[HN Gopher] Apple offers $970 in trade-in value for $52,199 Mac Pro
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Apple offers $970 in trade-in value for $52,199 Mac Pro
Author : jiripospisil
Score : 132 points
Date : 2023-01-17 20:27 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| w4rh4wk5 wrote:
| Loaded question, but as a Windows user I'd really like to know.
|
| Given that you can buy an acceptable Mac for, say, $5000, does
| that $52,000 Mac Pro give you any real advantage in terms of
| productivity. Are you even twice as productive?
|
| As a reference, I recently upgraded my rig with an AMD 7950X and
| an RTX 4080 (+ other components) for around $3500. At this point
| there isn't really any other hardware available, that'd give me a
| justifiable boost in productivity.
| matwood wrote:
| It was my understanding that it was basically built for people
| who work with 8k video. That's way outside my realm, so maybe
| someone else will add some details.
| wheats wrote:
| Well, it would be application dependent of course. For instance
| at that price we are talking about a machine that was purchased
| because it needed to have 1.5TB of RAM and channels able to
| take advantage of it. I would imagine it indeed could be more
| than twice as fast if everything being done is cached in RAM
| instead of having to reference a disk. We are talking about
| having 4 monitors simultaneously display 8K video editing, or
| heavy database workloads you usually wouldn't see on consumer
| PCs for machines like this.
| grecy wrote:
| I remember last time a machine like this popped up on HN a
| commenter said machines like this are purpose built one-off to
| color grade[1] Hollywood blockbusters that have budgets well
| north of $100M.
|
| Apparently, the answer is yes. When you have a hyper-hyper
| specific need, a machine like this really is worth it.
|
| [1] I'm no expert in video, and color grading is the only step
| I remember, but I'm sure there were other steps that it's used
| for too.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I've also read that you'd never color-grade a Hollywood
| blockbuster on their monitor.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Reminds me of customers these would "invest" huge amounts of
| capex into servers in the early 2000s when processor speed was
| going up exponentially.
|
| One guy was complaining that their mail server -- the size of
| half a rack -- was slow.
|
| I pointed out that the Blackberry phone he was syncing to it was
| faster.
|
| "But the server cost over a hundred thousand dollars!"
|
| Yes... and now it's worthless.
| matwood wrote:
| Having looked at and bought racks of used servers before, this
| pricing 'oddity' isn't that surprising to me. Apple is thought
| of as a consumer company, but 50k for a machine is strictly
| enterprise with the appropriate markup. In this case it got
| double whammied because of the switch over to Apple Silicon.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| It was massively overpriced to begin with.
|
| At the time it was first released you could already buy a
| Threadripper workstation with an NVIDIA GPU that would run
| circles around it for a fraction of the price.
| hbn wrote:
| I don't think it's particularly surprising Apple doesn't want to
| pay you tens of thousands of dollars for you to return an old
| machine that has almost zero market for buyers. What are they
| gonna do, take the time to sell it for parts? Anyone in the
| market to spend that much is probably a business that would
| rather just buy a new machine.
|
| They'll give a better percentage on your used iPhone 12 Pro
| because they can easily find someone to buy a refurbished iPhone.
| Not so with a $52,199 Mac pro.
| jeffbee wrote:
| If they're worthless to Apple why is Apple marketing refurb Mac
| Pro starting at $5k on their website right now?
| bandyaboot wrote:
| It's not that they're worthless. It's that to be able to
| offer anything approaching what most would consider a
| reasonable trade in value for this kind of machine, they
| would have to be selling it themselves for what, like $20k? I
| think they would have a very difficult time moving those.
| jeffbee wrote:
| They are though. A refurb with half the memory of the $52k
| machine is priced at $28k.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| I love that they charge $400 for the wheels under the case.
|
| Apple iWheels Pro
| booleandilemma wrote:
| * * *
| pavlov wrote:
| If you bought a $50k Silicon Graphics O2 workstation in 1997, it
| probably was worth that much in 2000.
| lallysingh wrote:
| No, I was watching at the time... Too many shops needed spares
| Keyframe wrote:
| I worked on SGI machines back then. They were daylight robbery,
| but having them (with appropriate software) in your arsenal was
| a major and key advantage. Not speed only but things you just
| couldn't do with other systems. This apple machine and video
| claim? Not so very much.
| falcolas wrote:
| I wonder how much the metals in it are worth nowadays...
| dmix wrote:
| This isn't really about the market value of this machine, it's
| a very specific trade-in value.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Who actually pays well for good-condition used computers these
| days? I have a 2019 MacBook Pro that could serve somebody well in
| a second life. I mean like companies, not some sketchy craigslist
| trade where somebody just tries to rob me of it. Last time I sold
| a laptop on Ebay, it ended up at some freight forwarders address
| with the recipient claiming they didn't get it. Thankfully Ebay
| sided with me then, but still, no telling if they will in the
| future.
|
| I don't want to give it up for $200 or whatever Apple is
| offering, for that lowball offer, I'll just keep the laptop to
| travel with.
| kelchm wrote:
| I guess the risk involved isn't substantially different from
| eBay, but I've had pretty good luck selling Apple hardware and
| phones via Swappa: https://swappa.com
| grecy wrote:
| I always buy used Mac laptops. I'm typing this on a 2014 MBP I
| bought used in 2019, and is still going strong. I want to edit
| 4k video, so in the next 12 months I'll most likely upgrade to
| a used M1 or M2 MBP or air.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I paid for an M1 when it came out because I wanted that
| specific technology combination.
| cwhatididtheir wrote:
| Facebook marketplace is great for selling used Apple products.
| The social identity aspect makes identifying potential scammers
| easy. You'll still get blasted by a dozen or so of these, but
| they're really obvious... New accounts with no friends for
| example. I've been surprised what people will pay for used
| laptops and other apple tech.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Not sure. Tried to sell a several-year-old $5k pro laptop and
| thunderbolt dock a month or two ago at $400. No takers, which
| was surprising to me as it is a great one. But thanks for the
| travel laptop idea.
| dkobia wrote:
| There are easier ways to say they don't want it, which is what
| this says.
| poorbutdebtfree wrote:
| I'll give you $980.
| dilippkumar wrote:
| Are we bidding?
|
| I bid $990
| 988747 wrote:
| Followed the comments thread and I wonder: can this
| https://twitter.com/DurvidImel/status/1615374036820697089?s=...
| be considered a legally binding contract? Because if so, then
| someone named Alec Ploof just made a lot of money :)
| elil17 wrote:
| It is absolutely a valid contract - if both parties are in the
| US it shouldn't be too hard to enforce.
| yakkityyak wrote:
| lol, no.
| elil17 wrote:
| Assent, offer/acceptance, consideration, and capacity -
| looks like a contract to me. I don't see the argument
| against it.
| deltree7 wrote:
| It is indeed legally bound
|
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-
| encyclopedia/contracts-101-make-l...
| lesuorac wrote:
| No judge is going to enforce a contract between somebody
| selling their employer's computer to another person
| unless the employer itself agreed.
| deltree7 wrote:
| It actually is
|
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/acceptance-of-contra...
| tshaddox wrote:
| That document fails to mention that this does not apply when
| one or both parties are clearly joking.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Also, actual contract law is a lot more nuanced than what
| this post on Bob Loblaw's Law Blog will have you believe.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Context: https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
| article=12...
| japanman425 wrote:
| The real L here is spending 50k on a Mac Pro. (Not because it's a
| mac, just unnecessary)
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's amusing... but I assume it's because trade-in values are
| based on non-upgraded or non-custom configurations.
|
| I know that even on eBay, the storage size on iPhones is
| basically irrelevant to resale price, for example. Your $$
| storage upgrade doesn't matter. [EDIT: per comments, I might be
| wrong on that one in the general case, so never mind.]
|
| So I have to assume that where Apple is putting trade-in devices
| into a standardized resale pipeline, the only part that matters
| is what can be standardized. That they're not going to create a
| one-off listing in the Apple store for a single particular refurb
| configuration.
|
| So sell it on eBay.
| hansvm wrote:
| > the storage size on iPhones is basically irrelevant to resale
| price
|
| That never used to be the case back in the 3/4/5 era when I
| sold them for a living. Any hunch as to why that would change?
| jeffbee wrote:
| > on eBay, the storage size on iPhones is basically irrelevant
| to resale price
|
| This claim seems quite unlikely. I just checked iPhone 13 128GB
| within 100 miles of the Bay Area and the median selling price
| for sold items was $549 but for 256GB it was $630 and for 512GB
| it was $735.
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| Remember if you are a business you'd have written off the machine
| in tax already, so the $1K is really just a bonus
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| Not an accountant. 3 years is shorter than the expected 5-year
| depreciation [1], so if you took a section 179 deduction you
| may have to pay some of it back. It may actually be worse to
| trade in than to let the machine sit for a few years.
|
| [1]
| https://www.irs.gov/publications/p946#en_US_2020_publink1000...
| coryrc wrote:
| Jerry : You don't even know what a write off is.
|
| Kramer : Do you?
|
| Jerry : No. I don't.
|
| Kramer : But they do, and they are the ones writing it off.
|
| aka that's not how write-offs work
| jeffbee wrote:
| I wonder what the config is. Apple will sell you presently a
| 28-core, 1.5TiB, 8TiB SSD + 2 64GB GPUs for that price. Which
| seems a bit extreme. If they needed that type of rig it's hard to
| imagine what other kind of thing they want to trade it for, since
| Apple no longer offers anything remotely comparable. The only
| thing even resembling it is the top-spec mac Studio with a tiny
| fraction of the memory.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _What else has dropped 50x in value in 3 years_
|
| All tech ever made in the entire history of tech, as far as I can
| tell.
|
| It kinda doesn't matter if you can get more for it in a secondary
| marketplace. Manufacturers don't really want to be in the
| business of buying things back from you if it will cost them less
| to make a new one.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > All tech ever made in the entire history of tech, as far as I
| can tell.
|
| I suspect 50x in 3 years would be exceedingly rare to see
| outside of products that literally expire or break in 3 years
| or are part of some ecosystem that has essentially died.
| Apple's trade-ins for iPhones, for instance, are much more
| generous than that. I suspect the issue here is simply that
| Apple doesn't want to be in the business of selling used
| desktop computers, but they do want to be in the business of
| selling used smartphones.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I think it's also absurd to say it's dropped in value just on a
| single bid that's likely far out of market. Apple doesn't set
| the price in the secondary market, just the primary market. To
| know the price you need to get bids from who ever is in the
| market for your stuff.
| [deleted]
| quartz wrote:
| I'm trying to figure out what "dropped 50x" even means...
| wouldn't that be like -$2.5 million?
| euph0ria wrote:
| Something that surprised me was that my MacBook that is pristine
| but 5 years old do not get any more OS updates.. and therefore no
| latest Xcode.. and therefore worthless to me. Are all iOS/Mac
| devs buying new machines every five years?
| Gigachad wrote:
| This has been really disappointing imo. I'm donating to the
| Asahi Linux project now so when my 2021 MacBook stops getting
| updates I'll be able to run Linux on it.
|
| https://www.patreon.com/marcan
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>Are all iOS/Mac devs buying new machines every five years?
|
| I buy one every three years - just before my AppleCare expires.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| One strategy is to check product lifespans before buying--you
| can usually get at least 7ish years of updates for a Mac if you
| don't accidentally buy a product that's _just_ about to receive
| an update. I think macrumors has a chart for this with simple
| "buy / caution / do not buy" indicators and history of time
| between updates for various kinds of products. Buying early in
| a model's lifecycle can make a big difference.
|
| Another is to just buy used every couple years. Buy a 1- or
| 2-year-old Macbook or iPad or whatever, sell a couple years
| later, repeat. Average annual spending can be surprisingly low
| this way, after an initial higher expenditure to buy your
| "ticket" to this train, of course, while still keeping you on
| recent devices just about all the time.
|
| Some businesses simply lease their Macs, so don't really have
| that problem. They'll lease a new set of devices long before
| any go out of support.
|
| Overall, any budget-conscious Apple strategy has to factor in
| the used market. Even if you're always buying new, if you time
| sales right you can recover a lot of your purchase price by
| selling your old devices. This can seem a little weird if
| you're used to the used market for consumer PCs--in that world,
| holding on to every device until it is totally worthless makes
| a lot more sense, because they lose used-market value much
| faster than Macs.
| euph0ria wrote:
| Good idea, thanks. Next purchase will be a Mac Mini for daily
| workstation and I'll keep my worthless MacBook and remote
| desktop whenever I need to be mobile.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| * * *
| CHY872 wrote:
| In general if you're a professional software engineer, the
| productivity upgrade of upgrading your tools at least every 5-6
| years is worth the money.
|
| If you bought high-end-ish laptops in 2021, 2016, 2011, 2006,
| you'd have gone through 3 different microarchitectures, and had
| a transformative experience change on each upgrade. If you
| upgrade every year, not so much.
|
| I don't like the XCode MacOS version requirements - I couldnt
| build the JVM a while back because my work hadnt yet approved
| Monterey but XCode required it. That was annoying.
| benj111 wrote:
| But then the problem is that Devs are checking their snazzy
| webpage on a top of the line Mac, thinking it runs great,
| meanwhile pcs around the world are being brought to their
| knees.
|
| So I would say, maintain your old computer and the one before
| that as testing laptops, so you know what the plebs have to
| put up with.
| fay59 wrote:
| 5 years seems like a low for Apple device longevity. I think
| that there's an enormous difference between today's Macs and
| Macs from 5 years ago and maybe the leap is accelerate
| deprecation, but there was a long period of stagnating macOS
| requirements. Hope we return to that for Apple Silicon Macs.
| roflyear wrote:
| I've had really bad personal luck with apple devices over the
| last 5+ years.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > Are all iOS/Mac devs buying new machines every five years?
|
| My company lets you buy a new computer every three years.
| skyyler wrote:
| This project has given my 2015 MBP a breath of life. It'll
| probably last long enough for me to replace it with an M3 MBP.
| That's what I'm hoping for, anyways.
|
| https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/
| tanseydavid wrote:
| Did you have to utter "M3" on the very same day that we
| finally have M2 MacBook Pros? </grin>
|
| I am now worried about a possible upcoming "M3" announcement
| in the next week or so.
|
| And I am only half-joking -- a while back I was funded and
| ready-to-purchase an M1 MacBook Pro and that same day the
| "M2" announcements hit.
|
| As a result I could not get myself to pull-the-trigger on the
| M1 purchase.
| burkaman wrote:
| I genuinely didn't know you could pay that much for a computer.
| Looking at the max specs of the Mac Pro
| (https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-pro/tower), it looks like
| everything is marked up 2-20x the price of the individual
| components. $7000 for a ~$3000 processor, $25000 for ~$1500 of
| RAM, etc.
|
| Edit: I misread Newegg, the RAM would be more like $10500
| cm2187 wrote:
| That's why all the components are soldered on those days.
| brigade wrote:
| Intel's recommended customer price is $8200 [1], and _each_ of
| the 12 DDR4 sticks is probably north of $1k [2].
|
| Are Xeons and dense ECC ram worth what they cost even at the
| part level? Not really, but servers have different economics
| than personal machines.
|
| [1]
| https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/193754/...
|
| [2] https://www.newegg.com/arch-memory-128gb-288-pin-
| ddr4-sdram/...
| kube-system wrote:
| Apple does have a significant mark up, yes, but, the costs of
| bringing a product like that to market is not a matter of
| adding up the price of the components.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| The price Apple sells these configurations is entirely
| unrelated to any sort of costs.
|
| They just do it because they can as they are the sole
| provider of high end machines running macOS.
| kube-system wrote:
| You are right. I did not intend to imply that they were
| related to costs. I was simply stating that those proposed
| costs weren't accurate anyway.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| There was a brief moment in the 90's before Jobs returned
| when Apple allowed MacOS to be licensed to third party
| system integrators. Naturally, the companies that popped up
| to sell generic Macs were massively under cutting Apple.
| Their prices have never been something that could stand up
| to direct competition.
| kube-system wrote:
| Had they continued down that road, Apple would probably
| be as successful today as IBM's PC division.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Sure but part of their success is being a lifestyle
| brand. A lot of people buy Apple for that. The
| interesting question here is around the productivity
| value of a 52k computer versus something at 5k or less,
| since almost nobody is dropping 52k on a computer just to
| fit in with the cool kids.
| kube-system wrote:
| For a video editor in an Apple shop who makes hundreds of
| thousands more by getting a video out a few hours faster,
| spending 50k do to do that makes sense. Nobody buys a
| fully loaded Mac Pro to fit in at the lunch table.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I buy Apple because of the vertical integration. They make
| the software and the hardware, both work perfectly
| together.
|
| Just look at Microsoft and the Windows Modern Standby
| debacle how not to do it.
| burkaman wrote:
| I understand but come on, look at that RAM price. If I can
| find a 20x better deal with 10 seconds on Newegg, presumably
| Apple can get those components for like 100x less than
| they're selling them for.
|
| Also $400 for some nice rolly wheels, or $700 if you decide
| to buy them separately:
| https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MX572ZM/A/apple-mac-
| pro-w...
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't even see any 1.5TB 12x128gb DDR4 ECC kits on
| Newegg.
|
| The biggest one I see is this, which is only 50% cheaper
| than Apple's price per stick. Not 20x. Not even 2x.
|
| https://www.newegg.com/nemix-ram-512gb-288-pin-
| ddr4-sdram/p/...
|
| And if you go with a brand name kit, Apple's price is
| pretty close to Newegg.
|
| That's not to say any of this matters. Apple sells a
| completed product, not a box of parts. If you want a box of
| parts, you're in the wrong place.
| burkaman wrote:
| You're right I got confused, it looks like closer to a 2x
| markup. You don't have to buy it all as one kit though,
| right? Just get 6 of these for $10,500:
| https://www.newegg.com/nemix-ram-256gb-288-pin-
| ddr4-sdram/p/...
| kube-system wrote:
| Of course, Apple doesn't use Nemix sticks either. Does
| Nemix get the same binned chips that SK Hynix uses in
| their namesake brand?
|
| The cheapest name brand is this, $19,000+ for 1.5TB:
|
| https://www.newegg.com/hynix-256gb-288-pin-
| ddr4-sdram/p/1X5-...
| Escapado wrote:
| That's true but I guess the poster was already refering to
| retail prices of those components which is more than what
| apple pays for them. And looking at the prices of other
| manufacturers at different scales that can offer those
| components integrated in products I would argue that
| "significant" mark up in this case is bordering profiteering.
| sithadmin wrote:
| I don't understand what one would do with a $52,199 Mac Pro. If
| you're blowing that kind of money on a Mac, you probably need to
| seriously rethink how you're approaching your technical and
| business processes.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > I don't understand what one would do with a $52,199 Mac Pro.
|
| You're probably doing the equivalent of whatever someone was
| using a $50,000 SGI for a quarter century ago.
| kube-system wrote:
| You have the fastest Mac, that's what you do. If you're in an
| industry where doing something faster generates
| disproportionately more money, you will find people spend a lot
| of money on equipment to do their work faster.
|
| You're probably a lot _better_ off boosting productivity this
| way in a lot of cases before you hire a new FTE.
| browningstreet wrote:
| He works for MKBHD, they shoot and post 8K videos to Youtube.
| fleddr wrote:
| Right, for all the users that watch Youtube at wall-sized
| $40K TVs?
| sithadmin wrote:
| I know. I looked into it. That still doesn't justify a $52.Xk
| Mac. Sure, other shops in that field are going to be spending
| the same kind of money, but less of it on the Mac, more of it
| on networking and storage.
|
| Then again, when you're MKBHD, one big hit video in a given
| month probably covers a decent portion of the cost of that
| insanely spec'd out Mac.
| [deleted]
| matwood wrote:
| He's talked about it before, that editing and then
| uploading time matters so much they used to ship an iMacPro
| to do post on site. Now they ship around max specced Mac
| Studios.
|
| And when it comes to editing 8k video, I'm not sure there
| are faster options than the macs.
| [deleted]
| dmix wrote:
| For some companies investing in the know-how to build and
| maintain custom workstations for a couple high-end employees
| isn't worth the effort or cost saving.
|
| That's the only excuse I could come up with.
| sithadmin wrote:
| You don't even need to invest in the 'build and maintain'
| aspect of things for use cases like the Twitter poster's
| (YouTube content). Just the backend network and storage
| services.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Someone text John Siracusa with a crying laughing emoji.
| racl101 wrote:
| Electronics depreciate fast. That's just that. Not even
| exclusively Apple thing.
|
| You want something that appreciates? Buy a Rolex.
| ggm wrote:
| How many motherboards of the time had lanes to handle 1.5Tb of
| memory, and maintain bandwidth to multiple (4) high refresh-rate
| hi-res monitors?
|
| I do really think its overpriced, but I also wonder if the "I can
| do better" people have configured a system in ALL its glory: not
| just "lots of RAM" but "lots of RAM with ECC, and with good fast
| bandwidth, and with sensible independent paths to video/GPU and
| oneward to displays doing 8K, running a single composite desktop
| (when required) on all of them, with no tearing"
|
| If in fact, this is just routine, sure: there's an APPLE tax.
|
| If this is a modern-day equivalent of a 4-plate steenbeck edit
| suite, it's priced for its market: the people who by "Red"
| lenses. You can do the same job on a simpler device, sure.
|
| Also: it grates cheese.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > What else has dropped 50x in value in 3 years
|
| I mean, it's not quite as extreme, but we all sort of expect cars
| to drop ~30x in value in about the same time period.
| crindy wrote:
| A car might drop in value by 30% in 3 years, not 30x.
| mattigames wrote:
| Mechanical parts subject to outdoor conditions/wear are nowhere
| in the same real as tech hardware.
| [deleted]
| BirAdam wrote:
| Sell it on an auction site with a base price with which you're
| comfortable.
| brundolf wrote:
| Apple's trade-in prices have always been lowballed, but they
| aren't normally this extreme. Usually you get _just_ enough that
| you might choose to take the loss instead of dealing with Ebay or
| something
|
| But I wouldn't be surprised if this one is just a weird edge-case
| in their formula with no eyes on it (and one that probably serves
| a vanishingly small number of customers, who would want to
| casually trade-in their $50k machine instead of finding the best
| price they can get on the open market)
|
| For reference:
|
| The OP is looking at a 1.8% trade-in value on a 3 year old
| machine
|
| Whereas I can currently get 16% trade-in value on my 4.5-year-old
| iPhone XS
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I thought the trade in on the iPhone 10 was pretty good when I
| took advantage of it last year. But that was via T-mobile and
| came with a 2 year contract. I also traded in my apple watch
| for a new one, and though the $100 was pretty decent compared
| to the $250 I paid for it.
|
| But for my second-gen iPad Pro, it is basically considered
| scrap. So not very consistent at all.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They don't want it back! Like luxury cars, the market for $50k
| computers is shallow. No company is buying it.
|
| So you need to find someone with a credit card willing to drop
| $10k on an old computer. Why would someone do that?
|
| Hell, in my professional life I've purged devices with $5m of
| depreciated value because the replacement cost of a new thing
| was less than the operational cost of keeping the old thing
| running.
| brundolf wrote:
| Apple may not want it back because they don't want to deal
| with refurbing and reselling a niche product, but somebody
| out there would certainly want it for a decent fraction of
| the original price. Hardware doesn't get obsoleted as fast as
| it did 20 years ago
| Spooky23 wrote:
| That's why eBay exists.
|
| If you trade in your old BMW, you'll get less $ than if you
| sold privately, but you'd also have less hassle.
| pdpi wrote:
| The trade-in values tend to be reasonable for off-the-shelf
| configurations (and especially base configurations). Not great,
| but reasonable. It's when you start stacking build-to-order
| options that the price grows much faster than the trade-in
| value.
| brundolf wrote:
| Yeah that makes sense too
| matwood wrote:
| Exactly. The BTO options are basically zeroed out for the
| trade in. If you're someone who plans to upgrade their
| machine frequently using the trade-in, go with one of the
| primary configurations.
| carlmr wrote:
| One of the issues is also that there's usually no good way
| to search for exact configurations when looking for traded
| in machines. Meaning that it's harder to convey the value
| to the end customer.
| harvey9 wrote:
| The search seems like an easy problem to solve. A set of
| options to select when you offer up a machine for trade
| is viable for any self built system. For Apple, they
| could just link your original purchase data so could be
| even easier.
| silisili wrote:
| I'd recommend trying to sell anywhere but Ebay. FB Marketplace,
| Swappa, even Craigslist.
|
| I recently sold on Ebay after a few year hiatus. I cannot
| believe the haircut you take these days. I sold an item for
| $360.00 flat. Ebay gave me $308.00. Since when have they
| charged 15%?
| pb7 wrote:
| Between eBay and PayPal fees, I believe it's been at least
| 13% for decades.
| silisili wrote:
| That may be where it diverged. In my case at least, ebay
| paid me directly. Perhaps they just moved finance in house
| and tacked on previous paypal fees onto selling fees.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| In the past, you had to pay Ebay fees and Paypal fees, and
| shipping. Did that 15% include the payment processing? I do
| think their fess are too high, but they are well within the
| normal range for marketplaces.
| [deleted]
| benj111 wrote:
| 1. In the UK at least they have an 80% off sellers fees
| roughly every fortnight.
|
| 2. All the rest you end up dealing with people asking if it's
| available only to then disappear (why they ask in the first
| place I don't know), or you wait around for the one who's
| supposed to be coming, but then doesn't. eBay is a much
| better experience.
| silisili wrote:
| For FB and Craigslist, granted.
|
| Swappa at least has been great to me. And the selling fees
| are substantially lower.
| phil21 wrote:
| It's only two datapoints, so perhaps not interesting. I've
| noticed the Google Store is now doing this as well - almost
| overnight trade-in values have tanked.
|
| I traded in my son's _cracked screen_ Pixel 3 XL 64GB in
| December for a new Pixel 7. I received a $271 refund, which was
| $6 higher than their on-line estimate. I was puzzled then.
|
| I was even more puzzled now when I needed a new phone and had a
| perfectly good condition Pixel 6 Pro that I was offered $122 on
| a few days ago. I opted to sell it instead.
|
| Either manufacturers/carriers were juicing trade-in offers for
| sales, or some bottom has dropped out of some market. I've
| always assumed some third party like Assurant or whomever are
| the ones actually purchasing these phones to refurbish and sell
| onward.
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