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A Vintage Computer Auction Site

D

Druid6900

Veteran Member
Joined
May 7, 2006
Messages
3,809
Location
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
I was looking over the old websites I had designed the other day and came across an auction site I had built.

I believe I used it to successfully unload a vintage Playboy collection I got in lieu of payment for some other site I built.

After playing with it for a while and discovering that it could do stuff that even Flea-Bay couldn't do, I got a rather strange idea.

There is a sufficient number of users on THIS site to, if a majority of people would use it and promote it, to probably make it a viable alternative to the (now homogeneous) Vintage computer section of FB.

I know there are a lot of little places out there and that's the problem, every place is little. Sellers aren't going to list without a good number of buyers and buyers aren't going to come around without something to buy.

I figured that a site that had no listing fees, no picture fees, no reserve bid fees, no fees for changing pages, no fees for waiting more than 30 seconds between paying some other fee might just take off if enough people got behind it.

A small FVF fee to cover expenses, make it worth the time and maybe even help someone defray the costs of running THIS site would be necessary, of course.

Now, I'm just tossing this out as an idea since I'm not interested in doing a lot of work for no particularly good reason. I have enough of that fixing all this old stuff. :)

If the interest was there, I'd be willing to put it up and work at promoting it with the Search Engine Submission software I use and whatever else I can do up to and including putting some of the stuff I have on my site up on it for auction.

I would also be amenable to a small decision making committee of interested individuals with enough time to steer the course of the site in the future.

I think ONE good site for Vintage items would be of much greater benefit to the Vintage community than a dozen small sites.

Be advised that I am not doing this with the idea of making a living off of it. At first :)

What do you think?
 
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You have my support, but good luck dealing with the mob of small auction site owners that specialize in vintage items. Doesn't Vintagecomputermarketplace.com do just fine, when it is up? If people would just advertise it....

--Ryan

And if it would work 99% of the time....
 
If you'd like to attach it to this domain that would probably eliminate your SEO issue.

Either way, I'd be happy to support the site.
 
Did you ever look at the Vintage Computer Marketplace site run by Sellam? It was serving a similar purpose - a place to go other than eBay with some specific features that made it more appealing to vintage computer hobbyists. It's been down for quite a while now and Sellam is controversial, so maybe it's time to do another one.

eBay works well because anybody cleaning out their attic knows to go to eBay. A targeted site like you suggest only works for people who are part of the 'community' already, and have slightly less of a profit motive. You will always be able to do better on eBay because the audience will probably always be much bigger.

I would certainly use and contribute such a site. Besides my TCP/IP code for DOS and operating system code that I've written over the years for large computer systems, I've even managed to write some passable web code.
 
mbbrutman said:
eBay works well because anybody cleaning out their attic knows to go to eBay. A targeted site like you suggest only works for people who are part of the 'community' already, and have slightly less of a profit motive. You will always be able to do better on eBay because the audience will probably always be much bigger.
Click to expand...

This is true. However, I can see an auction site like that proposed might fill a need, especially if you want your items to come from or go to people that actually are part of the "vintage computer" community. In particular, it could be linked to this site. The idea would be that people could announce the auction in the "Computer Items for Sale or Trade" section, then the auction can take place at the proposed aution site.

It's not likely that I could personally take advantage of it (I'm way too far away from most people) but I think it has merit.
 
Agreed.

My point (not explicitly stated) was that people are going to have to forgo some profit for the warm fuzzy that comes with selling to a like minded person.
 
I'd definitely check out an auction site like what Druid6900 is looking into -- especially if you get people like the bulk of us here on this forum -- that way people get a chance to actually not get ridiculously outbid on something and the seller can still get quite a bit of coin as well !! I start to wonder if some of the crazy high bids that come in on those ebay auctions are from speculators who are looking to make even more money off of the items a little bit down the road. Remember those days with the comic book industry when that was happening back in the 90's? It almost nearly killed the hobby.

That "vintage computer marketplace" site has been off for like three months at least I think. It was interesting to check out, I got a couple of things off of there, but I don't know how soon that site will come back.
 
I think it is a great idea. VCF has become very well known among collecters as well as newbys. With the numerous changes EPay has done to it's Vintage area and it's continually changing categories it has become even difficult at times to find the EPay Vintage sections at times. They obviously don't view Vintage computers as a hi-profit area.

Sellams marketplace was badly organised and hard to navigate, much less figure out ending times of auctions or other details.

A dedicated venue for computer auctions( not necessarily vintage but geared to that) could only go well, once recognized. A drawback could be an influx of computer marketers which overwhelmed the intent of the site.

A PayPal or similar payment link would be mandatory, but no big problem.

I've always had a problem with VCFs For Sale or trade section, since in most cases I hesitate to quote a price that would be ridiculed or be totally underpriced, or make an offer which could be insulting to some people. That drove me to EPay in many cases just so I wouldn't have to deal with it.

OK how do we take it forward ? The programming ability is certainly available on VCF.

Lawrence
 
Actually, the site is already built and has been tested and used and is sitting on my hard drive.

The only thing that would need to be done would be some cosmetic changes to the layout.

I could have it up in a few days and, Erik, I think it would be a wonderful idea to attach it as an extension of the VCF.

It's written in Perl wrapped in HTML and it has all the features of FleaBay (and a few that I don't think they have).

I can't recall if it requires MySQL support as well (it's been a while).

I propose that we set it up somewhere and take a look at it, see what it has that we don't want and what it needs that we don't have.

I'm sure that someone here besides me has been force to learn Perl, at some point. :)

One thing I DO want to mention is that I didn't write the entire code, it was a package and I just had to spend a few months customizing it.

However, we would have to probably come up with some sort of restrictions so that people don't take advantage of it and just pop in to sell a bunch of stuff off, but, that would be up to a streering committee to decide.

I also think that there is a provision to show the location of the items, regardless of where they are so that people like Tezza and our friends from Oz could list as well and you could decide weither what they have would induce you to pay the shipping.

Now, if we could just get Shark to convince some shipping lines to haul and hand off Vintage equipment...... LMAO

This site scales nicely and how big or how small the committee decides it should be is doable at pretty much any size depending on how much in the way of resources are thrown at it.

I'm not looking to compete head-to-head with FB, but, ya never know :)
 
Count me in

Count me in

I am a mac and pc technican (certified) so if you need any help or even any donations of current hardware let me know.
I have a bunch of hard drives and Im sure memory I can contribute.
 
Mrbill317 said:
I am a mac and pc technican (certified) so if you need any help or even any donations of current hardware let me know.
I have a bunch of hard drives and Im sure memory I can contribute.
Click to expand...

Thanks Bill,

I THINK Erik's plan is to put it on his server with the forums, so, I think he might have the hardware covered, but, I thank you very kindly for the offer and the support.

D.
 
Druid6900 said:
Thanks Bill,

I THINK Erik's plan is to put it on his server with the forums, so, I think he might have the hardware covered, but, I thank you very kindly for the offer and the support.
Click to expand...

Yup. That's the plan. I need time more than hardware, but I do appreciate the offer! :)
 
Okay, folks.

I took a look at Druid's auction code and decided that it wasn't quite what we needed.

I looked around a bit and selected another product that is a fairly good compromise between price and functionality.

Hopefully y'all will agree that it's useful.

Please visit http://marketplace.vintage-computer.com and check it out. Comments are, as always, welcome.

I'll put up a more formal announcement a bit later.
 
I must say, I am really pissed at eBay for dumping all their categories in the vintage computer section and just using one general listing for everything. Think of how much work people put into their listings just to mix them all up. It's like taking all your parts you spent hours sorting into different groups and dumping them into one huge pile. Try finding something in that mess now.:sleepy:

Another auction site with a good following is just whats needed, imo.
 
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