yeah, you make some valid points. as a collector myself i understand
the mechanism of "gotta have it" and how irrationally it often makes
people act in evaluating objects of desire.
i also think you may be giving more credit than is due to this
particular seller, although he did have the sense to find (and use)
this group to get his auction off the ground.
On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, at 08:04 AM, Eric L. Strobel wrote:
>
> The fact the person paid $0.00 for the item has exactly nothing to do
> with
> what it's (potentially) worth. If there were a collector who
> absolutely HAD
> to have one of everything Apple has ever made, and I had an old Apple
> 40 MB
> tape drive, the fact that it's practically useless nowadays would be
> immaterial. If that's the one thing the collector is missing, he/she
> might
> pay a seemingly astronomical amount just to complete their collection.
>
> The point is that setting an artificially high reserve can be a good
> way of
> judging what a potentially collectible item could fetch. The owner
> can now
> either re-evaluate the reserve price and re-auction, or can decide
> that eBay
> isn't the right place to be selling the item. Consider the
> possibility that
> virtually all of these devices may be polluting a landfill somewhere,
> with
> one maybe in a display case somewhere on the Apple campus, in which
> case,
> the item may indeed be worth more to *someone*.
>
> - Eric.
- Peter
pjfraser_at_alamedanet.net
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