eBay madness

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Ronald Wayne may have mentioned these words:
>On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 15:53:27 -0400, Ed Kelleher <pres at macro-inc.com> wrote:
> > Most complaints I think are just sour grapes.    :-)
>
>Sour I may be, but there were plenty of sources of neat computer
>"junk" before eBay.  And I liked those sources, thank-you very much.
>They cultivated a sense of patience and appreciation.

That's easy for you to say -- you probably live in a decently populated 
area. In the area that *I* live in, almost 50% of the classic computers in 
the area are owned by 2 people, a friend of mine and me. And the rest, are 
basically unavailable. (Believe you me, I found a guy with a couple of 
Amiga 1200s he *said* he wanted to part with -- that was 5 years ago, and 
I've yet to see a machine or him. I've sent *several* reminders through 
"friends of friends" with no response.

If there's something I need relatively quickly, ePay is the only way to 
fly. If it's something secondary, this list and my Tandy Model 100 list 
have proven *much* more fruitful than any local hunting grounds... and I've 
tried. Lemme tell ya, I've tried.

>In my books, collecting old computer stuff has as much to do with the
>hunt as anything else.

I'd have better luck hunting pink elephants. Booze is pretty easy to find 
in this town...

>   If the hunt is turned into a keyword search
>and instant gratification, it looses its appeal.  Why?  I think it's
>because you learn a lot more about computers while hunting them down
>than you do with them at your finger tips.

I learn a *lot* more working with the computers, than I ever learned about 
hunting for one. I looked for a VAX for a few years, and learned *very 
little* about them; as there were very few people here locally who'd eve 
*heard* of them, let alone knew anything about them. Once I had gotten one 
(well, several) I actually started learning how to use the durned thing.

But that's just my take on things. I realize that regionally situations can 
be very different - it's just in my region, life in the classic computer 
world sucks. ePay helps fill a void that can't be filled here by a little 
hunting.

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | "Profile, don't speculate."
sysadmin, Iceberg Computers |     Daniel J. Bernstein
zmerch at 30below.com          |