The sweet spot for home turntable enthusiasts on a budget seems to be the $200 mark. This might be the best of the bunch.
One can only imagine the sake-fueled club hopping that led to the development of the Seiko Frequency drum machine watch.
Sniping: How To Win On eBay
By James Grahame
People often ask us where to find vintage gadgets, and we usually point them to eBay. It can be a great place to shop, as long as you're not after something very rare or expensive. You can easily set up automated searches that let you know when something you're interested in is listed, and custom watch lists make it easy to track multiple items.
Winning an auction can be much more difficult.
Many bidders spend days watching an item, only to be thwarted when a mysterious buyer swoops in and places the winning bid with only seconds to spare. Bidding at the last moment is known as Sniping. It's a good way to avoid unnecessarily bidding on an item and keeps others from knowing you're interested until it's too late. Of course, hanging around your machine at all times of the day and night to place a last-moment bid is rarely possible.
The solution is online 'Sniping' software. You enter a maximum bid for an item days or hours before the auction ends, and the software waits until the last few seconds before placing a bid for you. I use Snipe Swipe (which offers unlimited automated bidding for $5/month) but there are dozens of competing systems. If you have to pay a per-transaction fee, it doesn't make sense to Snipe common items like fairly recent DVDs or CDs, since they don't usually attract much competition. Save your snipe for something a bit less common.
eBay users are firmly divided on the subject of Sniping. Some find it an excellent way to purchase items at a lower cost, while others see the practice as grossly unfair because it seems underhanded and puts non-sniping users at a disadvantage. Personally, I'm solidly in favor of the practice because it avoids unnecessary bidding wars and forces me to assign a maximum price to an item days in advance of its close -- if my Snipe price is exceeded in the last few minutes, I don't find myself upping my bid in an emotional quest to win at any price.
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On eBay, it pays to snipe [USA Today]
Snipe Swipe Automatic eBay Bid Sniper Service
