Re: [SWCollect] Retro PC game collecting officially became big business

[Howard Feldman]

Well, I do several hours of clever manual searches, once a week.  I can't tell 
you what I search for of course :)  It has managed to find me some good bargains 
that other people miss (especially when people misspell things..).  Lately 
though everyone seems to be finding all the good stuff I find too.  Since 
everyone pretty much snipes these days, I dont bother 'spying' on what other 
collectors are bidding on (one of the many advantages of sniping).  I also don't 
generally check particular users regularly, however sometimes if I find one good 
item, I will View Sellers Other Items and sometimes find something good that I 
wouldnt have found otherwise (see note about misspelling...).  My best finds are 
usually large lots of games, sometimes mixed in with hardware - people tend to 
avoid these kinds of auction with lots of 'stuff' and occasionally there is a 
good rare game in there that the seller doesnt usually know about.  I ask lots 
of questions in these cases.

That's about all my secrets..
C.E. Forman wrote:
What I'd like to know is how people (the same people all the time) are 
finding the rare items.  Granted, I'm aware of a few sellers putting a 
ton of stuff up, so people watch their auctions.  Everyone searches on 
Infocom, Drash, etc.  But I've also seen some really obscure stuff by an 
atypical seller go for a lot, stuff I didn't think anybody else would 
have found, especially since eBay has screwed around with the categories 
to the point where everything is essentially buried.
 
It's pretty much public knowledge that I wrote my own automated eBay 
search tool, but if a few of you don't mind sharing how you find your 
stuff, I'd be interested to hear it.  Do you rely on eBay's saved 
searches and automatic notifies?  Do you save the URLs for the results 
of a bunch of your own searches?  Do you spy on other known collectors 
and see what they've come across?  About how many searches do you do, 
and how often?
 
C'mon, don't be shy.
 
--
------------------------------------------------------------
Howard Feldman
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute
Author of the Search for Freedom Computer Role-Playing Game
Visit its homepage at:  http://home.golden.net/~feldman/SearchForFreedom/
Visit the Computer RPG/Book Museum at http://vgmuseum.chaoticmonkey.com/
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