xray wrote...
On Sun, 22 Jan 2006, John Miles wrote:
Winfield says...
That would be the day. What's the right price for your 8566B with
manuals, etc.? I see Nick at Ridge Equipment has one up for $9k,
but I doubt he'll sell it. Looking at the last 30 days, I see one
fellow who had two "untested" units, accepting $3100 "best offers"
for each, and another guy who got a $2700 "buy-it-now" sale for his
"untested" unit with a "dim screen". All three "untested" units had
photos indicating reasonable physical condition and some kind of
apparently-proper display operation. There's another one, "as is"
with a dark-screen photo, starting at $6499, with no bidders.

It's tough to say. At the end of the day it's worth whatever the
second-highest bidder thinks it's worth. Ordinarily, I'd wait for
all those others to sell or otherwise disappear from the field before
putting one up for sale, but I think this one will out-compete the
others without any trouble... at least among buyers who know what
they're looking for. A dim CRT is not a good thing on these units,
because the focus is the first thing to go. By the time the emission
is down, you don't get a very clean image.

At any rate, a $9K starting bid on an 8566B with a DOA-only guarantee
is just a waste of a listing fee, and everybody's time to boot. Much
better to start low and encourage people to look at the item on its
merits. I'd be surprised if mine doesn't land in the $6K-$7K
neighborhood. $8K-$9K is a high but still-fair price, if someone has
the cash on hand and has been waiting for the right one.

So, am I right? John was not surprized (price) and Win is now the owner?

Correct. $6,380 after 16 bids from 12 bidders. I started the bidding
at $1.00, "aikidoka.steve" stole it from me with $2.00, and the battle
was joined. Last night electron55 took it from calibrate72pb with his
$6,280 bid at 18:29:44 and I outbid him one second later, 15 seconds
before the auction was to end at 9:30pm EST. My sniper service placed
a bid nine seconds later, but it wasn't needed, I was already a winner.
:-) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=7583597242

I also grabbed John's 8568A 1.5GHz RF Section for $610.

These beauties will replace my inferior HP 8569B spectrum analyzer.

Yikes. This means I have something besides political opinions in common
with Win. We both have SA's that John M used to own and spent many hours
fixing up for us.

We've got to stop meeting like this. :-)


--
Thanks,
- Win