TAS has made the market less transparent

[HP67]

(06-09-2014 06:22 PM)John Ioannidis Wrote:  One benefit of TAS is that it provides data on what an acceptable market price is.

Sure, you can get some idea from there, but I think for hobbyist stuff in many areas it's probably not accurate. There are mailing lists and forums where people are giving away stuff or trading with people who really want to use it, or selling it at sane prices. Most of that never gets to ebay at all. By the time somebody posts something on ebay it's either they have no idea what it is and have no personal interest in it, or they tried to sell it to people on a list or forum and nobody wanted it.

What winds up on ebay is usually not from people heavily into this or that hobby, but people who just want to make a buck. I have nothing against making a buck. But I think a lot of people are making a business at the expense of a dwindling supply of tech stuff and that is not good. And the scrappers are getting a lot of perfectly good hardware and turning it into a few grams of gold. We will never see that stuff again. That's kind of sad.