Rare Apples, eBay, Goodwill

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005, Chad Fernandez wrote:

> I did offer some pricing suggestions.  My biggest suggestion is to try
> and sell all of it, or at least a larger percentage than is currently
> done.  Almost all of it should sell, at the right price.  If there is

I don't want to speak for Goodwill, and this thread is pretty much a
nuisance by now, but this is naive and unrealistic.  You're right that
"almost all of it should sell", but there's only so much shelf space,
there's only so much time you're willing to have crap cluttering your
shelves, and there's only so much profit (or none at all, or even a loss)
in the prices it would take to sell most of the PC crap that comes through
the door.  Goodwill stores are not setup to sell used commodity PC dreck.

The whole purpose of suggesting the price guide was to sort out the GEMS
from the majority of the crap that comes through (i.e. use it first as a
field guide to understand what you have), then choose an appropriate
price.

> error in the price it should be on the low side, not the high side,
> because the goal is too sell it, not have sit, and the only cost that
> needs to be covered is the handling cost.

Retail sales is more complicated than this.

> Something else that David could try, would be to get a copy for himself,
> and right down a summary, in the form of a sheet or two, that each
> stores uses to price things, computer related.  Like a quick reference
> sheet.  It wouldn't be all inclusive, obviously, but I think it would
> get used more often than a book, yet not be taken as law, either.

So using a price guide to identify specific computers that already has a
suggested price range to choose from is too complicated, but sending out a
"summary sheet" to all the stores that asks the same employees you just
finished saying aren't capable of utilizing a price guide to apply totally
subjective rules to select and price computers is not?

-- 

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

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