The $23,099.00 Apple II

Hello,

My name is Rich Carroll, and I have been working on Apple ][, ][+, IIe, IIc and IIgs machines starting in 1978 or 1979. I am the person who sold the recent low serial number machine on eBay.

Apparently eBay's system of keeping unsuccessful bidders identities obscured has been circumvented. This has allowed unknown people to send "Second Chance" emails to a number of bidders, including Steven, who posted the warning. (BTW, thanks Steven)

I changed passwords, secret question answers and email addresses immediately after the auction closed, and again two days later. I have had long conversations with eBay as to whether to declare the account stolen. Apparently, since my email was never compromised, and my signon in the last two weeks have all come from the correct ip address, the account has not been compromised and eBay believes it is someone with a tool to extract this information without a real signin.

My eBay name has also been changed from rcc! to us.rcc (I changed everything this time).

I like Apple II's and would consider replacing mine if the right machine was available at the right price. I am not looking for another low serial number machine, just s

All,

Not just Rich's Apple II, the listing of "motherboard+power supply+bottonplate" which ended at $3161 is also hacked, I placed a bid and yesterday received an email of second chance offer BUT when I login my Ebay account there is no notification at all (Ebay said there should be a button in your lost listing and you can press to buy it at your last bid value). The email just said to contact the seller through a personal email address, I then wrote to the seller "seatle*****" instead to verify whether he/she has issued the second chance offer and a lady replied that the item has been sold and shipped. Be careful.

Hi Rich,

It's nice to hear from you on this board! So for the record, the seller paid and the deal went through fine?

You mention being a fan of the Apple II, so on the one hand I imagine it wasn't an easy decision to sell that system but on the other hand I'm sure the selling price offset any second thoughts :).

Howie

on the other hand I'm sure the selling price offset any second thoughts :).

I can not only confirm Steve's observation, but add an even more astounding number. Steve noted that, "It went from $6k to $23,099.00 in less than 4 minutes." There were at least six bids by at least five different bidders in the last 18 SECONDS. There may well have been additional bids, but if someone bid 14K with six seconds to go, we will never know it, as their bid would have been denied as too low. My son does eBay more than I do, and he urged the family sit around the computer screen during the last seconds, and keep updating. Great entertainment. He is more into antique cars, and watched a COPO Camaro go from $5K to over $155K in the last six seconds!!!

I believe the some people treat eBay as a game particularly in the field of high priced, restored cars, and plan on bidding in the last six seconds by whatever means. Unfortunately, if you are bidding at the last second and don't bid to the highest or second highest bid, your bid may not show up at all.

If the person who won the auction does not close the deal, I can issue a second chance offer, or simply relist the Apple with a new starting price and perhaps a buy it now.

How can your bid not show up of you issued a serious high bid? Here is how.

Auction at $6k with 10 seconds left

A bids 17K at 5 seconds left.
B bids 23K at 4 seconds left.
C bids 25K at 6 seconds left. None of these three have the time to see and react to any other bid.

A's bid will not show up, as he was outbid by C, but it will move the price to one bid increment (here $100) over A's high bid.
B's bid will cause the price to move one bid increment higher than B's bid, and B's bid will be recorded for the buyer to see.
A's bid will be invisible to all (it was never considered a valid bid, nor did it raise the final price). On the other hand, if A's snipe was at 6 or 7 seconds left, A's bid would be visible.

While I am certainly pleased with the outcome, I can't say I think the ebay system is ideal. It tends to favor those who can and do snipe.

Just my $0.02 (which I can afford this week ;<) )

Rich

Yahoo Auction JP automatically extends end time by a few minutes when a bid is entered at the last minute. That effectively put an end to bid sniping there.

The $23,099.00 Apple II sold... the transaction has been completed.
The price would have been lower but two people had a bidding war.
However, even a higher price was offered if a second chance became available!
Rumor has it that there were several people waiting to bid for it.
The same person bought the $3600 Apple Rev 0 for the 1977 Integer ROMs and other components.

Who knows how many ventless Apple ll Rev 0 s were made and still survive?
Someone must have the documentation.

DC

Who knows how many ventless Apple ll Rev 0 s were made and still survive?
Someone must have the documentation.

DC

The highest serial number system WITHOUT vents that I've seen is A2S1-0201.
The lowest serial number system WITH vents I've seen is A2S1-0369:

http://dogic.blogspot.com/2006_09_24_archive.html

Note the blog author estimates a late June 1977 assembly date for that system, but that is a bit early since there are confirmed units with lower serial numbers that already have July date stamps. Reliable information shared in another thread indicate the vents appeared around October 1977, so around 3 months into production.

Howie

Someone mentioned the tax people. I have an accountant who does my taxes, and the preliminary thought is that a single unit bought more than 30 years ago, even though it was used in a business, doesn't likely qualify me as a business of buying and selling old computer hardware. I don't routinely buy Apple hardware, and certainly one sale in 30 ish years of Apple Hardware hardly qualifies as a vendor. I did ask about a capital gains liability, but the accountant said not to worry. What the accountant did mention is that eBay will send 1099 forms to any frequent sellers, forcing many to declare their ebay sales as business revenue, and trying to find offsetting expenses. My eBay account has 600 transactions in more than 14 years, and 11 sales in the last 6 months, so I am not worried, Those with a hundred or more sales in a year should be forewarned to keep accurate records to offset some of the eBay sales revenues.