Why should a seller on ebay be subjected to everyone and his dogs opinion regarding value and condition yet someone selling the same item on the forum be given discretion and possible immunity from opinion, that is just bollox even if I do say so myself.
I agree that it is all personal opinion but why should preference be given to members selling pins on here, how many times have I read over the years of someone getting caught out because they purchased a machine from a UK pinball group member or forum member because they felt a sense of security or familiarity?
With regards to the WH20, I would not even guess a value without seeing some decent pics and having a list of work done or knowing that nothing had been done etc
I look at this in terms of the effect on our forum community, which helps me differentiate in my own mind between ebay, and our own forum. For me, I'd argue in favour of things that I believe contribute to this community, and against things that I think damage it - and I'm ambivalent about things that lie between those two extremes. Personally, I'm not really interested in ebay prices or people's opinions of them, but I don't see this thread as being in any way damaging to the forum community. Along with the 'pinball prices' thread, it is separated out so the members of our community who want to discuss opinions of prices and condition can, and people who don't want to see it can easily avoid it - that is a far better solution that the old yahoo group, where you could not get away from the almost constant price discussion threads that contributed to making that place so bad. So I see this ebay thread (along with the pin price thread) as a very positive thing, as it provides a compromise that satisfies two different sides of our forum community, with no negative effect on this community. Any effect people's posts here may have on the ability of ebay sellers to make a sale (which I incidentally suspect is none whatsoever) I do not really care about.
But that seems very different to when one of our community members tries to make a sale, and has their post hijacked by opinions which degrade into criticism, and derail the chance of a sale, and leave them with the impression that it is too much hassle to even try. If we leave the for sale threads alone, then the only two people who's opinions actually count for anything can get on with their transaction, and if they can't agree on a price, or the buyer is not happy with the quality when they go see it, or whatever, they won't transact. The alternative, alienating people to the extent that they stop using parts of the forum, I see as very damaging to our community.
Whilst I understand that occasionally people may have had bad experiences buying from the yahoo group, or even on here, I don't see how the solution to that would be a free-for-all of opinions being made on for sale threads - by their very nature, being opinions, they will all differ, and are all equally valid (or invalid, depending on which way you look at it), and there is little or no chance of a consensus of opinion, so they are unhelpful all round. The solution to that problem is a tried and tested legal concept: 'buyer beware' - go and look before you buy.