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EBay $$$

Q

Qbus

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Joined
Feb 23, 2011
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Location
Salisbury Maryland
Would put this under rants if it were open but it’s also humorous. I have a old MSEA Military 386 system that I have in a rack and use for running DOS applications, some of the radio programing software I use requires an old system and wont run on new hardware. It uses a unique Power Solutions MAP130-4000 power supply and have had to repair it once or twice before. Well this time it burnt a hole thru the circuit board under the switching transformer so it basically thru.
Being you can find everything on EBay I went and did a search and several showed up. They were all used and three of them were just under $400.00, six were around $650 each and two were $3,750.00 for power supplies. You can still buy new MAP130-4000 power supplies from Power Solutions for around $275.00 or you can pay a lot more for a used one from EBay.
Two of them were listed for $90 and I did an offer of $40 for one of them and bought it but have to wonder if any of these people trying to sell this stuff for crazy prices like the two for $3,750.00 ever sell anything?
 
Believe it or not, it happens. Why? Part of it is just that people are familiar with eBay and it may seem worth a few more bucks to grab an item from a site they are familiar with rather than going to some unfamiliar, shifty looking, buggy, or overcomplicated individual vendor's web site and entering credit card information. Same reason idiots want to exclusively use Facebook(R)(TM) or Twitter(R)(TM) rather than signing up for forums like this one.

Then there is also the factor that since buyers can easily find it, they don't have to research anything, and have no idea what an item is really worth.

In some cases, drugs are probably involved. :p

In this case, it is silly that they are asking more than what the vendor wants. I've discovered that even sellers may ONLY compare item prices with those on eBay. Many of these sellers probably have no idea that the item is available new elsewhere.

People looking at prices also never seem to look at the reputation of a seller or how they are selling something. For example, a large seller with a good reputation who goes to a lot of trouble to show they have throughly tested an MFM/RLL hard drive and perhaps even offers a replacement warranty, very well may get a couple of hundred dollars from someone who doesn't have the time to mess with bricks. But then someone with only 10 feedback pulls a crap covered drive from a rust bucket, just throws it on eBay untested as-is with a blurry picture and vague description and expects the exact same amount.

Of course, then there are the times where something is not available elsewhere, someone comes with a life-or-death need, and those asking a bazillion dollars win.

Ah, the joys of paying too much on eBay. :rolleyes:
 
The odds of a specific proprietary 386 era power supply being available new are pretty slim so people just hit ebay.
 
Ebay is generally a terrible and awful place. But for people like me (super rural) it's really the only way to get old hardware. :(
 
After 20 years on ebay i can tell you it gets worse every year and its not the same awesome place it was around the milleniu
m. Whats amazing is how they have kept any other similar enterprise from coming into being. They are a monopoly and its time for a new company to bring us back to the grassroots without all the fees and nonsense.
 
Care to have a grownup response next time?


so does anyone know what these big changes are that eBay is inflicting on us by years end?
 
Last edited:
g4ugm said:
Not sure its its the same in the USA, but in the UK E-Bay will collect payments from PayPal and then pay end users less tax and e-bay fees. This means everyone will pay purchase tax (VAT) adding , in the UK 20% to all sales.
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They have been doing this for about year in the USA. Although tax is charged on top of the final price. So the seller gets price + s&H and eBay then remits the tax to the tax authority.
 
Al Kossow said:
I wonder what the float is on all that cash they are sitting on.
Click to expand...

Honestly you should be grateful that they're doing this rather than leaving the burden on the seller. Sales Tax, notably in the US, is a real pain in the neck.
 
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