As part of the DT feeding frenzy, I'm sort of baffled myself.
I can sort of see the logic on it-- she said "We used to try eBay, and it ended up costing like 35% of the take." It might also be much more labour-intensive-- creating listings, managing photos, fielding questions, settling with returns and managing the account itself. I do agree that it's leaving money on the table, but maybe they'd rather take the small win-- "these nutcases will buy it all, sight unseen, at 25 bucks a unit"-- over a bigger, but much more labour involved win. Getting an extra $80 on a board by nursing an eBay listing might be small potatoes if much of their other deals are big-dollar or big volume deals.
The other possibility-- which we won't know til our goodies start showing up-- is that the stock, while real, is B-condition parts. A pristine, cleaned SSK might be worth a couple hundred, but one missing a few keycaps, filthy, no cable, not so much. I expect as much, honestly.
Finally, outside of a few narrow, well-trod part numbers, there are still a lot of underpriced buckling spring boards out there. 122-key units, anything with RJ plugs, those "Bigfoot" units with XT-style layouts and even weirder plugs... their usability has increased thanks to new converter breakthroughs, but the market is slow to respond.
