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Why the bleep is eBay so expensive??

A while back I noted one seller saying he/she was no longer selling complete systems because shipping was a hassle.

Different strokes......

More money parting out the important stuff and less of a pain to ship I would think.
 
Why was the COVID thread locked? I was following it early a few days ago but dont know what happened. I just checked its locked. Didnt seem to end on a controversial tone...
 
If there is something that you want on ebay, but the price is more than you want to pay, just wait. Unless it is an ultra rare item that you might see come around once in 10 years, you will see one again for a more reasonable price. I never overpay for anything on ebay, I do place a value on my waiting time, however. If paying 10% more than my personal valuation of an item saves me two years of waiting time for the next one, then I may grab it because there is no guarantee that the next one will be any cheaper and I will have wasted 2 years of my life waiting for the next opportunity to purchase it. Waiting 2 years to pay $95 for a $100 item is also not worth it. The discount isn't enough to compensate me for my lost time when I could have been enjoying the use of that item.

You also have to figure shipping into whatever you are paying for the item. There is a widescreen CRT monitor made by Intergraph that I have been wanting for a while. The last few that were on ebay sold for $100, but had a $200 freight charge attached to them, which drove the price out of my valuation range. Items that are heavy or bulky enough to require freight delivery, also will not be shipped directly to your house. They almost always require a loading dock and the driver will not help with unloading. If it's a palletized item, you will need a forklift or pallet jack to get it off the truck. If you don't have a loading dock at your location, then you will have to collect it from the freight depot, which may be a hundred miles away depending on where you live, and it sucks if your only transportation is a Honda Civic. You will then have to rent or beg someone for a truck to go get it. Unless you can source something big locally, it's generally not worth it to have it shipped by freight carrier.
 
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In addition to my reply above, I have to say that some sellers are hopefully optimistic that someone with more money than sense will click the BIN rather than participate in an auction that they might lose to a sniper in the last 3 seconds. Also, there are a lot more flippers price gouging on ebay than there used to be. The problem is that when someone who isn't a flipper has something to sell, they see those prices and figure that must be what they sell for and they set their prices the same, and that becomes the new price forever. It's getting to the point now where you're better off making deals face to face with local sellers who are collectors themselves, and aren't looking for a quick payday, than you are going on ebay.
 
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Case in point: https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-5161-X...160-5155-to-a-5161-expansion-Box/193939218899

Even on Ebay, I've seen complete 5161's with both cards and the cable for not much more than that.
A bit of a bump on this thread, but probably worth remembering that the auction in question was a UK sale. In the UK although the full classic IBM PC range was sold here it was a bit late to market, faced very credible domestic competition before the PC platform was spoken for and the prices were inflated with the odd 1:1 exchange rate which always seems to happen between GBP and USD over technology products. Then when cheap domestic IBM clones like the Amstrad PC came along the sale of actual IBM kit slowed even more from a position that was never fully developed in the first place. Fast forward to 2021 and genuine IBM hardware which was always more scarce than in the US at the time is even more so now and when it comes to things that were rare in the first place like 5161's any part of the system will sell for stupid money.

I only started on my 5150 setup in 2017 and the money I eventually spent to get a complete system (although admittedly it did include a 5154 EGA monitor which is very rare in the UK) could credibly have got you the full 'classic trio' of a 5150/60/70 with associated monitors and keyboards at US prices.
 
I think it's easy in the US to forget that outside of North America we are not exactly tripping over IBM PC's so the price reflects the scarcity in our local markets. It's the same here in Australia where you would think being that we had our own IBM manufacturing plant from around 1976 to 1997 that the supply would be better here but it's not. A large percentage of them were for export to Asia and whatever is left that went into the local market is tucked away in private collections. If you manage to find one in the wild you've done very well for yourself.

That price for the 5161 XT Expansion Card is spot on what I would expect to see locally if I was ever to see one.
 
I think it's easy in the US to forget that outside of North America we are not exactly tripping over IBM PC's so the price reflects the scarcity in our local markets. It's the same here in Australia where you would think being that we had our own IBM manufacturing plant from around 1976 to 1997 that the supply would be better here but it's not. A large percentage of them were for export to Asia and whatever is left that went into the local market is tucked away in private collections. If you manage to find one in the wild you've done very well for yourself.

Yes, same in New Zealand. By the time NZ businesses started buying PC-type computers, Asian XT clones were online and at about 2/3rds the price.

Tez
 
I understand why the prices would be higher in your local markets but eBay is a global market.
 
An Australian plant was needed to supply IBM PCs to Asia? Curious why they didn't just build the plant in the Phillipines or even Singapore. Many ics were already manned there I thought.

Anyone know how many 5150/5160s were sold in Japan?

Did Research Machines gain any traction in Australia?
 
An Australian plant was needed to supply IBM PCs to Asia? Curious why they didn't just build the plant in the Phillipines or even Singapore. Many ics were already manned there I thought.

Why build a new IBM manufacturing plant in Asia when you already had one well established in Australia which had been producing IBM Selectric Typewriters since 1976? I think it just made financial sense at the time especially considering before the IBM PC was released they had invested more capital in expanding the Wangaratta plant in 1979 to increase production. They basically had a well trained workforce and facility ready to go.
 
An Australian plant was needed to supply IBM PCs to Asia? Curious why they didn't just build the plant in the Phillipines or even Singapore. Many ics were already manned there I thought.

Anyone know how many 5150/5160s were sold in Japan?

Did Research Machines gain any traction in Australia?

I dont think very many as speaking with someone in JApan, they are non existent and he'd never seen nor heard of a PCJR
 
I understand why the prices would be higher in your local markets but eBay is a global market.

It doesn't matter. Someone in the UK or Australia is going to charge UK or Australia prices because they know that's what they can get from a local buyer. They don't care what it sells for anywhere else and they don't have to. If you don't want to see items from outside your country on ebay, there are settings you can change to make that happen.
 
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