eBay disaster

[Tony Duell]

> > I will 
> > believe that you are honest, and that uou truely believe there is a brand 
> > new and good 12 sector RK05 pack in there, but we don't _know_.
> Hey, if you find a new and sealed box of diskettes sitting in a shelf for a long time, do you 
> question if there are diskettes in the box? New in the box is better than "untested sold as is".
> I could X-ray the box btw :-)

If I foudn a box of old floppies, I would want to open them and at least 
look at the surfaces before deciding whether to buy them. 

How would you feel about a NIB QIC tape? WOuld you assume the belt was 
still good, and that it hadn't stuck to the tape and was going to pull 
the oxide off? Becuase I sure wouldn't. How would you feel about a NIB 
HP97 calculator. Would you assume the card reader roller needed replacing?

> 
> > It's 
> > possible it's been damaged at some time.
> Yes, I mentioned that. But very low probability.
> 
> > it's possbie the plastic has 
> > fallen apart, or whatever. I'd rather hand a good used pack that one that 
> > I have no idea about.
> So you think it would be better if I sold the pack as tested?

As somebody who uses these old machines and peripherals, I would want a 
pack that I could use, not something to look nice on the shelf. So yes, I
would prefer something that was tested to something that was NIB.

Mind you, I have plenty of 12 sectore RK05 packs already... And a couple 
of alignment packs. 

> > I haev found it's impossible to predict the prices that things will sell 
> > for on E-bay.
> Fully agree. I've seen strangest things happen. Sometimes the same item gets very different prices 
> with not much time between auchtions. There was a Onmibus backplane. I think it did not get bids at 
> EUR 70. A few weeks later a similar backplane (but dirty dirty!) was sold in US for $350 as far as I 
> remember. That's strange.

I am still disapointed that I was outbid for an HP120 keyboard a couple 
of months back. OK, my bid was not that high, but I assumed that nobody 
else in England would want a Norwegian layout HP120 keyboard. I sysepct I 
have the only HP120 machine in England with Norwegian terminal ROMs. And 
I am pretty sure that this was the keybaord that came off my machine. Oh 
well, it doen't really matter, I made a keybaord for it long before this 
one was listed on E-bay [1], but it would have been nice to get the 
original. I still wonder what the buyer is going to use it for...

[1] My diagrams for this are on the Australian museum site.

-tony