eBay can be surprising

Some readers may have noticed that amongst the many links on this page is one to the list of items I'm selling on eBay (or for international readers try here). Today several auctions ended and I was astounded at the way that every item sold ad some saw fierce bidding in the last few hours.

Whilst this often happens on eBay, it was especially shocking here as the items included old VHS cassettes and even some early feature free DVDs that have both been superseded by current DVD releases, including season boxsets. I originally put them up primarily to see if I could clear some space in my room, to refresh my eBay selling skills before big sales later on and to see if I could get some more feedback which again will help later sales.

I guess as someone who's had a DVD player for nearly four years and who only purchased a handful of VHSes after that, mainly a series that didn't switch to parallel releases, I'd rather taken the dominance of DVD for granted. By contrast I was one of the last to switch to CD, and even then had to be dragged into it (mainly because I was never particularly into music in the 1990s and so rather resented it when other areas of audio were seemingly forced into it - although a few do seem to continue to produce cassettes to this day - and also because for one reason or another I'd never wound up with a CD player by accident in a bigger unit). Yet it seems there are still a good number who haven't joined the DVD revolution. A lot of students are often amongst them - unsurprising given how many have traditionally inherited the family's old VCR when it gets replaced by a newer model and are unlikely to have received an integrated unit or an outdated DVD player yet. But there appear to be pockets of sales elsewhere and may be for some time to come (which I hope so - otherwise I'll have a huge number to put on eBay in a very short space of time!). The machines retain other uses - how many of us use them as an elaborate adaptor to get round the problem of other equipment having only a SCART connection and no direct way to connect to the television set's coaxial socket? (Oh and given that virtually everyone stores their VCRs, DVDs, TVs, decoders and everything else on top of one another, why are SCART cables a metre long?)

Looking back at eBay I see the bidding increasing. At the moment the Bond movies are all coming to close and the one getting the highest bids as I type this is For Your Eyes Only - bizarre as it's arguably the most forgotten of the official movies by the public at large (a pity as it's easily the best of the Roger Moore films). Mind you it's being substantially outbid by a copy of Never Say Never Again - wonders never cease.