Mac128
Well-known member
I applaud your restraint JDW. I would also like to point out that it's not profiteering on eBay alone that's the issue, but rather obtaing the free advice from the "experts" and then turning around and using it against us, in the form of artificially inflating the market for those of us who might be interested in buying that particular vingtage Mac, and certainly, as Unknown_K points out, not offering for sale here first. It's OK to desire a certain price, but pumping the list to get the details to help sell it, and then using that info to maximize a profit, but giving nothing back to the group that helped obtain the profit, is just wrong. And presumably, once the seller who became a part of the community merely to sell his only vintage Mac, will never log on again, much less contribute anything, and resulting in a dead user account which will eventually have to be purged from the system. Under those circumstances, I would say there is no one who would be openly welcome. After all, as has been pointed out, it's relatively easy to search completed listings on eBay, as it is to search the voluminous forums here to find information about repairing Almost every Mac, but especially the SE/30 thanks to JDW's detailed posts. To bypass all of that freely obtainable information to get quicker answers only to facilitate one's for-profit ends, is ethically questionable - at least around here. I can think of no one I know or have read about in business who would personally or professionally feel otherwise, I think as evidenced by the numerous patent lawsuits which daily populate the high tech world.
Imagine this were the frontier, and a person rolls into a small town one day with a broken down wagon. They attend a town meeting, join the community, and ask the neighbors to help fix the wagon, which they willingly offer to do to help the new member of their community. Then as soon as the wagon is fixed, that person disappears having given nothing back to the community which helped them. Then a week later one of the people from the community goes to the big city to buy a wagon at auction and finds the very wagon he helped repair for sale. Since it is one of the few in good condition, a bidding war ensues, bringing the price of the wagon out of reach of the small town buyer, who helped repair the wagon in the first place so it would bring such a price. It would actually make this story worse if the seller had turned out to be a notable figure, that the town helped out due to their respect or admiration for that person and the things the person indirectly contributed to the community, like a politician, inventor, or celebrity. The community thought they were helping someone out who appreciated the help, not someone who was just passing through and would forget about them as soon as they started counting their money.
