Subject: Re: Univac on eBay

From: Robert Borsuk <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 14:31:13 2003

Actually I think this is a "Monkey shines" bid.  If the person was 
serious about it they would have bid more.  the 99.99 told me that they 
wanted to be part of the auction but didn't want to make the reserve.

Rob

On Thursday, March 6, 2003, at 03:03 PM, Mail List wrote:

>> >$11,099.99 was less than the reserve?  What on EARTH was the 
>> reserve???
>> >Also, who has that kind of money for a hobby - knowing that it will 
>> require
>> >tremendous effort to bring the system back to life?

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 22:18:57 2003

Hello Adrian,

 > 72hrs only for payment?

This is easily doable. Certified cachier's check by FEDEX Next Day Air
gets that done, at least within the same country, or direct bank to bank
wire funds transfers. An overnight letter is only about $10.00, and a wire
transfer is only about $30.00

 > Buyer to arrange *entire* shipping?

This is also doable. Immediately contact a national moving or shipping
company, show them the info, get a quote ( though they might have to survey
the equipment first ), and just tell them to get it done. I'm sure the 
seller would
check the local directories for the buyer and over the phone, pass on the phone
numbers of these moving or shipping companies that were in the area where
the equipment is located. Then the buyer just starts making the phone calls.

 >>It seems to me that the seller either wasn't serious about selling - or is
 >>quite greedy (the latter, I think).

When it comes to the sale of large ticket items, eBay's 10 days sometimes
isn't enough time for organizations or companies to go through the proposal,
approval, and authorization process. Perhaps the seller knew that he might
need to run it more than once to make it's availability more widely known, but
not immediately have it end in a legally binding sale, in order to try to 
do the
best they could with it. I once listed a Sun StorEdge Array for a company, and
had some companies that were interested, and they described how they needed
to go through a lot of "process" to get approval. With the kind of level 
that bidding
on that item went to, it probably wasn't the average home user that was 
involved
in it near the end. But if a museum, ( say the Smithsonian? ) wanted to 
purchase
it, it would take time. The seller having a high reserve that wasn't met 
can give
it that time.

Best Regards

At 07:19 PM 3/6/03 +0000, you wrote:
>At 18:22 06/03/2003, you wrote:
>
> >$11,099.99 was less than the reserve?  What on EARTH was the reserve???
> >Also, who has that kind of money for a hobby - knowing that it will require
>That's if it *can* be brought back to life. It may have been kept under
>cover, but it's not had a storage life without suffering (judging by the
>front of the cabinets).
>
> >It seems to me that the seller either wasn't serious about selling - or is
> >quite greedy (the latter, I think).
>
>I personally think the latter - the whole auction seems to have been set up
>not to be seriously winnable (72hrs only for payment? Massive reserve?
>Buyer to arrange *entire* shipping?). I suspect his "better half" has said
>"sell it", and he's had what (on the surface) looks like a good crack at it.
>
>IMHO, if he was serious about selling it, he'd be auctioning it through a
>"proper" auction house (ala Christies), and be looking for $100K minimum.
>It is, after all, possibly the oldest surviving large electronic computer
>on the planet...
>
>--
>Cheers, Ade.
>Be where it's at, B-Racing!
>http://b-racing.com

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From: "Eric Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 22:19:35 2003

> company, show them the info, get a quote ( though they might have to

Sure, if you don't mind it getting destroyed.  If I paid that kind of
money for anything, I'd move it myself.  I've seen the results of
letting moving companies deal with such things, and it would be a gross
understatement to say that it's not pretty.

And it basically would not be possible to get any real insurance on
such a thing.  Oh, you might be able to get some sort of insurance, but
when the system winds up destroyed, the insurance company will claim
that the value of the equipment was only the scrap value to begin with,
and pay a trivial amount of money to "settle" the claim.