I tend to agree with you. The problem with this business model is that consumer electronics is some of the easiest stuff to sell on eBay. The units are standar

I tend to agree with you. The problem with this business model is that consumer electronics is some of the easiest stuff to sell on eBay. The units are standardized, so they are easy to describe to potential customers -- when you eBay an iPod [1], the site even offers you canned descriptions and photos of iPods to include in your listing. And, if you keep the original boxes in your basement, consumer electronics is easy to pack up and ship. iPods are an extremely liquid asset: I eBayed two of them a couple months back, and both of them sold within $10 or so of the price that I had predicted based on earlier sales figures. The trading volume is large, and the market value well known, so there's really very little risk that, for example, you'll put the thing online and it won't sell at all. So paying TechForward amounts to a gamble that their promised buybacks are miscalculated in my favor. But that's unlikely, partly because they put a lot more effort into the prediction than I, partly because they presumably build in a factor of safety, and partly because, if they do guess wrong, they may well go out of business before I can collect my winnings. Once these guys declare bankruptcy my $9 is gone forever.