Ok, I hate to add more noise to the signal, but I agree with Richard's first post. I think 80% of the Ebay posts are just noise. I think 20% do bring good discussions to the list. A good example was the Topline/Stronglight thread the last couple of days. It doesn't matter who made it it was well out of the list timeline, why discuss it? We're not the IBOB list. Many of the items we see as rare really aren't. I'm sorry but Masis and Herses aren't all that rare on Ebay. If they showed up once a year sure the list should know. But plenty of those bikes show up regularly. I don't even want to get into the outing of PX-10s and Internationals. Maybe since I'm 15 years younger than the average listmember I feel I have plenty of time to pick these things up in the future.
We also hear a lot about how expensive Ebay is regularly on the list. It's a sellers market because there are too many bidders. If you want the deals you need to look. You can't have it both ways. You can either have a huge bidders pool or low prices, not both.
This leads me to another pet peeve about Ebay outings that I'm sure will piss people off. I don't like listmembers outing their own auctions with out first trying to sell the items to the list. Maybe it's just me but a lot of people on the list out their auctions but never offer items to the list exclusively. Aren't we all friends here, or do you just see me as another customer? I see the list as a special community of like minded souls and feel that outing our Ebay auctions without giving the list itself a shot at the stuff first as a kick in the teeth. It's putting profit before community. I don't think every time you should post to the list first necessarily. I think e-richie and Hilary are good examples of the balance where they out their auctions but they also give the list a shot first quite a bit. ciao, Brandon"monkeyman"Ives Community before cash in Santa Barbara, Calif.
PS: US Members don't forget to vote today.