Do resellers bother you?

[Boudicca]

Only if they are marketing cheap PC hardware as expensive Amiga hardware.

There are quite a few who paint Amiga on it and flog it as added value. (That to me is conn'ing the customer, if its pc hardware that just happens to work as amiga hardware, then market it as pc hardware that works with the amiga, at its pc market value, not at their inflated price.)

Things recently that have annoyed me on that score are :-

Flash card ide drives.
PC's running AROS or emulators.  

All I ask is they play fair and don't lie or exaggerate the truth.

[smerf]

Hi,

@Barney,

Hey I have a GVP scsi card, I sell it to you for $125.

smerf

[orb85750]

IMO the free market is a good thing overall, even for Amiga!

[ElPolloDiabl]

When things actually sell for high prices it's good feedback for companies to keep making stuff for Amiga.
You probably get both extremes in the second hand market, some hobbies only have cheapskates, others are full of speculators.
The problem with ebay is that there is no punishment for having a flood of high price buy it now listings. I believe it is only a 5 cent listing fee.
I wonder if those people have a read a book on: how to make money on ebay. Every hobby seems to have people listing and relisting stuff that is way over what people are prepared to pay.

[redrumloa]

No. This may sound harsh, but some people refuse to accept reality. The Amiga platform is more than 1/4 century old, it is an antique hobby for collectors. Simple market forces are at work, supply and demand.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen some head scratchers. I've seen some fairly common items get sold on eBay for ridiculous prices, but those are usually one off events. Someone lists an item for an absurd price hoping to net a sucker. Usually they don't but occasionally they do. Overall, over time you will simply see supply and demand forces at work as they have since the beginning of time.

[Darrin]

Hi,

@Barney,

Hey I have a GVP scsi card, I sell it to you for $125.

smerf

Pfft!  I have an A2091 with 2MB of RAM he can have for $124.99!  :p

[ciento]

No. This may sound harsh, but some people refuse to accept reality. The Amiga platform is more than 1/4 century old, it is an antique hobby for collectors. Simple market forces are at work, supply and demand.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen some head scratchers. I've seen some fairly common items get sold on eBay for ridiculous prices, but those are usually one off events. Someone lists an item for an absurd price hoping to net a sucker. Usually they don't but occasionally they do. Overall, over time you will simply see supply and demand forces at work as they have since the beginning of time.

If a reseller is paying property taxes and mortgage, or rent on their
long-term storage facility, they must walk the tightrope of high prices
and fewer sales, Vs lower prices with many sales. Limited Amiga parts means
its often the higher priced scenario. Big-box stores sell commodity parts
to the hordes. I'm just happy people save Amigas from the dumpster, even
against the little womans death threats. :hammer:

[Buzzfuzz]

No, as a collector I pay what I want to pay for it, but I know the limits.
 
Evilbay sometimes has insane prices, but sometimes you get a surprise at low cost items.
I recently picked up a GVP Combo 030 card, a 40Mhz version with the full 16MB fast for 152 dollars, and to me, that is a good price.
 
I don't care who sells what, if I want it, I will get it, but not at all cost.
It's a hobby, and it has to stay that way.
But on that note, my collection is pretty extensive

[runequester]

I guess one thing that irratates me a little is when the seller states that he doesn't know if the item works, knows nothing about it, states there will be no returns or refunds, and then has a sky high starting bid amount.  If the seller truly doesn't know if the item is functional then he should start the bidding at 99 cents and let the bidders take the actual risk.  

Amibay's policys are a joke.  Everything in life is a version of buying low and selling high.  How many people have bought houses or cars or boats to flip them for a profit?  If you go to an antique show/sale everything there is being bought and sold for a large profit.  Your grocery stores buy produce low and sell high.  It's a good thing they didn't get their lettuce form Amibay.

"buy it now, 500 dollars, totally worked when I tried it in 1998, no returns at all. Item has been very safe in my leaking basement. SUPER RARE!!!"

[fishy_fiz]

In theory, no, not at all.
 What does bother me though is that australian ebay is quite limited with the amount of amiga gear for sale, and slowly but surely there's one or 2 people buying up a lot of gear and then selling it for absolutely crazy prices ($700 cd32, $300 c64 emulator for amiga, $50 powerdrift, and many, many other examples). Not only does this make amiga gear unaccessible to me, but it just goes to waste and is posted week in week out. Probably half of what is available on australian ebay is this sort of stuff that does little more than take up space in the list of "amiga" items, and makes there be less available amiga gear for those of us who actually want amiga gear.
I have no problem at all with people being lucky enough to buy cheap stuff and selling for a reasonable profit, but the aforementioned people are making it hard for me to get ahold of amiga gear (Ive been trying to get myself a working amiga for quite some time and those people are making it very hard for me).

[Vlabguy1]

I just recently got a ton of Amiga stuff, with more on the way.. FREE.  I basically saved the stuff from being thrown in the dumpster(garbage/trash/bin).  Looking at the stuff makes me wonder what the heck am I going to do with all this stuff?  I will sell 90% at
no reserve auctions once I have time, and that might not be in the near future.  But at least the stuff is safe with me and as I get more I will post pics of what I get..

Rich
ny

recirculating Amgia gear only helps the Amiga hobby/community!! vs throwing the stuff out.

This is one of those things thats hard to prove, but it seems there's at least a minority out there who will buy up amiga hardware for cheap, then sell it on directly, at a higher price. (sometimes unrealistically so, I've seen single issues of amiga magazines on ebay for "buy it now" at 20 dollars. Seriously guys?)
It always amazes me that amiga gear will fetch extremely high prices, compared to a lot of retro computer stuff, and I wonder if price speculation is part of that.


Is this something that bothers you?

Does it make a difference to you if you are selling or giving stuff to someone, whether they are a user, a collector or a reseller?

How do you go about buying amiga stuff?

[runequester]

yeah, definately. Always breaks my heart when amigas are binned.

[Fairdinkem]

Do resellers bother you?

Some do, especially with the prices PPC cards are selling for these days, I mean there is one at the moment that is fetching $800 dollars US that is more than what I paid for a Pegasos 2. It is just the accelerator not even a whole computer and it is costing $800 US I mean that is insane, it's great for the seller and I totally understand the cool :afro: factor associated with these cards I mean I want one too but wow not at that cost I just don't have that sort of disposable cash laying around:confused: but people keep paying these record prices out of obsession I susspect and the need for cool :afro: factor.

I understand that when something is rare it becomes expensive but with these PPC cards it seems somewhat out of balance.

Maybe I want the cool :afro: factor and I am just envious:)

[jaym0nd]

They do annoy me, they get in the way of us enthusiasts.
 
Bargains on eBay don't exist anymore due to one man...we all know who he is.

[spirantho]

I am a reseller, so no: I don't bother me.

There's a place for resellers in a community, I believe... but there are good resellers and bad resellers.

In my business I mostly deal in Sinclair Spectrums, though I do a bit of Amiga stuff, and yes, I trawl eBay for bargains, and yes, that does unfortunately stop other people getting a bargain. But my highest bid is nearly always notably under the average - I place a lot of bids, but I don't win many.

But on the other hand, I do offer a service.

Some (many!) of the lots I win are only partially working. By the time they leave my office (at a definite mark-up) they're fully working, refurbished (cosmetically and more importantly electronically), tested and guaranteed.  Without resellers like myself it would be impossible to buy tested, working guaranteed old computers on eBay... and it's not like there's not a ton of untested ones on there still. Sometimes I do just buy something in cheap and then sell it at three times the price - but when I buy it it's almost always untested and when the buyer pays me, he knows it'll work.

As a reseller, I'm not just selling goods - I'm selling my knowledge and ability to repair, test and refurbish 30-year old machinery.

A good reseller provides a service and allows the continuation of the hobby. A bad reseller buys cheap and chucks it out the door at a massive mark-up.

So I hope I don't bother too many people. My customers don't seem to think so, anyway.

[Thorham]

The Amiga platform is more than 1/4 century old, it is an antique hobby for collectors.

No, of course it's not. First: Amigas are modern computers from early in the modern computer era. Second: Many people who have Amigas aren't collectors. People use the systems to play games, for example. Some people use them as their main machines.

The machines from the '80s and '90s aren't antiques at all, and some of those prices are completely ridiculous.