Has there been a recent trend on eBay for sellers to simply list their old computer items at ridiculous values as a means to inflate prices? I've been noticing sellers listing things at 5-20x the price items would go for in an auction style listing. So I put in offers for the amounts similar auctions would sell for and they all get declined.

feipoa wrote on 2021-10-24, 22:24:

Has there been a recent trend on eBay for sellers to simply list their old computer items at ridiculous values as a means to inflate prices?

that's been standard practice for pretty much anything on ebay for years and years now, there's always buy it now stuff listed for unreasonable prices that sells cheap in auctions.

imi wrote on 2021-10-24, 22:26:

feipoa wrote on 2021-10-24, 22:24:

Has there been a recent trend on eBay for sellers to simply list their old computer items at ridiculous values as a means to inflate prices?

that's been standard practice for pretty much anything on ebay for years and years now, there's always buy it now stuff listed for unreasonable prices that sells cheap in auctions.

Indeed, but I see the trend continuing on to common and plentiful items as well, e.g. items that are normally a dime a dozen.

feipoa wrote on 2021-10-24, 22:35:

Indeed, but I see the trend continuing on to common and plentiful items as well, e.g. items that are normally a dime a dozen.

I don't use eBay much these days for retro purchases, but about a week ago I needed a simple ISA I/O card, which is pretty much both the most generic and less remarkable item you can think of (other than winmodems). So I ran a search and was amazed at the results, most of the listings were priced at around $50, $100 or even more!! Do they sell anything at that price? Who in their right mind would spend that much on an I/O card???

There is a particular seller that annoys me greatly (I won't name it here), almost all of its listings are between $100 or $200, regardless of whether it is a motherboard or a bag of screws... it's just so random. NONE of the listings have pictures and more annoyingly it seems to have entries for every type of retro item in existence as every search always returns results from that seller. Looks like I need to refine my search filters.

TheMobRules wrote on 2021-10-25, 02:00:

feipoa wrote on 2021-10-24, 22:35:

Indeed, but I see the trend continuing on to common and plentiful items as well, e.g. items that are normally a dime a dozen.

I don't use eBay much these days for retro purchases, but about a week ago I needed a simple ISA I/O card, which is pretty much both the most generic and less remarkable item you can think of (other than winmodems). So I ran a search and was amazed at the results, most of the listings were priced at around $50, $100 or even more!! Do they sell anything at that price? Who in their right mind would spend that much on an I/O card???

It would be neat if there were a reproduction I/O card where you knew the serial ports would be 16550A, and where the IDE is known to work reliably with CF adapters and SATA-to-IDE converters. Perhaps one of the serial ports might be dropped for an onboard USB mouse to serial converter or PS/2 mouse to serial converter. There seem to be a good amount of talented board designers on here. Hint, hint...

I usually put in offers even if there isn't a best offer feature. My offers reflect realistic market value and they get rejected 90% of the time by sellers who think they are holding onto gold.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2021-10-25, 02:12:

It would be neat if there were a reproduction I/O card where you knew the serial ports would be 16550A, and where the IDE is known to work reliably with CF adapters and SATA-to-IDE converters. Perhaps one of the serial ports might be dropped for an onboard USB mouse to serial converter or PS/2 mouse to serial converter. There seem to be a good amount of talented board designers on here. Hint, hint...

Right, add a few more features and get this... https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FB1VLTQ but put an 11th gen i5 on it....

as long as they keep catching the occasional sucker who will pay their king's ransom, they will keep doing it

I preferred eBay when sellers had to re-list their items every 7-10 days and pay for those listings. The first re-list would be free if the seller lowered the price by a certain percent, I think it was 15%. Also, auction listings were cheaper than buy-it-now listings. These two older methods encouraged sellers to liquidate inventory quickly. Now it seems you can list items indefinitely and only pay a listing fee when it sells? Is that the case? I haven't sold anything in over 15 years so I am out of date.

feipoa wrote on 2021-10-26, 11:23:

I preferred eBay when sellers had to re-list their items every 7-10 days and pay for those listings. The first re-list would be free if the seller lowered the price by a certain percent, I think it was 15%. Also, auction listings were cheaper than buy-it-now listings. These two older methods encouraged sellers to liquidate inventory quickly. Now it seems you can list items indefinitely and only pay a listing fee when it sells? Is that the case? I haven't sold anything in over 15 years so I am out of date.

I'm not sure, not having sold for ages, but it certainly explains what seems a bizarre practice - relisting an item for months / years on end without hope of someone buying it!

I've been at this for over 21 years.....here's my thoughts.....

There have been several attempts over the decades to standardize the costs on vintage computer equipment. When I was 14-15ish (1997) I went to visit my sister in Idaho, went to a computer museum in the region, and bought a book of blue-book values for vintage computers, most of the stuff we cover here was still over $100-500 in value (XTs, ATs, 386s, some early 486 machines). At that point, I Was not yet a vintage computer guy, I was a guitar guy by and by large only.

2001 happens, I start accumulating 486s like there's no tomorrow because everyone is jumping on the XP bandwagon - mostly for free. People were GIVING Them to me because they did not want their old DOS machine anymore, they wanted a Pentium 4 with Windows XP on it. Anything Pentium 90 or higher was going for over $100 still. SVGA CRTs still asked for a good $40+ at Goodwill, bug VGA or EGA or CGA was just a few bucks.

2005 rolls around, prices on IBM PC, XT, and AT class sysems start going up. Up till that point, a 286 was a "free" item because nobody knew what to do with it. In that time frame, I bought a barebones Deskpro 286 for $24 that looked like hell and had been sitting in a guy's garage for several years. My Deskpro 386 was over $50 and sold for $75 on E-bay when I sold it. I bought my GEM 286 around that time for $34.00.

2010 is when I got out of things for a little bit. LGR was still a small fry, 8-bit guy was still the macbook guy, at that point, I was the only person I was aware of on YouTube doing any amounts of DOS computer stuff, and by that point I'd kinda' left that because my guitar stuff was way more popular, and I was tired of most people chastising me for having a pile of old PCs and that I should "junk em' and get a AMD Athlon/Core 2 Duo with Windows 7".

Then during my absense, LGR caught on - and I was stil lhankering to at least have one old 486 box around to mess with. What has happened to vintage PCs in the last decade is what I predicted during the 2000's would happen and almost gave up on that belief. I mean, in 2010, only a handful of us were messing with old stuff like this, and it was not YouTube driven, we were the outliers of the internet....but buy 2015, the pool had grown, you had LGR Oddware/Thrifts/Things, Macbook Guy was now the 8-bit guy, Adrian's Digital Basement started to crop up not long after, Phil's Computer Lab shows up, NostalgiaNerd, and of course me (Creepingnet), VWWestlife, and a few other older YouTubers were still around doing things, at least in my case, periodically. That's when I really started to see prices shoot up.

At this point, I don't even hunt for old hardware anymore. One thing in this hobby that easily turns into a "trap" of sorts is when this stuff was plentiful we got tons and tons and tons of it for next to nothing. When I lived with mom, I had 32 x86 IBM Compatibles at one point in various stages of (dis)repair ranging from fully working and kicking butt to barely a barebones box with a working motherboard. When I started my channel, I had an entire floor of my closet taken up with old 8088-Pentium laptops and desktops. Today, I still kinda have that but the mix keeps getting weirder these days.

I still sell on E-bay and try to keep things reasonable so that parts of my collection get out there and still get a good home from time to time. I have seen a few machines I've sold in the 2000s and 2010s pop up on there again every so often. A DEC 486/33 I repainted in 2003 (bad yellowing, pre-retrobrite) popped up in the last year, it's crazy, I sold it for around $15.00 in 2005, but it was going for $100x that almost - for example.

That said, I still come across a good bargain once in awhile. When I moved where I am now, I was GIVEN a NEC Ready 9522 tower, but I hardly use it. I've had co-workers give me a lot of 2000's era stuff, and I still, in our town full of thrifts, find the occasional 486/pentium system in some dank, dark corner of a thrift shop somewhere that most people would be too scared to walk in to because it's in a roughter part of town. Sometimes I just bump into things visiting little mom and pop computer shops, or doing things like I kinda did with New2U computers which was talked to the manager and got an opportunity to check out some stuff that went through. BUt being as I'm almost 40, have a career, and a wife, I don't really have as much time as I used to to be messing with jumpers on cards....these days I prefer to enjoy what I've got, not chase after more hardware I have to tweak and tune and fix.

I think these open-source projects are the future for retro-hardware. As the pool of old stuff dries up due to overpricing, hardware failure, recyclers, and whatnot, to keep these old boxes going were going to need to look to the future to keep things sustainable. Some of it is an opportunity to enable us to have more room options in the future that are not just merely emulating on some Raspberry Pi in a custom enclosure.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/165155022649
Adlib Gold 1000 sells for $2400 USD.

Shocking and impressive!

feipoa wrote on 2021-11-12, 08:29:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/165155022649
Adlib Gold 1000 sells for $2400 USD.

Shocking and impressive!

I'd at least rattle the box when received 🤣

Auch... I didn't expect such ending 🤣

CT1740 + Ensoniq SoundscapeDB:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/224677091565

kixs wrote on 2021-11-12, 11:06:

CT1740 + Ensoniq SoundscapeDB:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/224677091565

According to the listing, the CT1740 was the first Sound Blaster 16. I didn't know these were in demand. Sold for $760. Let the wealth flow.

I believe the "Ensoniq SoundscapeDB" demanded the premium here - although I didn't expect more then 300USD for the combo. CT1740 usually go from 50 to 90USD with DSP 4.05.

I think part of the price was because of it most likely being a pre-production board... at least looking at the markings on the DB.

There was another listing on there for a couple of Soundscape S-2000 cards that were apparently the very cards that were sent to the FCC to get certified.

I guess it must be a collector's item, sb16 are usually somewhere around 50$ I think.

I read here somewhere thatthe ones with a volume knob are noisy but it might just be a rumour.

The market for old hardware sure is hot ATM, I wonder if it's a combination of people have spare cash and time because of COVID restrictions...? Anyway it's motivated me to drag stuff out of storage and sell it off - it's not going to last forever no matter how well stored so it seems like a good time to cash it in (and inevitably spent it all on old hardware again 😁)

creepingnet wrote on 2021-10-27, 14:29:

I've been at this for over 21 years.....here's my thoughts..... […]
Show full quote

I've been at this for over 21 years.....here's my thoughts.....

There have been several attempts over the decades to standardize the costs on vintage computer equipment. When I was 14-15ish (1997) I went to visit my sister in Idaho, went to a computer museum in the region, and bought a book of blue-book values for vintage computers, most of the stuff we cover here was still over $100-500 in value (XTs, ATs, 386s, some early 486 machines). At that point, I Was not yet a vintage computer guy, I was a guitar guy by and by large only.

2001 happens, I start accumulating 486s like there's no tomorrow because everyone is jumping on the XP bandwagon - mostly for free. People were GIVING Them to me because they did not want their old DOS machine anymore, they wanted a Pentium 4 with Windows XP on it. Anything Pentium 90 or higher was going for over $100 still. SVGA CRTs still asked for a good $40+ at Goodwill, bug VGA or EGA or CGA was just a few bucks.

2005 rolls around, prices on IBM PC, XT, and AT class sysems start going up. Up till that point, a 286 was a "free" item because nobody knew what to do with it. In that time frame, I bought a barebones Deskpro 286 for $24 that looked like hell and had been sitting in a guy's garage for several years. My Deskpro 386 was over $50 and sold for $75 on E-bay when I sold it. I bought my GEM 286 around that time for $34.00.

2010 is when I got out of things for a little bit. LGR was still a small fry, 8-bit guy was still the macbook guy, at that point, I was the only person I was aware of on YouTube doing any amounts of DOS computer stuff, and by that point I'd kinda' left that because my guitar stuff was way more popular, and I was tired of most people chastising me for having a pile of old PCs and that I should "junk em' and get a AMD Athlon/Core 2 Duo with Windows 7".

Then during my absense, LGR caught on - and I was stil lhankering to at least have one old 486 box around to mess with. What has happened to vintage PCs in the last decade is what I predicted during the 2000's would happen and almost gave up on that belief. I mean, in 2010, only a handful of us were messing with old stuff like this, and it was not YouTube driven, we were the outliers of the internet....but buy 2015, the pool had grown, you had LGR Oddware/Thrifts/Things, Macbook Guy was now the 8-bit guy, Adrian's Digital Basement started to crop up not long after, Phil's Computer Lab shows up, NostalgiaNerd, and of course me (Creepingnet), VWWestlife, and a few other older YouTubers were still around doing things, at least in my case, periodically. That's when I really started to see prices shoot up.

At this point, I don't even hunt for old hardware anymore. One thing in this hobby that easily turns into a "trap" of sorts is when this stuff was plentiful we got tons and tons and tons of it for next to nothing. When I lived with mom, I had 32 x86 IBM Compatibles at one point in various stages of (dis)repair ranging from fully working and kicking butt to barely a barebones box with a working motherboard. When I started my channel, I had an entire floor of my closet taken up with old 8088-Pentium laptops and desktops. Today, I still kinda have that but the mix keeps getting weirder these days.

I still sell on E-bay and try to keep things reasonable so that parts of my collection get out there and still get a good home from time to time. I have seen a few machines I've sold in the 2000s and 2010s pop up on there again every so often. A DEC 486/33 I repainted in 2003 (bad yellowing, pre-retrobrite) popped up in the last year, it's crazy, I sold it for around $15.00 in 2005, but it was going for $100x that almost - for example.

That said, I still come across a good bargain once in awhile. When I moved where I am now, I was GIVEN a NEC Ready 9522 tower, but I hardly use it. I've had co-workers give me a lot of 2000's era stuff, and I still, in our town full of thrifts, find the occasional 486/pentium system in some dank, dark corner of a thrift shop somewhere that most people would be too scared to walk in to because it's in a roughter part of town. Sometimes I just bump into things visiting little mom and pop computer shops, or doing things like I kinda did with New2U computers which was talked to the manager and got an opportunity to check out some stuff that went through. BUt being as I'm almost 40, have a career, and a wife, I don't really have as much time as I used to to be messing with jumpers on cards....these days I prefer to enjoy what I've got, not chase after more hardware I have to tweak and tune and fix.

I think these open-source projects are the future for retro-hardware. As the pool of old stuff dries up due to overpricing, hardware failure, recyclers, and whatnot, to keep these old boxes going were going to need to look to the future to keep things sustainable. Some of it is an opportunity to enable us to have more room options in the future that are not just merely emulating on some Raspberry Pi in a custom enclosure.

Somehow I wasn't aware you had a channel. Being a old computer/guitars guy as well I had to look you up and gave you a sub. I'll have to binge some videos hopefully.