[NTLK] Care to join the pool to purchase some 3Com 3CXE589DT PCMCIA XJACK ethernet cards?

This online seller, located in Fremont, CA, is selling 750 of these
cards in lots of fifty cards each $275 *asking* price for the cards. The
auction utilizes the fairly-new "best offer" system, and just for the
hell of it, I offered $100 for a lot of cards, which was unsurprisingly
turned down (hey, you never know for sure until you ask....). At $275,
with fifty cards, each card works out to cost $6.22. I suspect the
seller would be willing to let each lot go for around $225-$250/each,
but that's just a guess. I also live close enough to Fremont that I
could pick these up, or perhaps one of the guys from the Stanford Newton
Users Group could (Fremont is not that far away from Stanford, just
across the bay to the East), which could further reduce the overall cost
of the units.

The question is, are there at least fifty (or fewer, if people want
multiple cards) people on the list who would be interested in this?

I know WiFi is all the rage, and I like it and use it regularly, but the
WiFi driver is commercial, you can't register it anymore (although I'm
working on trying to resolve this, thanks to an interpreter) and these
cards will work with just the Farallon Ethernet driver patch, which is
free. Ethernet is also fairly ubiquitous, although there's still the
issue of the wire. Personally, I like to be prepared for all situations :)

I started out only looking for one want a few for myself, and would be
willing to sell the rest to you all for maybe $10/each individually
(perhaps less in bulk) plus actual postal costs, and I would be happy to
ship anywhere in the world. I don't want to just offer to resell the
cards at cost, primarily since I'll have to sink a fair amount of time
one weekend into getting these all boxed up and labeled, dealing with
international customs forms for anyone outside the USA who wants one,
etc. I'm willing to do it, however. This seller does not ship outside of
the USA. These are also in their original, large 3Com boxes, and I am
willing to yank the cards themselves out and remail just those, if
people would prefer that, I'm sure it would save significantly on
shipping from me to you.

The auction is at
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290021980455
I am a fairly regular eBayer. I mostly buy but have sold dozens of
things over the years, and my feedback can be seen at
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=aperezbios
I could accept PayPal or money orders drawn on US banks, if you are
interested
My paypal e-mail address is the same as the sender address of this
e-mail, and I have a confirmed address there, anyone can check this
(although I'm not sure how; it shows you when you go to pay someone,
however)

So.......any takers? Write me back off-list if so, with yea/nay's and
quantities. If you want to pay me now, that would be great. If for
whatever reason the deal with this company in Fremont were to fall
through, I'd be happy to refund everyone their money, which is trivial
to do with PayPal.

Alex Perez

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