Signed copy of PG's "On Lisp" (out of print) - for charity

by modsearch • 17 years ago

30 40 17 years ago

modsearch5• 17 years ago

Autographed, new condition, from the box PG got when the book was published. The book goes for over $200 without an autograph as its out of print and quite rare. Its being auctioned off for charity by YC-funded startup Listia. If you do buy credits to bid, but do not end up winning, we can refund your purchase in full. enjoy!

pg5• 17 years ago

I think a lot of people may not realize how cheap this is. 700 credits is effectively $20, because you get 500 free credits for signing up, and additional credits only cost 10 cents.

prakash2• 17 years ago

Did you wear that Armani coat on sales calls or to raise money?

jacquesm9• 17 years ago

It is cheap, on ebay the unsigned version goes for $85. (I checked ;) ).

mattyb• 17 years ago

I want this, but when I signed up I only got 100 credits. I sent them an email.

rms• 17 years ago

I got the HDTV for $80 and some crap that I gave away, which makes Listia my favorite YC startup ever.

andreyf4• 17 years ago

Also, PG's old coat: http://www.listia.com/auction/198

Only 3 hours left!

yan• 17 years ago

For those interested in the text itself, pg hosts a complete version online: http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html

jamesfong2• 17 years ago

I would be so on this if it didn't look shady for me to bid on my own site.

jacquesm9• 17 years ago

Hi James,

Well, if this is your site you are about to have an unsatisfied customer.

I thought of helping your auction along a bit, so I signed up and made a $100 deposit in 'credits' on the off chance that I would be winning the bid.

Only AFTER going through all that (10 minutes of form filling, credit card hunting and so on) and making my bid I'm being told that I'm already outbid, because the highest bid shown is not the highest bid.

This sucks.

If the bid shown is not the highest bid you should say so loud and clear before accepting payments or bids. Not afterwards, that's just plain scammy. Sorry for the harsh words, but that is my opinion about this.

Now we'll get to see how well your return policy works.

Not impressed.

The refund option is somewhat hidden, care to point the way ?

EDIT: REFUND RECEIVED.

That's pretty good customer service, I'll give you that much.

immad• 17 years ago

That is fairly standard in an auction site to not see the underlying highest bid.

But I can see how it is annoying that you have to pay first before you know whether you win an item. They should change that some how. Maybe auctioning is not the right format for a psuedo-virtual currency.

sokoloff• 17 years ago

As the current high bidder (but knowing full well that I'll get outbid before the end anyway), I was also a little surprised by the fact that my "full" bid wasn't used but rather only the amount needed to beat the highest bid by a bid increment.

That's exactly how ebay works, so I didn't find it all that shocking, but my honest expectation was that it would show my full bid.

Anyway, I suspect there's a lot of returns coming in the next week (for all but one of us... :) )

modsearch5• 17 years ago

Hello, we implemented it this way since eBay is the most popular auction site out there and that's how they've always done it. However we do understand the confusion here. Do you think it's better to change the wording or simply move away from a proxy style auction? We hae been debating this internally as well but always deafult to eBay's functionality in these cases. You can use the contact form to request a refund. Just give us your username and it will be done right away. Thanks for the valuable feedback.

mlLK• 17 years ago

Is this the charity? http://www.pinestreetinn.org/ How are you affiliated with this organization? I'm curious as to why you're even doing this, or how the idea even came into fruition.

You are like the last person in my mind who would ever consider capitalizing on his/her status as a celebrity, but given it's for charity I guess how you doing it (donating to charity) doesn't really matter.

pg5• 17 years ago

Yes. I'm not affiliated with them; they're a charity I donate to.

andreyf4• 17 years ago

Some feedback here: http://www.listia.com/auction/2067

Really crappy that I can't edit this. The title says 512MB chip (which it is), I pasted from the wrong notepad into the description which says 2gb (which its not). But I cant edit it, or delist or anything.. Sorry (2 days ago by suedehed)

lacker• 17 years ago

Things look really expensive on Listia, but just because the numbers are so high.

I looked at that suit and thought "700! Jeez, who buys clothes that cost 700 bucks?" And then only later did I see, 1 point = 10 cents and your first 500 points are free, so really 700 points = $20.

It's silly and psychological but I bet most of your users don't actually figure out what your "points" mean. Why not just make points equal to dollars.

fdesmet• 17 years ago

Am I misunderstanding something? I have to sign up, buy credits, and if I lose an auction, I then have to refund the unused credits? What a waste of time and effort. I'd rather bid in an accepted currency, not some web site's funny money. (Sad, too, because I'd really like to bid on the book, but can't be bothered with all the buy/refund hassle.)

Signed copy of PG's "On Lisp" (out of print) - for charity

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