20 ms·
In the late '90s I'd do a much smaller scale eBay gambit. Buy Plam Pilots or Palm Pliots (eBay used to not suggest corrected spellings) cheap and flip them fo
by jaynos 13y ago
In the late '90s I'd do a much smaller scale eBay gambit. Buy Plam Pilots or Palm Pliots (eBay used to not suggest corrected spellings) cheap and flip them for more money as Palm Pilots. Looking back, it was probably a waste of time. I think I only did this about 10 times. It was easy to justify since there was usually another bid on the item, but not 10 people bidding like when the product was spelled correctly. Also, I figured if I could buy an item for $X, the person was fine with selling it for $X (otherwise they should have put a reserve on the item).
- sedev 13y agoAs recently as last year there were still niches where spelling errors led to arbitrage opportunities: I knew someone who was into CCGs (e.g. Pokémon, Magic: the Gathering) and would search for variations on card names, score cards cheaply, and keep them around to trade at full value later. Same rationale (which I agree with!): eBay gives you a way to say "I will not accept a price less than $N" and a way to say "I will accept the highest bid regardless of magnitude." Trying to second-guess a seller's choice between those is just totally not viable.