Re: Nibbles Magazines ISO

["Shawn B." <leabre@html.com>]

> I agree with you about the price (although I would only be willing to
> pay some $30 for it), but not about your motivation.  Do you really only
> care about how rare the item is and not about how useful it is to
> you when you decide how much you're willing to pay for it?

I'd be willing to pay $30... but I'm willing to pay more.  Just not the
asking price.

> Assume this DVD was heavily copy protected so nobody could copy its
> contents.  And suppose no-one could even read its contents.  Next,
> suppose only one copy of that DVD existed, and that the original data
> had been destroyed and could not be recreated without a substantial
> amount of work.  Finally suppose this unique DVD was in excellent
> codition.

Well, that is a different situation.  If it was important, and unclonable,
and the only one in existance, and important to me... I'd suppose I'd have a
different take.  Of course, I'm talking about something different.  Perhaps
my rationale is a little off-base, but, when I think about it, I just can't
help but thinking to myself that the price is too high for something that
has substantially lower production costs.  I feel "gouged", and that is
enough to prevent me from caring enough to fork over my cash.  It doesn't
matter whether it is a realistic price and I'm not being "gouged" in
reality, but I feel that way and thats what matters to me.  There is nothing
in his offering that I can't do without.

> If so, that DVD would be a very rare, but useless, item.  How much would
> you be willing to pay for such a DVD?  $140?  $300?  More?  Less?

I don't know.  I paid $5,000 for a Sony Playstation 2 Developer system and
tools and a few nice perks, on Ebay.  I paid $450 for a Net Yaroze (that the
seller omitted the SDK disk) so had to pay another $560 to win another
auction just to get that disk.  Those are worth something to me, personally.
They offer me something that I greatly care about.  The satisfaction I can
derive from them is intense.  But Nibble magazine isn't worth that much to
me.  I paid $300 for all the hardcopy editions.  That is reasonable to me.
Even if I had known about the DVD at the time I was ready to purchase the
hardcopies on Ebay, I probly would not have settled for paying half price
for the DVD.  The phychological effect it has on me is weird.  It just isn't
worth it to me to pay $140 for a digital copy.

Maybe the price will come down, but I doubt it.


Thanks,
Shawn