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VintageComputerMuseum is at it again!

smp

smp

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 4, 2011
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Location
Bedford, NH, USA
FYI, the fellow known as VintageComputerMuseum over on eBay is at it again!

This time, he has one of the new Altair 8800 Clone computers (http://altairclone.com) up for auction.

He titles it: "Rare MITS ALTAIR 8800 Clone Computer * Museum Condition* Works Ships Worldwide."

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-MITS-A...tage_Computers_Mainframes&hash=item2334bedd44

And, you will see that he is offering it for $1299.99, when you can go direct to the Altair 8800 Clone web site and purchase one for $621.00.

This guy is unbelievable!!! Does anyone know who he is?

smp
 
His eBay feedback is pretty good - 4420 with 100% positive over the last 12 months. Despite the creative pricing.

I think that auction is deceptive and priced to catch an unwitting buyer. But that's eBay for you ...
 
It is true that the item is "Rare". Nobody I know has one, and there's probably less of these around than there is of a lot of collectible vintage machines which are routinely called rare. Neither price nor availability is relevant to that. You can pick up the phone and buy a Maserati GranTurismo right now, but they're still so rare that I haven't seen one drive by here.

As Mike points out, the right term is "deceptive", though I can see why that would not be used in a listing. ;)
 
Lots of stuff on E-bay can be bought for less elsewhere. I have a Digilent Nexys-3 board. When they turn up on e-bay they are always more expensive that buying direct from Digilent....
... I also note no condition is included and its sold "as-is" wonderfull scam
 
vintcomp. sells at retail prices. Nothing wrong with that, we are not his target market. I am hoping he gets a vendor booth at vcf east but there is prob. no incentive. Everything is so cheap there. Its the best way to get old tech cheaply.
b
 
A lot of the stuff he sells is junk, and he knows it is.

A couple of my clients bought Compupro Systems from him, and it cost them hundreds of dollars to replace the missing parts, and repair defective boards in the Systems.

He does not test anything.

He buys the least expensive junk he can get his hands on, including known defective stuff, to flip and sell using his "...minimal testing..." misleading wording in his eBay ads.

If you question his honesty, or closely question him on an item for sale he will block you without even answering you.

I know, because he blocked me after I asked him about something that someone bought from him when it arrived missing parts and in no way even close to operating condition.

Recently I put some non-working Compupro boards up for sale on eBay, specifically stating that they were not working and being sold for repair or parts, and he had the balls to bid on every one of them. Knowing that he would turn around and repost them for sale on eBay, as minimally tested, I did not want these boards to be resold and the Buyers dupped, so I took the time to place him on my Blocked Bidder List.

An example of his deceptive practices is the Compupro/Viasyn SP186 80186 Slave Processor Board that he has for auction on eBay right now. Bring the ad up, and enlarge the power regulator section of the board. Someone did some bad solder work on the board, and some components have been pulled off the board. How can you call that board minimally tested? If it was tested, it must have been found to be NOT WORKING, and should have been described as NOT WORKING. I believe that this same board may have been sold fairly recently by another party on eBay for around $80.
 
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Hmm, due to some of my recent interests, I have been watching this listing from "vintagecomputermuseum" for a Columbia 1600-1 Desktop S# 2803. If that really is serial number "2803" then it, in my opinion, it deserves to be in an actual museum. But notice how there is no picture of the back, so we can't see the actual serial number. And the ONE picture that is there is small and fuzzy. At least he shows it powered on to the BIOS. Of course at 399.99 there is just no way.

Oh, and ocasionally when I search for Magitronic stuff I always see a listing from Recycledgood for a 286 motherboard that is visibly missing the CPU, BIOS, keyboard controller, and perhaps other parts, yet they want an arm and a leg for it!
 
billdeg said:
vintcomp. sells at retail prices. Nothing wrong with that, we are not his target market. I am hoping he gets a vendor booth at vcf east but there is prob. no incentive. Everything is so cheap there. Its the best way to get old tech cheaply.
b
Click to expand...


I have no problem with his pricing, after all it is his stuff.

I do take exception to his deceptive, misleading statements/comments, and the outright lies that he tells in his ads.
 
You want a laugh at how stupid the prices are, look at the selection of AT keyboards; rubber dome crap at a hundred bucks a pop? Does anybody actually pay this joker's "Buy it now" prices? Well... I guess they must with the 4K+ positives, but that would make me wonder if they're just paying the e-bay fee on low-ticket items to sock-puppet themselves.

Al Kossow said:
I REALLY wish there was a way to blacklist sellers from searches. Him and recycledgoods would be at the top of the list.
Click to expand...
I wish every search let you blacklist results; e-bay would be a good start. The ability to remove results like "-magazines" is great, but blacklisting sellers would be nice... since, yeah. You just listed the top two off my list of "ignore this one" -- though usually I can blacklist these jokers from my searches by taking what I'm willing to pay, and filtering out anything that costs more than 50% over that.

It's a bit like google searches -- I wish to hell I could blacklist certain sleazeball scam sites like "expertsExchange" or idiotic misinformation web rot garbage like "W3Schools"...
 
The other solution is to blacklist them from your listings. Most of us know their mains and their alts so a list could be developed and passed around, of course you would need to keep it pretty anonymous and low key or else they would start crying everywhere that they're being unjustifiably harassed and threaten anyone linked to the creation of the list. At the very least it prevents them from continuing the loop of pure greed computer collecting has slowly got a negative reputation for.
 
Unfortunately, my "Not Rare ALTAIR 8800 Clone Computer * Museum Quality * Works" parody auction sold already! I was hoping it would last for a week.
 
Sorry I am just really sensitive to people who are deceived to pay too much for an item. I work for a bank and we take calls every day from people who have paid for something that was mis-represented. Unfortunately a lot of these are older and cannot afford the loss.
 
My point exactly! That's why I put up my auction showing the real, "not-rare" product at the real price in a parody of his $1399 (now $1039) auction.
 
Ok, I didn't follow the last few comments until I looked it up.

This is the insane over priced auction mentioned in the in the original post:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-MITS-A...s_Mainframes&hash=item2334bedd44#ht_464wt_697
And... it says it sold today... :?

Deramp apparently posted this "parody" auction, using a similar description, at the normal new price ("not rare" lol):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Not-Rare-AL...656?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27de7b1470
This apparently sold yesterday. (For the normal new price also see: http://altairclone.com )

Which is unfortunate in that hypothetically it is possible whoever just bought the one at the rip-off price just did an impulse eBay search and buy, which would have turned up the parody auction had it not sold.

On the other hand, there is plenty of room in those cases to pack full of drugs.....
 
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