magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

You may recall, that a few weeks ago I bought a used CRT on eBay for $1. There was no reserve price, and no one else was interested in bidding on an old 14" IBM monitor when you can usually find them lying around in the street for free. I hadn't seen any in the street for a while, wasn't happy with the crop on Craigslist at the time, and figured that with a flat fee of $20 for shipping I could bid up to $5, and still stay at my $25 upper limit.

The monitor arrived today, two weeks later. It appears, as I expected, to have been thrown out from a school computer lab, which someone then listed on eBay with the hopes that they could make a couple of bucks. According to the shipping label it cost $26.29 to send here from Arkansas. Meaning that the kid who sold it lost $5.29 in shipping, plus the eBay listing fee, plus whatever the packing tape cost (the box and other packing materials seem to be recycled).

I cleaned my desk off, now that I had a physical goal (making room for the monitor) to motivate me. Plugged it into the video out on my laptop. Did some power cord shuffling to make room to hook up it's electric. Plugged it in. Turned it on.

The first thing that I noticed was a hissing sound. The screen did not illuminate. Then a faint smell of ozone. I quickly turned it off. Checked and double-checked all the plugs. Turned it on again. Still hissing. And a pop, as if there was an electrical short. I turned it off again.

I shut down my computer. Checked the plugs again. Turned it on and restarted. The power light lit up (it probably had been all along), my computer recognized a plugged in VGA monitor, but still the hissing. And still no image on the screen. It popped some more. Definitely an electrical short. More ozone. Quickly, back off.

I had pretty much given up on it by this point. The short did not seem to be in the cord. There was no picture. And if the pops hadn't yet arced across and fried anything important, there was no doubt that they would eventually. I did try it one more time. Hiss. Pop, pop. And smoke from the case. Okay. Fried.

The kid who sent it insured it, that's probably why the shipping price was above the flat $20 he had listed on eBay, but you can only recoup insured losses for up to the actual value of an item. What's a used 14" VGA monitor actually worth? $5? $10? It's not worth the trouble of trying to make an insurance claim.

I'm out $21. The seller is out close to $10. The USPS probably more or less broke even. eBay made some pocket change. The moral of the story? Find your crappy, used computer equipment in the street. If it's busted you can put it back where you found it, and all you've wasted is a little effort in carrying up and back down a couple flights of stairs.