[NTLK] Ebay vs List

From: Kevin LaCombe (the_droner_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Aug 12 2002 - 12:11:35 EDT


Economics Lessons:

Time = Money

Balance of Supply and Demand determine Price.

NTLK List Member not = Saint (necessarily)

-----------------------------------------------

As someone who occasionally posts auctions on eBay, I
was interested to see how the "eBay vs the list"
thread would go.

I think it's great when someone on the list offers
something up to the list members. A lot of times they
even give it away. Some members even offer to sell to
list members before posting for auction on eBay. A
few times I have bought from list members like this
with the intent of keeping what I wanted and selling
the rest on ebay. I don't advertise on NTLK that I
will be selling something simply because my original
buying offer was based on potential selling price.
There is much more demand on ebay than on the list.
Sometimes that has worked out, sometimes not. It's my
risk.

The real question comes when you spend a lot of time,
energy, and money to acquire something that could sell
for 5x what you paid. Do you offer it to the list for
what you paid? Maybe the SER-001 should sell for $5?
Anyone get any great deals letely that they would be
willing to give me for free? I'll send you my address
but I want it shipped overnight express at your
expense.

I while back I bought (and paid for) a bunch of new
4MB router flash cards that were offered to the list
members for my cost plus shipping and a donation to
NTLK. Okay, I lied. I figured out what my cost was
and I actually made $0.06 per card. I think there
were just over 100 cards sold so I scored about $0.60
on the deal. Oh, and I got to go to the post office
everyday for about two weeks too. Now, to me it was
all worth it since I got to meet a lot of list members
and NTLK received over $1000 in donations (Thanks
again to all who donated!)

Recently I posted a question to the list about Mac
Powerbooks. I asked which older PB was good for use
with a newton. I got a lot of good input AND received
several offers from list members. Now I'm sure these
were all nice people but a lot of them included the
phrase "I was gonna sell it for $XXX elsewhere but
since you are a list member, I will give it to you for
$YYY. In most cases, $YYY was 2 x $ZZZ with $ZZZ
being the average ebay selling price. Ebay is a four
letter word starting with 'e' but it's not that evil.

To wrap this up, Ebay is a great place to buy and sell
stuff. You can also buy and sell stuff from the list.
 You are not necessarily a bad guy if you use ebay and
you are not automatically a good guy if you are a list
member. As I recall, most people sent in the donation
to NTLK for the 4MB card deal. Just a few VERY
PROMINENT (and still active) list members chose not to
make any donation.

v/r

Kevin

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