Ebay listing practice - untested vs. missing chips

JODY

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Someone has a board on Ebay listed as untested but in the pics I see it is missing the 6502 CPU. The CPU on Ebay is listed for about the same price as the board. I emailed the seller and he says it is listed as "untested" so it is fine. To me "untested" is not the same as "missing parts". What do you think?
 
untested to me means exactly what it says, that it hasn't been hooked up to a machine. If the seller wants to educate people on the item then he will include obvious things like missing parts. otherwise all he has to do is take a pic of said item and let the buyer be educated.

Buying untested, items with no pic, or items that don't show prom test screens (if there is one) is up to the buyer. it's a gamble and you can either win or lose, it's your choice.
 
It's a roll of the dice.

Maybe it's broken and someone swiped a good CPU... maybe it's good, but sucky and someone needed the CPU to fix a board they liked better... who knows! :)

If you think you can fix the board and it's cheap enough then go for it. If you can't fix it but think you can get it fixed cheaper than buying a tested/working one (like Bubble Bobble for instance) then go for it!
 
It's a grey area... if they didn't test the board because they noticed that it's missing parts, then in their mind it's still untested (by them).

I've actually bought boards on here that were sold as untested (by them), and when I got them, they had writing of the board that said "NW" and "NOT WORKING"... still, they WERE untested... but because they didn't needed to be tested, they were known not working... but were untested because of it. Catch 22 or whatever. Was I thrilled? Hell no.

In a situation like you mentioned though... I'd prefer to see both on the listed "Untested/Missing Chips", but I have a habit of asking for pictures of the boards now before I buy anything.

Still better than buying something sold as "working when stored", and getting it in and having it missing 3-4 custom ICs. Again... maybe "was working when stored, but after being stored... was raped for customs" doesn't look so well in a description.
 
I've never bought a board by itself before so will have to keep this in mind. I can see where somene might not know if there was supposed to be a chip in a socket and thus honestly not know if anything was missing.

Then again, someone could take advantage of others by pulling the most expensive chips from a board then selling them individually. Guess this would be taking "parting out" one step further. The board may sell for more than it should due to the missing parts due to it simply be labeled as "not tested" instead of "missing chips".
 
I agree with that - most of the people selling these boards don't have a clue. Some boards have empty sockets anyway, so hard to tell if something is missing or not.

Personally, I think it is better to see the CPU missing - at least you know what you need and can make a clear judgement on price. I've bought a few that had CPU's in them, but dead. I can't help but feel that it was intentional.

Even more frustrating are classic Konami boards with Konami-1 CPUs, with a small picture. There will be a CPU in the socket, but it is not a Konami-1 CPU. Now that sucks!

As always, it's buyer beware.
 
If you don't know if a board is missing parts or not you can always ask the fine people here on this forum. I seen them name a cab from just a small sliver of a presswood board still attached to a coin door.

Sometime I understand Untested board since I deal with boot leg boards and other Non jamma type boards.

But jamma based boards that are just priced too good to be true. I would wonder why and bid or not accordingly..
 
If the seller knows its missing chips they should state it in the auction. If your not familiar with some boards it can be hard to tell since some sockets are left unpopulated. This applys to alot of jamma boards.
 
untested to me means exactly what it says, that it hasn't been hooked up to a machine. If the seller wants to educate people on the item then he will include obvious things like missing parts. otherwise all he has to do is take a pic of said item and let the buyer be educated.

Buying untested, items with no pic, or items that don't show prom test screens (if there is one) is up to the buyer. it's a gamble and you can either win or lose, it's your choice.

i remember back in my get rich quick days i bought 20 "untested" dvd players off of ebay.

None of them worked, untested my ass.
 
"Untested" a.k.a It doesn't work, but I don't wanna say it.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves on auctions or sale threads besides shilling. To me. "Untested" Means 99.9% it doesn't work. Especially if you look at the other items sold by the seller and it shows them working, or tested.

I'm sorry but if you are going to use e-bay a.ka. feebay. Where sellers are trying to get every penny that they think their item is worth. Just like a buyer is trying to get their items as low as they can get them. You are not going to test them that way if they work, you can charge more?

Marking them "NW" drops value right off the bat. That is with anything. So they try to sell you that "Hey! There is a chance that this thing might work!" dream to someone willing to take a chance. Saying it's untested so they can still justify their price because nobody would pay that much for an un working board.It's as bad as someone not adding pictures, or crappy pics and being real vague with the description.
 
This is one of my biggest pet peeves on auctions or sale threads besides shilling. To me. "Untested" Means 99.9% it doesn't work. Especially if you look at the other items sold by the seller and it shows them working, or tested.

I'm sorry but if you are going to use e-bay a.ka. feebay. Where sellers are trying to get every penny that they think their item is worth. Just like a buyer is trying to get their items as low as they can get them. You are not going to test them that way if they work, you can charge more?


Partially true. I know im not going to spend an hour and $5-$10 in parts making an adapter for a board that might bring $40. If I dont have the means to test something I sell it as "untested but assume not working". If I have the means to test something I definitly will because like you said it will bring alot more money if its working. I always test a board directly prior to listing it even if I tested it recently. Lots of things can happen to a board when its stored so no guarantee it will be working after sitting on a shelf. If its not working its sold as not working. I dont think its so much an ebay problem as it is a dishonest seller problem.
I cant imagine anyone not having a way to test a jamma board. Sure they are a few people but you see an awfull lot of jamma boards being sold as untested.
 
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Partially true. I know im not going to spend an hour and $5-$10 in parts making an adapter for a board that might bring $40. If I dont have the means to test something I sell it as "untested but assume not working". If I have the means to test something I definitly will because like you said it will bring alot more money if its working. If its not working its sold as not working. I dont think its so much an ebay problem as it is a dishonest seller problem.

Yeah, I can understand that the older non-jamma games are a pain. Some people that don't have the spare parts to test and are selling huge lots of them OLDER games. That sucks because many probably do work and the seller has to cut a loss because of all the work that would be needed to run them pre-jamma games.

I was mostly talking about Jamma games though, and how some test some but not others.
 
On ebay I assume non-working when I read untested. Untested is a "sale word". Seller's use it when they know they have junk but don't want to completely kill the sale listing it as "non-working". I have sold a few boards as non-working where I just didn't test them, in the end 4 out of 5 worked fine, one had a graphics glitch. I had no means to test them and didn't really feel like testing them.

Then again I didn't really sell them I gave them away after the buyer paid shipping.

Anyways back on point.

If someone here says untested I would be willing to give the benefit of the doubt (depending on the person of course), but for the most part...untested means junk.
 
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