Subject: Re: eBay being sued over patent infringement

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu Apr 24 21:43:54 2003

Doc Shipley <[email-masked]> wrote:

<< I sell goods all the time on the austin.forsale newsgroup.   As far as 
I'm concerned, eBay is an *asset* to that, not a detraction.   eBay is 
the de facto Blue Book for used/surplus goods, allowing me to decide if 
my property is salable, whether it's worth more in cash than as a 
possession, and how to price it.   It also shortstops lowballing by 
prospective customers.   Naturally, it isn't the only resource I use, 
but it a very convenient and extremely well-organized asset for any 
seller, and for any buyer of either local or online goods. >>

I think for most items, including collectible classic computers, this is 
absolutely true. I've said for many years, you can find ANYTHING on eBay if 
you look regularly, and for most things, most of the time, it's a deal. 
Things that have collectability you have to be more careful about in order to 
get the best price. That's really true of anything though, shop around a 
little, research before you buy. I think Michael Nadeau's book, "Collectible 
Microcomputers" is terrific and I highly recommend it to anyone here, but for 
pricing, I think the values are definitely on the low end of the spectrum. 
For instance a Heath H11 from 1977 is said to be valued at between $65 - 
$175. Do you know how fast I'd jump on the opportunity to buy one for under 
$200?! Even if just the cpu. Off the top of my head, an H11 in great shape 
with a couple manuals a few cards in it, operational, I'd say would easily 
get $600+ on eBay. Anything above that would approach excessive in my mind, 
but on average, eBay prices represent "real" market values to me. eBay has 
done a pretty good job over the years to improve the process and to be fair 
about charges, etc. I think it's just about one of THE best web creations of 
all time, seriously. Doc, you said it right, it's a fine tool and asset.

Best, David

David Greelish
Classic Computing
www.classiccomputing.com
"classiccomputing" on eBay

---

From: James Rice <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 15:40:36 2003

I bid on a NeXT cube  in 2001.  I had exactly the same bid as the 
winning bidder and the item display had the same bid time down to the 
second.  I questioned ebay about it.  They gave me the bid time down to 
.01 second.  I missed the bid by .01 second.

James

steve wrote:

>--- Jeffrey Sharp <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
>  
>
>>So what happens when you and I both use the same
>>sniping service on the same
>>auction for the same bid?
>>    
>>
>
>The bid placed earlist would win (well, assuming no
>other higher bids were placed). You tell esnipe
>exactly when to bid (its accurate to a few seconds).
>
>No two ebay bids occur at exactly the same time, even
>with a sniping service.  So even if we both tell
>esnipe to bid 5 seconds before the auction ends. One
>may be placed 5.01 seconds and the other perhaps 4.99
>seconds before the auction ends. Depends how the
>server ques us up...
>The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
>http://search.yahoo.com