New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

Trade Me. It's either a feast or a famine!

tezza wrote:Trade Me. It's either a feast or a famine!

You are not wrong! I loaded it up just now and got a bit of a fright.

I wish the guy selling the Apple Iie would list the power supply and serial card separately, wouldn't mind those but I don't need a fourth IIe!

I like the last minute snag n grab. That after all is what auctions are all about. Gets interesting when you're after 3 or more items and already put in a decent auto bid. If you want an item bid for it. Tezzas and Spidies last round of bidding on the last A4000 was magnificent!

Placing a bid for few bucks for something you is going to go a lot higher is like pleading to others that you don't what them to compete in the auction. You know that's not going to happen. In saying that you might get lucky.

I hate to burst the bubble, but as it's probably the main item pushing up the price, I feel I should mention that the 3.5 controller card isn't the superdrive card.

It's the more common little brother, commonly known as the "Liron". It'll work fine for the 400/800k drive he's supplying, but it will not do 1.44MB with an external "superdrive.". (I have the "Applied Engineering" 1.44MB external, so the "superdrive" card is on my holy grail list. )

And for those wanting authenticity, I'll also mention that both the installed and the spare motherboards are from a platinum. The spare 230v psu would be nice though.

machinecoder wrote:hmmmmm, Apples IIe's with monitor usually go for $150, ooookkk, this one is at $550 already

Yep, and I got that nice platinum on there a couple of weeks ago for almost exactly what I predicted. ($151)

See my previous post.. It'll be the "superdrive controller" (heh) plus the spare NZ PSU, mobo's etc pushing up the price. Also, this is a pretty complete system with lots of software. It does have a 3.5" drive with a controller. There's a few extra's that would cost you a pretty penny to accumulate one at a time. NZ (230v) stuff with spares is unusual.

$500 is too much though. The superdrive controller is not. The "serial card" is a noname parallel card. The PAL colour card is totally irrelevant, there's no boxes and the manual set is a mishmash of several models.

It's still only a common "enhanced IIe", i.e. THE most numerous Apple II out there. When the 3.5 card is only the Liron, for $500+, I'd expect original motherboards, plus the relevant boxes and manuals.

Egos and misinformation have gotten involved a bit, I think. New(ish) collectors who are prepared to throw money at getting everything quickly. The winning bidder has a couple of nasty surprises, and after the "little boy pants" comment, I will laugh if it's Ron.

I don't mind last minute bids... There's a good chance that sometimes the last 2 minutes are not being watched. People go have dinner and forget. I've done it myself.

What does get on my goat is people who then continue with the last 30 second bids and drag the auction out in 2 minute increments after it's clear that someone is sitting there bidding. That's just annoying.

I normally take the opposite approach. Once it's clear I'm bidding against someone, I'll make it really clear that I'm watching, by manually bidding immediately when the other person bids. (so that they'll bid and as soon as they refresh, they're outbid. That usually puts an end to the "last 30 seconds" sillyness quite quickly. )

Well fook me, where did all that money come from?
Is it people moving here from overseas to rebuild chch?
Even I can't compete, and that's saying something.
Might have to find a new hobby.

Gibsaw wrote:The spare 230v psu would be nice though.

Um, is it just me, or does it have 220 V written on the end? European maybe? If that's the case it'll probably be ok on 230 V but may be stressed slightly - I know when I first ordered Italian FM transmitters for a community station I used to be on the board of the importer recommended we set them to 240 V before installing - they came factory set to 220 V, 240 V was the next option and they knew of some PSU failures where the NZ voltage swung to it's upper tolerance limit (253 V I think).

Gibsaw wrote:I don't mind last minute bids... There's a good chance that sometimes the last 2 minutes are not being watched. People go have dinner and forget. I've done it myself.

Yea, I have done this too. Which is why I don't usually leave it until the last minute.

arjoll wrote:

Gibsaw wrote:The spare 230v psu would be nice though.

Um, is it just me, or does it have 220 V written on the end? European maybe? If that's the case it'll probably be ok on 230 V but may be stressed slightly - I know when I first ordered Italian FM transmitters for a community station I used to be on the board of the importer recommended we set them to 240 V before installing - they came factory set to 220 V, 240 V was the next option and they knew of some PSU failures where the NZ voltage swung to it's upper tolerance limit (253 V I think).

Yes, this is something to watch. One time in the past I happen to acquire two speccy PSUs for some reason. A 220v and a 240v one. I remember the 220v one used to work but it did get hot.

Far out that Apple IIe is heading towards the sky. With two bidders, both who are known to be aggressive and seem to have deep pockets, there is no telling where it will go!

tezza wrote:Far out that Apple IIe is heading towards the sky. With two bidders, both who are known to be aggressive and seem to have deep pockets, there is no telling where it will go!

I think they are about to go head to head on the ZX81 too...

Good lord, it's getting insane, the last 2 minutes will be fun to watch.
Good time to sell.

Edit: just spotted a CPC-464, curses.... "Buyer pIckup only". First computer I owned.

BPO can be a pain. I have noticed on some auctions though that some sellers do accommodate bidders if the bidding does skyrocket. I've want something bad enough and it's BPO I'll generally ask. Who knows it might work out.