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

[John Foust]

At 02:45 PM 4/13/2005, vrs wrote:
>I think it's like confusing Silicon Valley (or Portland, Oregon) with the
>world :-).  Maybe if I lived and worked where you do, I would see hundreds
>of different venues doing a brisk business in this stuff. [...]
>I think the term "the market" should refer to wherever the bulk of the
>available stuff trades, (provided that the venues included are actually open
>to the general public). 

There is no "there" there.  There will always be tremendous variation
in regional density of particular items, and this necessarily affects the 
price, which is why arbitrage flourishes on eBay.  

I've never seen most of these BBC micros in person, for example, but I'm 
sure they're quite common across the pond.  There may have been a couple 
dozen Teraks at a half-dozen universities around the US, but they may not 
have ever existed in other areas of the country.  You have to consider
where the items were commonly sold as well as where they were 
commonly scrapped.

- John