On Fri, 7 Dec 2001 10:00:27 +1300, you wrote:

>Last night I went along to an auction of 500 lots of computers.
>Hoped to pick up maybe one or two cheap low-end Pentiums
>for messing about with. The lots on offer ranged from 120MHz
>to 600MHz PII machines. all either 1998 or 1999 models, with
>2-3GB empty drives, CD and sound cards (no speakers). Some
>of them were marked as faulty and non-starting. I thought the
>bids would be around NZ$150 (US$65) to possibly NZ$750
>(US$315). In total amazement I saw bids of NZ$2000 (US$840)
>and really started to think "hey, am I missing something ?" But
>no, these PCs were exactly as described in the catalogue. Even
>obviously broken PCs with missing parts were getting premium
>prices (which attract 10% premium + 12.5% tax), pieces of crap
>even I would consider tossing in the bin. Compared to what was
>on offer in the local second-hand paper (www.t&e.co.nz) and
>even what could could be built up from new retail parts, I just
>couldn't believe how high the bidding went. Anybody else seen
>this ? I'm having trouble understanding why on earth antiquated
>machinery that's had day-in-day-out use for 4 years would fetch
>such prices
 Auctions can be funny like that, although I've rarely seen it at PC
sales - most people seem to know what's junk and what's not - I'd have
expected to see the sort of prices you were expecting - the prices
they fetched were just insane!=20
I don't think I've ever seen anything pre-Pentium 3 go for over UKP50!

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