vintagecomputermuseum
ugh.
Now there's a seller we can agree on. I absolutely hate the way he's constantly putting "Works!" in the description of everything. Why should anyone get excited when, for example, an IBM Model M keyboards works? It would be more unusual for such an item to not work, than to work. Saying it's "been tested and works" is fine. But the use of the exclamation point, and then not guaranteeing anything will work upon arrival just seems to me to be a very amateurish/unintelligent attempt at promoting his products.
And of course his prices have traditionally been sky high. Though recently he seems to be listing some items for a much more reasonable (but still high) price. He's got an active listing for an IBM Model F PC AT board for $99 for example, which is more than I think it's worth, but still less than what a few have sold for. It's certainly much better though than his typical listings which are at 5 - 10 times the going rate. He's got a lot of stuff that isn't very common to see, so I certainly don't hold it against him for asking high prices for those items, if that's what he wants to do. But it seems pretty ridiculous to put listings for common stuff at exorbitant prices. It also seems strange that I've never seen him put anything up with the ability to make an offer. Maybe he used to and got tired of everyone sending in low-ball offers...I don't know because I haven't been viewing his listings for that long. There's certainly been some items that he has that, if all else was equal with him, I would have sent an offer if he had that option.
I guess the thing I dislike most about him is his practice of constantly recycling his listings by making new listings after only a short time. Of course he's doing that to get his items back up on top of people's search lists, which means more people see them. But in doing so it's a real pain for people who regularly search for certain classes of items and get stuck with his rehashed listings constantly showing up. For that reason alone I would have to think hard about buying anything from him even if he had something priced in the range I wanted to buy.
Beyond that, I haven't noticed anything else negative about him and if he were to do something about those issues I might be interested in buying some of the rarer stuff he's got.
