[time-nuts] The "auction site"?

Rex rexa at sonic.net
Tue Jul 2 04:59:12 EDT 2013


On 7/1/2013 11:59 PM, Doug Calvert wrote:
> Hello,
>   Why do people go out of their way to avoid writing ebay on this list?
> The statements are purposely written so that it is obvious that the
> "insert mystical phrase"  is ebay and not a generic auction site. What
> history am I not aware of?
>

I dunno either. There seems to be a trend in all engineering-friendly 
sites / lists to not mention the name eBay outright. Maybe they worry 
about conjuring up something like  the movie "Beetlejuice"?

There are pros and cons to liking the online trading. A couple decades 
back I liked going to the local swaps, but now it is easier to sit here 
and do my browsing or make my bids online. Many of the old sellers have 
gone to the internet or base their pricing on the current "going rate". 
The negative is that cheap deals are getting rarer as the dealers will 
swoop in if the price is too good, to buy it and sell higher later. The 
good is that there is much more stuff to entice me than the random local 
supplies usually could offer.

There might be some oasis of good deals (like MIT swap?) and I might 
tend to sell locally at a small bargain, but that is no longer common.

Like it or not, eBay is the main game now. and I see no reason to encode 
mentions of EBAY. Who here hasn't made a purchase or sale that way?




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