Watching Go price movements on eBay

Learning about the Nirensei fuseki on a cold
Northern California morning

Yellow Mountain Imports raises its starting bids

I took a look at YMI's recent auctions and noticed that they have increased the starting bids on their Kaya and Shin-Kaya sets to $145 and $125 respectively. I had previously blogged that the former sold for an average of $166 with the bids trending downward.

Two bidders managed to get these kaya table sets for $100 each; the auctions ended on a late Saturday evening and an early Sunday morning. Lucky them!

Perhaps to nobody's surprise, the floor bamboo gobans that I had blogged about back in September are not selling that well. Sets with 15cm-thick playing sections are not getting bids even at $250. Layered bamboo is likely to outlast most other woods and these gobans are probably more labor-intensive to make; but they don't have a very appealing look to them. In my humble opinion, YMI should sell these at a discount.

The table bamboo gobans are selling well with bids still going up to the mid-$80s. These have both 19x19 and 13x13 grids on them.


The Go-Gamestore offers thick-board sets at auction

Starting Bid $90 with a Buy-It-Now of $120. Auction 8736702455

It looks like The Go Gamestore in Canada is offering-up challenges to YMI. They're now offering spruce sets (2" thick boards) at starting bids of $90 with a Buy-It-Now option at $120. I saw two of these this morning. Standard shipping to the US is $31. If you live in Canada, it's $27.

It's always good to have competition in the market. The Go Gamestore was apparently one of the first vendors to introduce Yunzi stones to the Americas.


In other news

ChiyoChan got back from Outdoor Ed in Loma Mar (Santa Cruz) last Friday and I'm just happy to have my daughter home and the house a little noisier in the afternoons and evenings.

Parents had to pay a fee of $285 for each child. Based on what we've heard, I'm a little disappointed at how the camp was run. Although ChiyoChan and her best friend GinnyChan enjoyed their time together, they noted that:

• The food at dinner and breakfast matched less than 60% of what was described during parental orientation. The better foods were never served.
  
• Lunch was just peanut-butter sandwiches with fruit and jelly-sandwiches for children with allergies. The latter group thus consumed mostly sugars and no protein for the afternoon leg of their hikes.
• Each kid had only about three minutes for showers.
• The toilets were worse than those at camps of the National and State parks. ChiyoChan and GinnyChan would know since both of our families go camping. You might wonder, "How could they be worse?" It was that these weren't cleaned daily.
  
• The heater in one of the other girls' cabins broke down on Monday and wasn't fixed until Thursday. We had a cold snap last week
  
• Although parents and family were encouraged to write cards and letters to be given daily to the children from Tuesday to Thursday, some kids did not receive these until the Thursday.

ChiyoChan's own personal peeves were:

• One of the kids in her cabin snored and woke up frequently in the night. Most of the kids had bags under their eyes when morning came.
  
• There was some "interesting" graffiti in the cabin.
• The male counselors (who were assigned to the boys) "sang too much" on the bus.
• They played "An Extremely Goofy Movie" on the bus as their in-transit entertainment. (Tough luck kid, but not every parent would approve of "Monty Python and The Holy Grail" for 10-11 year-olds.)

My thoughts are that this program requires better oversight and should perhaps be overhauled. I think ChiyoChan learned more from our camping trips to Yosemite Valley, Tuolumne Meadows, Sequoia National Park, and Big Sur.

frankiii's 15cm floor Kaya Go set arrived in Champaign, IL, this evening according to his FedEx tracking numbers. Unless the weather becomes an issue, it should be delivered this Tuesday.