Hi, Frank. Thanks for replying. > In the case of items that I'm bidding on or that I'm personally > interested in, it's a matter of protecting my self interest. I > don't think that's in any way unfriendly, and it's certainly not > lacking in logic.
My use of the terms "logic", "helpful", and "friendly" were meant to apply to "the whole picture", and not just to the individual parts of it. However, let's take each point separately and see what happens. In this case, I would agree that protecting oneself is logical. But, I would suggest that it is neither friendly per se nor helpful per se (and much of this discussion has been about what is good for helping our fellow PDML members). > If I let the list know about an item that I think that others here > might be interested in, I try to find out if the high bidder might > be a pdml lister. If I thought from the eBay ID that it was > someone I'm familiar with, I'd shut up. I wouldn't want to screw > him/her out of a good price. Well, although I would have to commend you on your efforts at recognizing the hundreds of PDML members amongst the thousands and thousands of eBay members, it would seem that you are sometimes (or perhaps often) going to ~not~ recognize PDML members who are bidders. And, you have no way of "recognizing" (divining, actually) the PDML members who may have been closely following auctions that they may eventually plan to bid on (if the price doesn't go sky-high first simply because someone "spilled the beans"). > That may not be friendly to the larger eBay purchasing community, > but it is to PDML. And if it's a nice piece (or even not so nice) > of Pentax equipment, I'd rather see it go to one of :"us" than the > world at large. I don't think that's such a bad thing. Or, maybe > I'm wrong. I agree with your suggestion that it is a good thing to assist fellow PDML-ers. That is certainly logical, friendly, and (literally) helpful. However, since you don't know which PDML members may be following an auction closely, you may be hurting some PDML-ers while you are, at the same time, trying to help others. Still, I have to admit that this strategy will tend to help PDML members at large (even though it does tend to help the "casual" bargain hunter at the expense of the PDML-er who is expending a lot of effort to glean Pentax gold out of the eBay rubble). > Really, it is kind of moot anyway. In the 18 months or so that I've > been posting here, I think I've posted twice on the list regarding > current eBay auctions, and one was pretty whacky anyway - anyone > remember the tethered blimp with the 645 with a reserve and a BIN of > around $6000? ;-) Well it's probably moot for other reasons, too. Regardless of what we discuss here, we never really seem to develop a consensus. Even if a majority agree with something, the minority will tend to undermine what the majority wanted to happen anyway - <g>. And, members come and members go, and we all have short memories anyway. > What I have done on a number of occasions, is contact members off > list if I see anything that I happen to know that they're > interested in at that time. That has nothing (in my motivation, > at least) to do with pricing, rather it has to do with helping > friends acquire something that thay want. I think that this is an excellent and highly commendable thing to do. But this also supports my point: In your example you are trying to help out a PDML-er who has been working hard for a time at locating a particular piece of gear at a reasonable price. But, let's say, for the sake of argument, that you are unaware of that PDML-er's effort, and you happen to make an announcement to the PDML about the item that he/she has been silently praying for (let's call it "eBay-ing in stealth mode"), then that same hard-working PDML-er will then see the price go out of sight if a few other PDML-ers (who had not necessarily been "earning" their chance to get a bargain) jump in and start the price spiralling upward. And, if we can get away from the individuals involved for a moment and consider just the PDML as a whole, what the announcement will have done is to cause some PDML member to pay a higher price than some (same or different) PDML member would have without the announcement. Oh well... I'll get off my soapbox now, I guess. I've done enough damage for one evening (and I'm probably being neither helpful, friendly, or logical at this point, anyway - <g>)... And maybe I'll go scout out eBay for a bit, and see what bargains I can find... ;-) Fred - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
