A new ID for an old "friend"? :-)

a well known eBay item
Caveat emptor

Massimo

Cobubba lives!

Edited: 2 Nov 2011, 7:15 p.m. after one or more responses were posted

gaboco sounds like an abbrevation for "Garbage of Colorado"

like IBM used to say:

Garbage in ... garbage out!

Mir

I think Cobuba has opened a second account!

Looks like the same guy to me. Photographs look too similar (backgrounds, lighting, etc.)

Compare these two listings:

15C #1

15C #2

Do you believe in parallel universes and doppelgängers ?

It has to be the same guy. Look at the Completed listings for coburlin. There is a 10C with Serial No. 2237A00058 that never sold.

Now the new guy, garboco, is selling a 10C with the same serial, same picture, same description, everything. If coburlin never sold it, how could a new person sell it?

item numbers: 260860868285 and 220885617880

No ... the dude may simply have two accounts.

The new eBay handle might suggest that his first (or last) name is Gabriel. He seems to have an attachment to Colorado since "co" has shown up in his handles and he lived in CO when he had the "burlin" handle way back. Has anyone bought anything from Cobuba and might know his name?

Namir

Makes perfect sense!

Cobuba can have not two accounts but a hundred account. Unless he changes his approach to selling, he is going to get the same reaction from eBay buyers regardless of what he calls himself. If he wants to move items and have more sales, he needs to lower his prices. He can do that without reinventing new aliases.

Stupid is as stupid does!!

Namir

Edited: 3 Nov 2011, 1:49 a.m. after one or more responses were posted

The thing is, he makes an occasional sale at his ridiculous prices (usually to someone overseas). A lot of eBay sellers aren't willing to ship calculators overseas, but for what he's charging he can afford to insure the thing to make sure he doesn't take a loss if the post office loses it or uses it as a hockey puck. I agree that what he's doing is shady (buying up calculators in decent condition cheaply and pairing them up with assorted manuals and cases, then selling them for ridiculous prices), but unfortunately it is neither illegal nor an eBay TOS violation.

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[...] A lot of eBay sellers aren't willing to ship calculators overseas [...]

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not quite true. a lot of AMERICAN eBay sellers aren't willing to... pretty much everyone else in the world is more than happy to ship anything almost anywhere, and do so without disaster or personal risk to their health.

in terms of the world population america is quite small and insignificant. it just happens to have a bigger pile of functional bombs than anyone else (note the word "functional", so russia doesn't count!!)

It's the same guy. No question. Same type of name, same serial numbers in the listings, same exact $5.95 charge for shipping, same origination location, etc.

I poked him via email and asked about the new name. He hasn't responded. ;-)

I'm sure he reads these forums, to keep up on what's hot and in demand, or to see if anyone has any units for sale that he can mark up 4,976%. It's a shame there are people like him out there.

Thanks,

Bruce

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in terms of the world population america is quite small and insignificant. it just happens to have a bigger pile of functional bombs than anyone else (note the word "functional", so russia doesn't count!!)

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Well, and a functional economy (until recently at least). And lots of innovative companies like HP.

310 million gas hogging americans are worth at least 5 billion bicycling chinese people, and at least 600 million Europeans, in terms of market. That's changing, but isn't there yet. Maybe if the new class of World Rich can get their act together, they can eviscerate the U.S. economy in the next 5 years so that the Chinese can become the top consumers. That is the goal. New and growing consumer markets are much more exciting to businesspeople than are established, saturated and shrinking ones.

Countries such as N.Z. and Au. are nice and tiny. You guys can be more nimble during these massive adjustments :-)

Edited: 3 Nov 2011, 10:42 p.m.

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not quite true. a lot of AMERICAN eBay sellers aren't willing to...

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in terms of the world population America is quite small and insignificant. it just happens to have a bigger pile of functional bombs than anyone else...

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not quite true. a lot of AMERICAN eBay sellers aren't willing to... pretty much everyone else in the world is more than happy to ship anything almost anywhere, and do so without disaster or personal risk to their health.

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I admit to not like to ship outside the US, the reason is multi-part: (1) The buyer ends up paying a lot for shipping, often more than what the item is worth. If you use a good carrier, like UPS, this is almost always the case. (2) I often get requests to not put the full value of the item on the shipping forms so that duty is low on the buyers end, this is fraud and I don't want to take part in that. (3) In general, the US Post Office people are not at all helpful in shipping items overseas and it can take a lot of time hanging out and the PO (30 minutes on a couple of occasions) to get the shipping forms correct.

I do all my shipping using the Canada Post for 99% of it I can buy my postage online and even fill out the customs information, print a label and then drop it in a mail box or take it to one of the many convenient postal outlets. When I buy from an eBay seller in the US, which is quite often, I always ask for shipping via USPS as mail flows smoothly to Canada Post and most often I am not even billed for taxes or duty. I will not bid on anything if the seller will only ship via UPS because UPS always collects taxes and charges very high customs brokerage fees. My experience has also been that a lot of sellers that advertise that they will not ship to Canada when I ask if they will make an exception most often they are willing to do so.

I live in France and have buyed a lot of items from US sellers on *bay, never had any problem since one year.

Delays were about 10 or 15 days for boxed items and sometimes, customs asks for 19,6% VAT which I must admit, can make the item a little expensive in the end. But the euro/dollar exchange rate makes things smoothier, seen from the european side. Also, for manuals, lonely calculators with no boxes or accessories, items less than about $100, I frequently had no custom taxes at all, and even had short delays.

Still, I understand your point 3:

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In general, the US Post Office people are not at all helpful in shipping items overseas

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You can probably pull the "US" mention out of this sentence.

I ship all my items via USPS Priority Mail to international destinations. I have yet to have anything lost or damaged, although sometimes the delivery time can be very long and there is no way to actively track a shipment. I always insure it and buy a return receipt so I can verify delivery if the recipient does not notify me. Paperwork is a very simple 1 page customs form, and many entries are not required for non-commercial shippers and items valued at under $2500. I fill everything out in advance, so the wait at the post office is typically very short. Shipping to Canada costs about 1/2 the rate for the rest of the world and I believe that NAFTA reduces or eliminates tariffs that apply elsewhere. I never use UPS or FEDEX.

As far as TAS is concerned, they now include shipping costs in their fees, such that it is not profitable for sellers to ship overseas. So, you can thank TAS for discouraging US sellers from shipping internationally.

Maybe we could set a flag for troll alert.

I ain't american but "small and insignificant" is not what comes to my mind when I think about the US, specially on a forum of people devoted to HP calculators which, in my opinion, are on the top of US engineering glorious inventions.

And I'd rather be afraid of Russian "non-functional" bombs than of American functional ones ...

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Still, I understand your point 3:

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In general, the US Post Office people are not at all helpful in shipping items overseas

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You can probably pull the "US" mention out of this sentence.

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Oh yeah but your have ROYAL Mail man!

They can sometimes be a ROYAL pain in the .... ;-)

Edit: Of course, the place and person I deal with belong to the "Post Office", "Royal Mail" carries the mail and is a separate entity - they are a ROYAL pain in the .... .

Edited: 4 Nov 2011, 5:11 p.m.

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Maybe we could set a flag for troll alert.

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Maybe we should cool down a little.
Reading his post again, he said "in terms of the world population america is quite small and insignificant". I think the American population is less than 1/20th of the world population... in my book 1/20th *is* small.
Everyone likes to think that their country isn't insignificant, but "in terms of world population" most are... except maybe for China and India! :)

Cristian

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Maybe we should cool down a little.
Reading his post again, he said "in terms of the world population america is quite small and insignificant". I think the American population is less than 1/20th of the world population... in my book 1/20th *is* small.

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[rant on]
Unfortunately, today, that is to some small extent true. Our economic might, once supreme, is waning and we are using our quickly draining treasury (like sand in an hour glass) to garrison the world. Isn't this what happened to the Soviet Union when they decided to go into Afghanistan? Why exactly do we think that we are immune to the same sort of financial stresses that broke the USSR? I would love to see us become, once again, that old force in technology, innovation, and industry. I don't say it is all gone, that is surely not the case, but we are certainly weaker than we once were and economically far less important.
[/rant off]

Sorry, just my $0.02.

Cheers,

-Marwan

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You left out this part: "it just happens to have a bigger pile of functional bombs than anyone else." This implied to me that America's importance is *only* tied to its military might.

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FWIW

Marwan, I wouldn't be too quick to write off the economic influence of the United States. We've been through some tough times during the last few years, like many countries, and our government is certainly dysfunctional at times, again, like many countries, but it seems that many people still want to come here, some legally some not.

And I certainly wouldn't write off the United States as a military power. Just ask Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, or Moammar Ghadafi (a US-built drone ratted him out I think). Oh, I guess you can't ask them after all.

Gee, it was more fun discussing Coburlin.

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Why exactly do we think that we are immune to the same sort of financial stresses that broke the USSR?

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I would love to see us become, once again, that old force in technology, innovation, and industry.

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I'm a little pessimistic, not just about the US, but about the world. 40 years ago we (meaning "we mankind") could go to the moon, now the only way to go even to low Earth orbit is the Russian Soyuz. 30 years ago we had great new calculators almost every year, and people who wanted/knew how to use them; now we have mostly cheap-ish gadgets, and if we want something more we have to rely on community efforts. A few decades ago we were willing to take risks, experiment, push the frontiers beyond: now everything has to be "politically correct", risk is evil and so on.

This is stagnation, or worse. I think the human creativity and enthusiasm are atrophising, slowly but constantly. :(

Cristian

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With "universal health care", "stimulus plans" and "jobs bills", ever increasing government spending and government control, we seem to be heading in that same direction.

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Only for one more year. After that, President Cain will get us back on the right track.

Oh, I am certainly not willing to write us off quite yet. In fact I am rather more optimistic than many. It just sometimes seems that we keep shooting ourselves in the foot. And no fear, I am not writing off our military might. On the other hand our pockets are not infinitely deep and with our military expenditure being something like 40% of the total world military expenditure (2009 figures) and something like 6 times that of China I just don't see how we can realistically maintain that.

As for people coming to the US, we are still the land of hope for most of the world. And dysfunctional? Not even close to some other countries. None of that means we can't do better.

Ok. Back to coburlin <g>. Sorry I went off on this side trip.

Cheers,

-Marwan

Edited: 5 Nov 2011, 7:09 a.m. after one or more responses were posted

I agree with all of your points. We certainly can do better, and with the right leadership I'm optimistic that we will. We developed the technology and know-how to get to the moon 42 years ago, and with brilliant people like Steve Jobs giving us technology that truly revolutionizes lives, I don't fear for our future too much.

I might even buy an ipad one day!

Back to the original topic, Coburlin, he's just trying to make a buck by tapping into some folks fanaticism over HP calculators. I don't know how successful he is, and I don't really care. I have noticed the same HP-65 he's been trying to sell for like 3 years now.

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I have noticed the same HP-65 he's been trying to sell for like 3 years now.

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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Einstein