[Raion]

eBay listings are banned on IRIXNet as of 2025. Do not link to eBay, do not direct people to eBay. 

This is not going to be a popular move, but it has direct, important reasons as to why it's being done:

1. eBay is solely responsible for price driving in the hobby, period. It has made systems unaffordable for many and posting about it has become an unhealthy obsession for many. It no longer fits in the culture of the community. 

2. Buying things on IRIXNet to flip on eBay has always been banned, but this makes it much more explicitly clear. 

3. The category has been underused as of late and does not serve a necessary community purpose. 

For those of you disappointed, I'm sorry, but I do not see a way forward that would be anything more than an unhappy compromise.

[robespierre]

The people who rant about prices are just delusional, or in denial of basic economics. TANSTAAFL.
There is no such thing as "price driving", any more than "overproduction". These ideas are just cope.

[Raion]

I do not believe it's justifiable to have $3000 for a low spec Octane under the claim it's a "GE scanner machine". I do not want to encourage that in our forum. Nekochan didn't allow ebay listings either really, as you may recall, so this is hardly an unfair rule.

[jan-jaap]

The $3000 "GE" Octane is nothing new. Same for O2's with some magic mainboard revision qualified for MRI machines. $30K "Discreet" Tezro suites have showed up on eBay every once in a while too. They're not aimed at hobbyist and they don't bother me.

What has changed in the last couple of years is the disappearance of the $25 Indy and the $75 Indigo2 Impact. Affordable systems that allow easy entry to hobbyists. But an eBay ban here isn't going to bring them back because they don't exist anymore.

15 or 20 years ago, I would sell a good Indy for 25 or 50 bucks and if it had a cracked case it would go to recycling because nobody wanted it anyway. But once the supply of "good" systems runs out people will buy the cracked Indy because it's still better than nothing at all. And soon you've got people listing "untested" Indigo2's for $300. It raises the bar to enter the hobby, but at least they didn't go to recycling like I probably would have done.

Similarly, lets say I wanted to buy a BMW E39 M5. The one from around Y2K with the V8. 5 or 10 years ago I could have bought one for less than 10K and a nice one for maybe 25K. Today, a half decent one is at least 50K, with nice, low mileage ones closer to 100K. Anything significantly less than that is probably rotted out and wrapped around a tree at least once. It didn't take eBay for this to happen. It's people who were young when these came out and lusted after them back then that now have money to spend and fight over whatever remains

In the end it's all a matter of supply and demand.

[Raion]

> The $3000 "GE" Octane is nothing new. Same for O2's with some magic mainboard revision qualified for MRI machines. $30K "Discreet" Tezro suites have showed up on eBay every once in a while too. They're not aimed at hobbyist and they don't bother me.

It wasn't a problem until idiots started basing their pricing on that.

Regardless I don't want us to be contaminated further. I care not what the discord community does since that's outta my hands, but I can take unilateral action.

[Irinikus]

The people who rant about prices are just delusional, or in denial of basic economics. TANSTAAFL.
There is no such thing as "price driving", any more than "overproduction". These ideas are just cope.

100% Correct!

This is a free market with no reserve bank propping it up. (If something's listed at at an unrealistically high price, nobody will purchase it until the seller drops his asking price to a more acceptable level - fair market price discovery!)

[joshyfishy22]

These machines don't grow on trees. They aren't manufactured anymore so of course the price is going to go up when these machines start dropping like flies. Basic supply and demand.   I wish there was a way to make the prices of this stuff go down but it won't happen.

[karpour]

There are lots of people who view old machines as an investment, where the value will go up over time.

Cheap machines still exist, but they aren't being sold on eBay, but rather within communities. I picked up a very cheap O2 a couple years ago, even though I had no use for it. A while later, I sold it for the same price to someone who wanted to get into SGI, but did not have the money to pay ridiculous eBay prices.

eBay *has* changed. 15 years ago, people listed old hardware to sell it, nowadays people keep listing the same junk for years with the same insane prices, hoping that someone will actually pay it.

[Irinikus]

Most of the SGI listings on eBay do move, especially the nice ones. (I’ve been watching eBay for years, and have a large number of automated searches in play.)

The systems listed at ridiculous prices, which don’t seem to move, are usually listed by sellers with thousands of listings, who usually don’t care whether those listings move or not. (Without price negotiation anyway.)

The listings in question usually aren’t good collectors examples anyway.

A distinction needs a be drawn between hobbyists and collectors, as collectors are usually willing to pay a premium for a high quality example of whatever it is that they collect. (Due to their quirky nature, SGI’s fall into the category of collectible items, which will inevitably result in a rise in price of the good examples - collectors aren’t interested in poor examples.)

I personally don’t mind paying what I need to, for a good example of something I desire. (I’m both a hobbyist and a collector.)

[Irinikus]

Seeing that I'm a Fallout Fan, I'll use bottle caps as an example to show you that just about anything that's rare and collectable fetches a high price:

Here's an example of 10 vintage bottle caps which went on auction and were bid on 33 times and fetched a price of $1,136.77! (Not ridiculous money, but a significant amount for 10 bottle caps!)



Here's another example:



$810 is allot for a single bottle cap! (And this one's pretty rare @ 7.9 out of 10, but imagine what one with a rarity of 10/10 would cost, bearing in mind that the rise in cost would probably be logarithmic from here!)