Appraisals, value, the "Market" was Re: And $500 gets you...

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Wed, 13 Apr 2005, vrs wrote:

> However, expecting everyone to have known or cared enough to follow your
> links and figured out who you are and what you do, is a bit of a stretch.  I
> have followed the links, and still have, at best, a hazy notion of how your
> days are spent.  Which is (or should be) OK.

I don't understand how anyone could confuse me with being a "dealer".

> I understand your frustration, but I still disagree.  Ebay is "the market"
> in a sense similar to the way we say wall street is "the market".  That is
> the place where large (relatively) numbers of buyers and sellers are doing
> business.  It simply does not matter that you, or Warren Buffet, can get
> better deals elsewhere.

I'm afraid you've boiled economics down to a simply unreal and nonsensical
interpretation.

> Each of these venues has a rational price for the item.  (Even my friend,
> who is no doubt hoping I can help figure out his power supply problem.)
> Which one we call "the market" should depend on which is available to the
> average buyer.

They are all part of The Market.  There is no one place that you go to and
that is "The Market(TM)" with the reference prices for the rest of the
world to follow.  What you mentioned (that I snipped) are all various data
points of The Market.  Somewhere in there is The Market Value.  You are
confusing points in The Market with The Market itself.

> > How many times does it need to be repeated that eBay is NOT the Market?  I
> > know a lot of people got into this hobby by assembling their collection
> > from eBay and so it is all they know, but understand that eBay is ONE PART
> > of the Market, and to think that the world is eBay, and eBay is flat, and
> > you fall off the world at the edges is foolish.
>
> Sure, but we still have the semantic quibble about what people mean when
> they say "the market" :-).

Sure, and some people can be correct when they use that term while others
will be incorrect, or will be using it in an incomplete sense.  If we are
going to agree to use a common language we must also agree to use common
definitions of the words in that language.  Until now, I've never seen
anyone try to define "The Market" as "eBay".

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

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