Fatdog said:
Remember the recent JVC RC-M70 that sold for $1,500 on eBay? The seller for that auction, conion65, made nearly a 500% return on his original purchase. Notice that the factory boxes are the exact same one in both auctions. That was the clue. Not too bad for only spending a little more than $300.
Essay time. (Sorry, but the subject has been on my mind lately.)
I find it hard to believe sometimes, but there are folks who use eBay, not to find items they need or collect, but who use it mainly to “flip†items (buy low, sell high) and make a profit. At first, flipping seemed to me to be pretty harmless (“More power to them,†I used to say, “If they can find gullible, lazy, uninformed buyers who don’t care what they pay for things.â€), and perhaps even a legitimate use of eBay (After all, there’s no eBay rule that says you have to keep what you buy!). But after encountering a few regular flippers as I went about bidding on items I collect, I finally realized that they’re actually one of the curses of eBay.
It takes lots of time, persistence, cleverness, and odd-hour searching and bidding to find unique eBay items at good prices: hard-to-find items that are so good and sell so low that it’s possible to re-sell them at a profit. And to their credit, eBay flippers are masters at those techniques. The problem is, so am I. That’s how I’ve been able occasionally to find (and win!) fantastic, must-have, rare, unique, obscure items for my collections at a decent (or, when I’m lucky, even bargain) prices.
But with flippers on the prowl (and there seem to be more of them every day), I’ve discovered that I’ve got some very serious competition. Lately, at least with some of the things I collect, I seem to get outbid on nearly every hidden gem I find. Which I could probably accept, if I knew that the item were going to another, rabid collector like me, who simply had more money to spend than I had. It becomes much harder to accept when I see the item being listed by the winning bidder a few weeks later at multiple times his winning bid.
I really only have two choices: either bid ridiculously high for a hidden gem I’ve managed to find, to try to outbid any flipper who might come along, or put in a reasonable bid, watch as a flipper wins it, and then bid on it again at a much higher price when the flipper puts it up for auction.
This is why I’ve decided that flippers are the true scourge of eBay. They don’t buy to save/collect/treasure/enjoy an item. They buy simply to make a profit. And, as a collector, they make my “finds†cost much more than they would/should if flippers weren’t around.
Obviously, it’s pointless to wish flippers would go away. I can no more make that happen than I can keep eBay sellers out of thrift stores. (Sadly, low income folks, who use thrifts to find cheap necessities, and collectors like me, who come to find hidden gems, now have to contend with hoards of resellers who do nothing all day but travel from store to store scooping up bargains they can hawk on eBay at a profit.)
My only solution has been to try to wean myself off of eBay as a source for collectibles and take a giant step backwards: try my luck at the flea markets, rummage sales, and the collector shows that still exist. Yes, there are fewer of them than ever before (again, thanks to eBay). They occur less often, there aren’t as many sellers at each show as there once were, the selection is worse than it used to be, and the shows are much more scattered around the country. There certainly are fewer shows than ever where I live, so I try to keep up with the national collector show calendar and do a little more traveling than I used to do to hit the good ones.
But every time I negotiate a price with an in-person seller that’s lower than his asking price, as opposed to bidding up an eBay seller’s item way beyond his asking price, I feel satisfied. Because, despite the time and effort and money I expend traveling to shows, and despite the more limited selection, and despite having to walk endlessly up and down aisles in old, dimly-lit buildings, and despite the time I waste chatting with sellers and eyeballing their items close-up, I know I am, in fact, beating the system.
with that. But not 100%. Any Renault Alpine against any M3 just for starters...... With the part that M70 is a really good box 
. It starting to look like some rich boys toy that way. And is not the best way for us collectors. That way soon we'll just droll over listings and posh guys are goin to be "cool" carrying some M70 
. I ve been all my live from the underground site of the live. So i hate when somebody is trying to put rules to follow to be "cool". Legends , star status and so are easily made whit some marketing. I prefer to have some splendid Rotel, Maranz or Sansui for that amount of money for example 
. And will wait for right priced M70. If no one pop up - spending the money for some other catches.
I paid $135 or so for mine and added fresh deck belts and :superduper: rebuilt slider pots 
Hell, even the 838 has a fine tuning knob 
...........but I do remember the Conions and Lasonics.