[Tropo-Bob (Bob)]

I am member, because this Forum helps me with my hobby. To take a recent example, I found Sirius B, after reading the helpful hints given in another post.

Also, when I buy new equipment, I now often seek opinions on expensive items first. In the pre-forum days, buying items was a bit of a lottery. I normally knew nobody who had the equipment and was it really what I wanted?

I notice that some people do churn equipment. I can relate to those who love their equipment, want to buy and see for themselves and then are prepare to cop a bit of a loss when they sell. It is almost like they just rented the equipment for a year or two while they tried it out.

The more professional buyers and sellers: Kinda OK, except I sometimes suspect they give opinions about equipment in Forums, which may be intended to praise the items that they wish to buy & sell. I normally check out the buy & sell stats on people offering interesting commentary on equipment and then disregard those made the few with a high sell records and few other posts.

Yeah, I do sometimes feel that the semi-professional buyers and sellers are disrupting the quality and authenticity of opinions given in equipment posts.