Out with the old, in with the new
Bring on the bargains. I’m ready to deal.
That’s a nice way of saying that I’m actually too cheap to pay full price. No reduction for whatever the justification, and I will find a way to do without. That’s why, when the background noise at home mentioned the need for a newer iPod, I started noticing the asterisks in the flyers. In particular, the one that offered $50 for trading in an old MP3 player.
One of my first acquisitions in the mysterious land of eBay was something called a Rio Volt SP90. Looked like this:
Yes, it used removable media. Recordable CD media, which gave a staggering 700 MB of digitized storage. “Real” audio CDs, or WMA (which I never really took to my heart) and MP3s (as long as the bit count was kept low enough). Ran on batteries, worked better than anything else we had around the house. A “wunder product”. I bought TWO of them.
And then there was a rapid evolution in the transportable media player, culminating in the iPod. Given the possibility of making a deal, I searched the bottom of my nightstand and found one of my prizes. Goodbye prize; hello shiny new gadget that does so much more.
At the store, I asked (somewhat timidly) if there was a restriction on how old my trade-in could be. Come on, this is retail. Of course my Rio was worth what I paid for it on eBay, back in 2003. Deducted from the cost of my new, shiny iPod touch, but everybody is happy, happy, happy.
Just for the record, there is a similar unit offered, on eBay right now, with bids opening at $1.99, (plus $5.00 for shipping). I’ll keep a watch, but I doubt that the seller will do any better than I did this evening.
