[rollei_list] Re: OT: eBay as History
- From: Eric Goldstein <egoldste@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:17:51 -0400
Marc -
eBay is extremely useful as a SOURCE for historical data. Few sellors
have the skills or motivation to doctor the images of what they
display there. The descriptions/narratives are unreliable, but that is
nothing new to historians... just about all narratives from all
sources are.
What can be very unreliable is the interpretation of that data in the
hands of historians, few of which enter into their investigations with
neutrality... they almost all have a position to prove or uphold and
facts to spin spin spin...
Eric Goldstein
--
On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 1:02 PM, Marc James Small <marcsmall@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 12:06 PM 7/22/2010, Austin Franklin wrote:
>>Hi Marc,
>>
>>> I don't give a flying damn about eBay.
>>
>>I'm surprised (and I'm not ;-). As someone interested in historical
>>information, I would think you would be very interested in what shows up on
>>eBay. Many historians in many different fields use it as a very vast
>>resource, never before available, to gather new information.
>
> Yes, some people live on eBay and some folks try to rely on it for
> historical data. It is VERY unreliable as an historical source. Most of
> the Zeiss researchers have simply quit using it for that reason save when
> someone points out a specific auction. But eBay now permits the haziest and
> most imperfect of descriptions, so no history can be based on this.
>
> Marc
>
>
>
> msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
>
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