, lots of 24 port Cats, small
routers, etc.  A friend of mine wanted one, but there was a Cisco
reseller there who insisted on winning them all.  He asked her if she'd
let him win just one, but she refused.  So, he kept counter-bidding till
they were almost retail.

Other people just didn't understand that bidding process.  There was a
lot of ~10 Microsoft Natural Keyboards, bidding was for the whole lot,
but you were pricing 1.  A guy bid ~$75 and won. I bet he thought he was
getting the stack for that, not 10x that.

I went to one more auction after that, and it was even worse, left after
about two hours.  I was hoping things would get better in a few years,
but with places like ebay, why risk selling your stuff for cheap at a
real auction when you can flip it on ebay and have morons en-masse run
up the bids.

Maybe I'm just bitter. =)

> /KRM
>
> On Fri, 16 Jul 2004 07:25:34 -0400 (EDT)
> "Ethan O'Toole" <ethan at 757tech.net>wrote:
>
>>> On Thu, 15 Jul 2004, Bill Bradford wrote:
>>>> older PCs (like the tiny desktop cases made by Dell about
>>> the size of a>Trapper
>>>> Keeper) if anybody has some.. :)
>>>
>>> Suddendly, I feel very old at the mention of that product
>>> name...
>>>
>>
>> Hah!
>>
>> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3142&item=5507714368&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
>>
>> For $50 I wonder if it turns into a battle mech like Kenny's on
>> South Park.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org