Topband: For sale?

[Mike Waters]

Hi Jerry (et. al.),

Yes, let's have some updated selling guidelines. Reasonable ones. And as
someone nicely pointed out, there are well-established websites (like
qrz.com or qth.com) if you want to sell your antique Morse code key or your
multiband linear.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed to me that:

1. Someone offered something for sale that was mainly of interest to
Topbanders. A famous Topbander (W8JI) designed it with Topbanders in mind.
I believe that ON4UN tacitly agreed by including it in his book.

2. However, that was quickly followed by more For Sale items that were *not*.
Those posts became the *real* issue, and nothing further would have been
said about the DXE NCC-1 *if* the other FS items had not followed.

3. There was nothing wrong with the NCC-1 listing, since so many Topbanders
either own or would love to own one. Right? (Rhetorical question.) This
entire issue erupted with the subsequent FS posts.

IMHO, *a few* *160m-specific* items --that would definitely interest a fair
number of us-- should be allowed here. (Some examples might be Beverage
antenna control boxes, 160m RX arrays, or even an occasional monoband
amplifier or filter, either RX or TX.) Any further communications about
such items should be off-reflector, except for an "Item is Sold" post.

Now, I hear what everyone is thinking: *it could get out of hand*. Well, if
and when that happens, then Tree --perhaps with other longtime Topband
Gentlemen™ here-- will address that for us in the future (which has not yet
arrived).

But let's speculate a little ...
 - Let's say there were too many matching transformers, etc. this
quarter? *Then
disallow items under a certain value.*
 - Many items for sale that are from newbies? *Then only allow long-time
members to sell items.*
* - *We could even disallow listings that include "Other items for sale,
contact me for a complete list".

It goes without saying that commercial FS listings have never been allowed,
and that's probably the way it should continue to be.

In summary: allowing an occasional FS item (as outlined above) is not going
to turn this fine reflector into a little qth.com.

This is my one-time $0.02 worth about this. I did not intend for it to be
an all-or-nothing or all-inclusive list; I only intended for this to be a
starting point for others to build on, if someone desires to. No private
replies please, they will be deleted (unless you are Tree. :-)

73, Mike
W0BTU

On Mon, Jul 6, 2020, 3:16 PM K4SAV <RadioXX at charter.net> wrote:

> I just looked thru a bunch of old Topband messages and found 130
> messages pertaining to FOR SALE items.  Many of those were when the
> forum was under different management however.  Perhaps it is time to
> reissue the guidelines on FOR SALE  items.
>