Unrevealed Source wrote:
eBay does not ALWAYS establish a true market price, but you're right; by and
large it is the way prices are determined on used radios.

With the exception of a situation where the buyer uses shills and never
closes a sale, Ebay very definitely establishes a market price. And
the sale prices are far more representative of real value than the
stickers some guy has pasted to his pickup-truck full of old iron at a
hamfest. Given the number of buyers and sellers that see and bid on
the goods Ebay is a lot closer to a perfect market than a couple of
guys posting FS postings on rec.radio.shortwave.

But you'll always
have the auctions that fall into one end or another of the bell curve. I
think that was Mike's point. Hey, look at these abnormally high prices.
Would you have less objection if people pointed out the other end of the
scale? Hey, look at this radio that somebody got for a STEAL! I don't
think Mike was "complaining", just pointing them out to the group.

Let's try it another way. What is an abnormally high price. Is it one
that occurs off ebay? Or is it one that is too high for another
prospective buyer.

And while I don't have as many radios, the number of years in the hobby, or
the breadth and depth of knowledge that Mike has, believe me when I tell you
there are no "sour grapes" about someone else getting these radios. I have
enough radios and have enough experience with eBay to know that if the
bidding goes higher than I think a radio is worth, it's OK if I back off and
let someone else have it. I just wait for something else to come along.
That's part of the fun. I already have all of my "must own" radios.

Perhaps this thread would be better continued if we posed the questions:
"What makes a radio worth paying a lot of money for?". How do you define "a
lot of money"? Is it defined as paying more than the radio cost new? How
much more? How do you weigh scarcity vs. performance, i.e. if a radio is
rare but performs poorly, is that better than the other way around?
Example: Would you pay more for a Hallicrafter TW-2000 than a Kenwood
R-5000?

The reasons SWLs demand radios like the R-5000 as pure listening
devices are completely different from the reason collectors demand say
a Zenith TO and it really isn't possible to compare the two. We all
know a radio like an R5000 will run circles around most any tube radio
that is still working, but the R5000 looks positively sterile to a
collector of old wooden tabletops. Some people are willing to pay
upwards of $40k for a wooden case floor model radio with tubes, and I
say more power to them if that is where their collecting interest is.
And others are willing to part with big bucks for old boat anchors like
the R390a and HRO series.

The less we try to inflate our self-sense of collector expertise by
bashing the purchasing decisions of others the better off we all will
be. It might actually be possible to enjoy one-anothers collecting
interests, different though they might be.