[Phono-L] eBay

[Robert Wright]

Bill,

First let me formally thank you for your service to this country.

Second, there's a website some of you may know about that caters to the 
high-end hifi audiophile types (easy, Greg!) called AudiogoN (put a www and 
a com with a couple of dots in there to see what it's about), and it's been 
a godsend for me while putting together my front room system (which I also 
use for mastering).  It's more set sales than auctions, but there's plenty 
of those too, and quite a few dealers work through there as well.

I've saved about 75% of retail on the gear in my system thanks to that site. 
It's free of any glitzy graphics -- very utilitarian approach...  PayPal is 
welcomed but not connected/sanctioned/tied in like it is with eBay, and 
saying in your listing that PayPal users must include an additional 3% if 
perfectly fine.  It's grouped into categories and sub-categories so you can 
easily find what you're looking for.  It's well-known in the audiophile 
community and sustains itself (listing fees were FAR below eBay's last time 
I sold something there), and when you contact someone for a transaction, you 
exchange emails directly instead of being 'monitored' by the site's powers 
that be.

Has anyone tried, or would anyone be willing to try, setting up a site like 
AudiogoN for phono collectors?  I'd be very suprised if there were more 
people trading $10,000 turntables and $130,000 speakers than those of us 
trading phonographs/parts/etc.

Just a thought.  A little advertising and involvement from one Union show 
would put it in view of a large percentage of its potential users.  Any web 
gurus out there interested?

Best,
Robert



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "buck Buchanan" <ret.armysgt at yahoo.com>
To: "Antique Phonograph List" <phono-l at oldcrank.org>
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2008 8:51 PM
Subject: Re: [Phono-L] eBay


>I have been using ebay for a number of years and I have watched the fees 
>climb for the sellers to the point that they have lost many of the dealers 
>that used to be on this website.
> Now that they are forcing them to use Paypal I expect them to lose another 
> 25% of the current sellers. Being an ex-flea market person the profit is 
> very little on this type of a system if your over-head increases and you 
> can't pass it on to the individual that is buying the item then you go out 
> of business.
> I have never used another site for bidding on records and I am also new at 
> collecting records does anybody know another auction website where I can 
> start looking for the older 78's and misc items from the Victorian period?
>
> Thank you
> Bill Buchanan
>