Well, quite obviously they're collectibles! Their performance is so abysmal by today's standards that they are _not_ worth using in an operating circuit except for maybe a crystal radio. So far the bidding has stayed at that point, but I figure about ten minutes to closing, things will start to get hot again.
But you think that's bad? Try this one! They're NOS!! Never been used! In original boxes, which some dealers will tell you makes the item worth a whole lot more! I expect these, which are now at about $8 each, to climb to more than the above transistors before the auction is over. We'll know by this time tomorrow, since there's less than a day left. BTW, Tim will *really* like these, because they each come in a Sylvania TOOB box!
And then there's this guy. He seems to be an opportunist. I've been watching this paricular bag of transistors for almost a month now. He hasn't sold it yet. He doesn't get the picture that if you try to sell something like this without any documentation on what it is, or what it's used for, and if you just set a high minimum bid, and then charge a lot for shipping, almost no one will bid on it. But with almost 2500 auctions under his belt, you would think that he has enough experience by now to know better. So I figure he is the kind that really doesn't care about sales, he's just waiting for a sucker to come along and fall for his bait. And there are enough suckers out there to make it worthwhile. I got a bag of almost 200 transistors thru the mail the other day and the postage was a whopping 60 cents, and this guy's charging $4.85, making him a nice tidy profit of $4.25. And with a $6 minimum, that's over ten bucks for a bag of 100 transistors, well above what you can buy them for at Mouser or Digi- key. But if the fool would just include some data or a URL to a data sheet, he would probably find a sucker ^H^H^H^H^H^H buyer. Duh.