Bulk auction proposal (SmashTV, etc.)

[Jidis]

I was wondering if anyone else here had ever considered a "random bulk order" type system where individuals here would more or less "pay up front" for larger quantities of an inexpensive item which appealed to them, and pool the remainder together somewhere for the MB community to pick through at an exact percentage of their total.

For instance, a guy has two eBay auctions up now for two different black pushbutton caps. I *think* I have the switches which one goes with and I could maybe use 20. The dude's got a bag of 500 on each auction (yikes!), BUT, it's $13 with $7 shipping (4 cents each). I've gotten similar ones from Digikey for 75 cents or something. Now say, I come in here and announce that I will try to grab them and I need about 20, I go ahead and buy them, take my twenty, plus an extra 30 (more than I can eat for the next two years), put the leftover 450 (!) in an envelope and mail it to Smash for a couple bucks (not to volunteer him or anything ;)) and let others grab the rest, maybe in bags of 50 for around $2.20 (the original $20 + the $2 to get it to a central location / 500 x 50). So a bunch of people might get 20 or 30 dollars worth of caps for 2.20 (plus outbound sh.+handling), I get my 20 caps and Smash loses the drawer or shelf space that I would have lost, making his house look cluttered :-* Then if other people like them and add them to their orders, the money could be periodically PayPal'd back to the buyer or used as credit to get other "desirables" from Smash. Or, if they sit for a ridiculous amount of time, he/she could pay the couple bucks to bring them back home. Not much potential loss for a chance to retrieve some of the wasted supply values. Plus, we won't rape each other on the cost of sending this cheap plastic crap back and forth as some eBay dealers might do. The other cool thing is, in the event of auctions and such, we won't be at risk of inadvertently battling a fellow MIDIBoxer for the things we all like if the bidding plans were announced in advance, plus we may be made aware of good deals on things we will soon be shopping for. Maybe also give the other interested parties the ability to pay and reserve shares of an auction after it has closed.

I know this "quantity of 500" thing is a bit of an extreme exception, but there are always the 20's, 50's and 100's that you only want 6 of, and the bag(s) of cool looking knobs that you won, but never found the right project for.

Don't mean to single you out Smash, you just seem like you already kind of do the stuff, plus the "distributor" would deserve a handling cut, and they'd have access to all kinds of random parts which they could buy or trade for.

Just a long-ass thought :)                                       George

PS- (SmashTV) I haven't forgotten the MIOS doc request. After you told me to, I started scribbling down notes on everything I found troublesome from beyond the hardware, bootloader and OS stage. I'm still fighting with some design and software details, so I may need to work through them first, and may be seeking some answers here in order to keep going. I doubt my problems and findings would take anyone much further than where my box needs to go (LCD functions, no moving faders or rotarys), but they should easily help to build a framework for getting a couple steps past where the current tutorials end.         

[Screaming_Rabbit]

... a bit too much work and organisation for a couple of bucks  ;)

Greets, Roger