I pontificated on this a while back in this very entertaining thread:
I think this is a problem with eBay in general rather than Macintoshes in particular. I remember stumbling on this listing and wondering if it was time to seriously consider stopping the internet: eBay changed the rules recently so that fixed-price items remain on sale forever, and you can...
forums.macrumors.com
Part of the problem is eBay removed listings fees and renewal fees a couple of years back. Sellers can now list a thousand things without having to pay, and they can be relisted forever. Since then eBay has had a flood of stuff that will probably never sell, but the auctioneers are convinced that a Youtube star might buy one as a prop, or a hoarder might buy it so he can corner the market. The new baseline price for broken, fungus-filled 1970s screw mount camera lenses is £42.95, which is £42 too much.
Used computers are a difficult topic. Right now on eBay in the UK there are a couple of old G4s that were used in a studio with Pro Tools, presumably interfaced to specialist hardware that cost a fortune, but now they're no more valuable than any other G4; in the thread above there's a G4-based non-linear video editing suite from 2002 that would have cost a high five-figure sum when it was new. And there are things like old minicomputers and mainframes that are almost unsellable, in the same way that used fighter jets and naval vessels are unsellable.
I wrote that post back in January. One of the examples was this pile of cack:
It's still there, now £599. The mixture of the display case, the lack of an original box, and the "better than new" restoration actually make it worth
less than a good-condition used ZX Spectrum. The seller will just keep reducing the price forevermore until in desperation he buys it off himself and relists it so he can try to artificially boost the price.
Another factor is that it's not like the 1980s, when the baby boomers had tonnes of spare cash to spend on
Action Comics #1. It's 2020. The economic outlook is grim. My hunch is that people tend to overvalue their stuff, and because there's a flood of sellers suddenly short of cash the prices appear to have gone up; but looking at "sold listings" the sales don't seem to have risen to match, because few people nowadays are prepared to rustle up £120 for a retro toy.
Of course, people are still spending. I'm subject to the same constraints as the player character, and I recently bought a Brompton folding bike. It's the third-most-expensive thing I have ever bought. There also seems to be a huge pent-up demand for the PlayStation 5, and it'll be interesting to see how well it sells. It will no doubt be expensive but people want to be entertained. My theory therefore is that the consumer market is now dividing its money between cheap luxuries such as ice cream and Tesco's Finest-brand microwave meals, and expensive, hopefully durable things such as bicycles and new fridges, which leaves the market for retro computers in an awkward position.
Why I am rambling so much? I recently bought a Brompton folding bike. I have spent the last week cycling to and from work, which is the most exercise I've had for ages. My entire body is supercharged. Literally vibrating with power. My body is literally vibrating with power. And so is my brain, which is part of my body. One day I'm going to have a heart attack, but hopefully not today.
The other two examples I included in the post above were a ThinkPad what was on sale for
more than the RRP listed in the title, presumably because of a mistake with the seller's automated listing software. That's also still exactly as it was five months ago. Two sold, two remaining, just the same as in January.
The last example was a copy of the final issue of
The One magazine, a kind of less pompous proto-
Edge. The listing dates from 2017. It's £2999. It was recently relisted. In the last six months the seller has sold £109 worth of assorted junk, so I guess he's hoping for one big score. One big score.
