Hardware Pricing - So many damned regrets

[TeamBlackFox]

Well it's certainly been some time since I was on here.

Anyways, I'm back in the scene for the time being, as an A2000HD was given to me by a friend who was seriously thinking of binning it.

I swore off Amigas about 3 years ago due to being laid off from a datacenter job up north and the insane prices. It seems since then that little has changed. People still scalp each other over 20-30 year old hardware. A good used car close to the price of a not perfect A1000? Someone's smoking some crack there!

Anyways, I spent the last three years in the SGI/Sun scene, where most of the entry level stuff is still peanuts (SGI and Amiga also share a lot of the same sort of cool things) and even the high end stuff is not too bad (I've never paid near a sizable amount for an SGI box, and that one was maxed out, and quite fast!)

Meanwhile these quaint little 16/32 computers are fetching far more on the open market, and I even saw an insane price for a 68060 Phase5 accelerator, even after cheaper and equally fast Vampire and other chips have hit the scene.

It's depressing. Don't get me wrong, it's probably not going to be forever like this, but I feel like affordability of my hobbies is a problem. Meanwhile my Mitsubishi GTO project is collecting dust and my main car needs brakes badly... I don't have the best priorities, I know...

Edit: Instead of talkin actual numbers since apparently not even outside of the actual marketplace are prices allowed to be mentioned - I used hyperbole to get my point across. Happy?

 

[Half-Saint]

Sad to say but supply and demand dictate the price. As long as there are people prepared to pay ridiculous amounts of money to own a piece of hardware... well, you know the rest.

 

[TeamBlackFox]

Sad to say but supply and demand dictate the price. As long as there are people prepared to pay ridiculous amounts of money to own a piece of hardware... well, you know the rest.

I understand that. I guess it's the same story with SNES games - games like Earthbound actually sold decently but they're in such high collection demand there's never enough carts to go around.

I get it all. But scalping people is beyond disgusting. I deal with this in the SGI community - people will ask many times the value of a piece of hardware and then get defensive and insulted when I inform them they're way off.

 

[demolition]

What some people think is expensive, others will gladly pay. This is why price discussions are not allowed here as it is highly subjective. If someone will pay your asking price, then the price is not too high no matter if it is 10x the price it was 10 years ago. If nobody responds to a high priced item for sale, then the buyer will probably realize at some point that the price is too high and reduce the price eventually. Otherwise the seller will just have to keep the item for eternity and so be it.

I see no reason to inform a seller that the asking price is way too high. If they have success in selling stuff through 'scalping' then blame the clueless buyers. If I had an item that usually sells for $100 and someone will gladly pay $250 for it, then it would be kind of stupid of me not to take the $250.. Unless the buyer is a minor, has some mental issue or is otherwise not fully capable of understanding the deal, then it would not be my place to question their decision.

 

[tbtorro]

I get it all. But scalping people is beyond disgusting. I deal with this in the SGI community - people will ask many times the value of a piece of hardware and then get defensive and insulted when I inform them they're way off.

I'm sorry but IMHO it's the same old story for people who can't afford one hobby or another and scream Scalping! all the time when there is none.. Would be nice if once and for all people would realize the price is driven by market forces nothing else. It's open market driven by supply-demand, which is the oldest lesson of buying and selling. So in this regard using 'scalping' is complete nonsense, if people don't want to get scalped then, they SHOULDN'T buy whatever hardware and they won't.

I tell you a real scalping example: If say, you sell a drug that you have monopoly on, and you know people have no choice because nothing else exists on the market, and they must buy this if they want to live. And then you sell it to them say 20x the price it costs you to research and produce that drug - now THAT is scalping.

But this is just a hobby and people have the choice to buy or not to buy (and to sell or not to sell) something for a certain price. The rest is economics.

 

[Justin]

i believe Amibay is a victim of its own success with regards to price driving.
when Amibay started it was to stop the ebay craziness and get like minded people together to trade hardware/software and remember the good old days. Over time Amibay grew and grew, but no pricing was allowed. so what happened was people went onto ebay and used closed threads here to judge their prices. they then added into the price carriage, the next person came along, took that price added a bit and then added carriage and so on and so on.

we have reached the stage where ebay is usually cheaper than Amibay now (with a bit of searching) Scalpers come here 1st for the large captive audiance.

Also years ago this board was full of chat posts, jokes, polls help and info, it has since become quite sterile and business like, it is a real shame to me as i used to love this site and would be here all the time, these days i log in now and again to talk to Nurney about meet ups etc, but that is about it

cheers, JuvUK

 

[slk486]

I tell you a real scalping example: If say, you sell a drug that you have monopoly on, and you know people have no choice because nothing else exists on the market, and they must buy this if they want to live. And then you sell it to them say 20x the price it costs you to research and produce that drug - now THAT is scalping.

No, scalping is when someone re-sells something at a very high and quick profit. Ticket-scalping for instance. Or buying something from Amibay at 10 and immediately re-selling on ebay for 80. The latter can sometimes lead to artificially bloated prices.

 

[tbtorro]

I tell you a real scalping example: If say, you sell a drug that you have monopoly on, and you know people have no choice because nothing else exists on the market, and they must buy this if they want to live. And then you sell it to them say 20x the price it costs you to research and produce that drug - now THAT is scalping.

No, scalping is when someone re-sells something at a very high and quick profit. Ticket-scalping for instance. Or buying something from Amibay at 10 and immediately re-selling on ebay for 80. The latter can sometimes lead to artificially bloated prices.

This has always been grey area in my opinion. Who will decide that '10' was a 'real' value of that item? What if the item DOES worth 80 only the seller didn't know it? What is 'immediately'. One day? One hour? What about buying for 10 and selling for 1000 two months later? Or buying for 10 and selling for 12 one hour later?

And please note the OP is not using the term by the Amibay definition but in much broader sense - i.e. everything that is expensive to him, judged by his idea of item worth is 'scalping' to him..

Ticket scalping I would accept, because I've seen scalpers would buy a HUGE part of all tickets and sell them at a premium - but again in this case I would argue that they don't have choice because the dealers would own a big (if not most) part of all tickets - hence the buyers would need to pay the premium to get to the concert/event..

It's all about choice in my opinion. If the buyers have other choices then it's by definition NOT scalping, because if there is choice, nobody will buy anything at unrealistic prices.. Everything else is economics.

 

[slk486]

To me it's more in the intention of the re-seller than a specific threshold, however the official Amibay policy ("Buying an item, for the sole intent of profiteering from its resale.") ​defines it well enough.

I do agree that most of this stuff is controlled by market forces.

 

[salaxi54]

It's good to keep numbers out of the discussion IMHO, and i disagree that Amibay in general has been almost restricted into buy-sell matters. There's still plenty to learn and fix in these premises! As about hobbies being expensive, well, you can make it cheap or expensive! For example: you like the Amiga OS environment, use an emulator!
You like both the OS and the machine's looks? use an emulator and get an Amiga case to house it! You like the real thing more? Well then, you'll have to compensate for the total cost.. Or try building something yourself!
Some of you might've seen my cockpit project, people involved in this hobby usually spend (some would say waste?) grand buck! But i personally prefer to make anything i can from scratch, thus keeping my hobby costs ultra-low. Heck, i can't even afford a HOTAS, so i carved my flightstick from solid wood... Can't do that yourself? Start looking around for friends with skills! Actually, now that 3D printers are so popular, there's so many things one can achieve!
Just my 2 cents.

 

[Half-Saint]

we have reached the stage where ebay is usually cheaper than Amibay now (with a bit of searching) Scalpers come here 1st for the large captive audiance.

I'm still under the impression that amibay is generally cheaper than eBay.

 

[TeamBlackFox]

You guys seem to be talking passed me. And that's fine.

There's a difference between free market demand and scalping. An example would be something when I pick up SGIs off eBay. I clean them up, add an HDD and replace any broken parts. I take that, add 20% and list it. I list inexpensively for a number of reasons:

Ethical - I often introduce people to hobbies with my low pricing. To scalp them would be beyond evil.

Building customer relationships - I have relationships with customers that span back 6-7 years. I value these.

Speed of Sale: Cheap hardware sells faster.

 

[demolition]

You guys seem to be talking passed me. And that's fine.

There's a difference between free market demand and scalping. An example would be something when I pick up SGIs off eBay. I clean them up, add an HDD and replace any broken parts. I take that, add 20% and list it. I list inexpensively for a number of reasons:

Ethical - I often introduce people to hobbies with my low pricing. To scalp them would be beyond evil.

Words like 'inexpensive' and 'low pricing' are subjective, so it is all in the eye of the beholder and they change their meaning all the time.
I like Tbtorro's example of increasing the price on medicine simply because you know that people's lives depend on buying it. That is scalping and beyond evil if anything is. Unfortunately there was a very recent episode of that happening.

Buying retro hardware and reselling it immediately for 5x the price is not evil. That is simply business and not something that people's lives or health relies on so if you think the prices are too high, find some other hobby that is cheaper. People only post stuff at insane prices because they are rewarded for doing so. Stop rewarding them by buying from them and they will eventually go away.

 

[tbtorro]

You guys seem to be talking passed me. And that's fine.

There's a difference between free market demand and scalping. An example would be something when I pick up SGIs off eBay. I clean them up, add an HDD and replace any broken parts. I take that, add 20% and list it. I list inexpensively for a number of reasons:

Ethical - I often introduce people to hobbies with my low pricing. To scalp them would be beyond evil.

Building customer relationships - I have relationships with customers that span back 6-7 years. I value these.

Speed of Sale: Cheap hardware sells faster.

Again - you are perfectly right to do whatever YOU judge is fair and smart to do. Just please don't extend your 'rules' to others and judge them to be 'scalpers' just because YOU don't agree with the price they sell anything for.

For example I also don't agree with the current price of new cars in general. I will probably never buy a new car because I PERSONALLY think it's the worst expense one can make. The value of the purchased good will rapidly decrease over a few short years, not to mention the constant maintenance costs, insurance and taxes even when I'm not using it.. Yet I would never consider car companies 'scalpers' simply because I do have several other choices like buying a slightly used car, or simply use public transport or a bicycle. So I simply chose to NOT buy a new car, and I get on with my life.

Point is, NOBODY is forcing you or anyone else to pay the 'high' or 'outrageous' price of retro hardware, yet people do. And that has nothing to do with the seller(s) but the market. I for example have a hobby budget and made a rule to myself to only buy new hardware from my hobby funds. If I was to sell my other surplus hardware below market price (because I would think it's fair to do so) that will not help me at all. I could try to PM the seller to ask to sell me their Cyberstorms below market price because 'it's fair' and I point out that I do the same and see where would that get me.. You see, it's all about market forces..

 

[Retro_Lover]

Buying cheap then selling 5-10x more expensive IS SCALPING, no matter how much you sugar-coat it. I find it pretty damn disgusting that some you you do sugar-coat it. Do you think it's business when buying a mini nes/snes and selling them 2-3x the price ?
That is not only CUNTISH, it's SCALPING, pure and ****ing simply.

 

[Sardine]

^^ what Retro_Lover said

 

[TeamBlackFox]

The other issue is that a lot of people rather than take reasonable amounts for hardware would rather destroy it than take a price cut.

I had a rather nasty experience with someone local who wanted about five times what I paid for my car for an Atari 7800 (He did have all the games, admittedly)

I informed him that while he had a nice collection, he was wayy overpriced. He proceeded to film a video of him setting it all on fire with a flamethrower.

 

[Pghulme]

The other issue is that a lot of people rather than take reasonable amounts for hardware would rather destroy it than take a price cut.

I had a rather nasty experience with someone local who wanted about five times what I paid for my car for an Atari 7800 (He did have all the games, admittedly)

I informed him that while he had a nice collection, he was wayy overpriced. He proceeded to film a video of him setting it all on fire with a flamethrower.

Erm.............. struggling for a comment on this

 

[TeamBlackFox]

I was at a loss for words too, don't worry.

This is the US of course. Flamethrowers aren't regulated, then again nobody goes around incinerating **** with them because they cost more than your average man's mortgage.

 

[thebajaguy]

I keep my eye out every so often on the local and regional for-sale and garage/yard sale boards and occasionally trip over something worthwhile. I've snagged an otherwise functional A3000 system w/monitor (sans HD, minor batt damage but all clean now) off here for ******* because of a (relatively) local pickup opportunity. I also find my little hacks and feature enhancements here. I figure I'll one day trip over one of the 060/PPC boards in an unsuspecting seller's system (found a PP&S 040 in what was supposedly just an A2000HD - saw the telltale different backplate). Will I pay the going rate here? I don't want them that bad. Ferengi Rules of Acquisition in effect - just know how to apply them best.