@PuertoLibre: Auctioning something on Ebay when you are done with it is not immoral.
I consider doing business and leaving someone on uneven footing to be
immoral. That is the moral standard set forth in my mindset. I realize there are many others out there who are not sharing that standard.
What about those who want rather than need? Why is selling a beanie baby on eBay immoral?
If they are aware of the intent that the device is being bought for isn't going to produce what they want then the sale is immoral.
A beanie baby is a beanie baby. Unless it is damaged or not as described, it is conforming.
Someone who buys a miner with a very obvious expectation (and is advertised as such) of making bitcoins should know what they are getting themselves into and why you are selling it.
If you are offloading then you know it is a lemon. If the other person buying it is expecting profit equal to or superior to the price they paid, then they do not know you are selling them a lemon.
This is the type of stuff you learn as a kid. How not to screw others because it has ongoing consequences. In other words conducting a sale on good terms and with good faith. That seems to be a foreign concept to many dealing in Bitcoin...it appears.
It has no value other than how much a person wants to own it. A public auction is a fair method to dispose of things.
Again, it's right there in your own writing.
You said "dispose". What does that tell you about what your selling?
I had a laser printer that was large, loud, expensive to run and wanted nothing more to do with it. However, there was nothing wrong with it functionally. It 'lasered' and scanned and networked just fine, so to speak. Someone who needed a large laser printer/scanner for their office snatched it up for what I felt was more than it was worth. It was also for a lot less than professional printers can be has new. I don't think that was an immoral transaction, I just think someone else could get more value out of it than I could.
Your opinion is projected unto the object.
You named annoyances and cost to operate. It otherwise operates as the buyer intends to make use of it.
From the way you are writing you sold it off at a deep discount. Keep in mind that miners are being sold at above their online retail price. People expect the miners to produce bitcoins.
In ebay ads with miners in them, there are two polarities in listing types:
1) Either absolutely nothing is said about profitability or anything specific to that end. They just post they have it and end of story.
2) They talk about it's various features and how it is a money printing machine. But usually fail to say how much it is expected to print.
You know why people go to ebay to discharge their miners. Because they couldn't otherwise get a "too high a price" for it, if they tried to sell it among us "who know better" on BitCoinTalk.
They go to the corner of the internet where they barely have enough sense to rub two brain cells together.
The flipping of pre-orders is low. But bitcointalk.org is not the entire market anymore. As long as the auction starts at a fair price and full disclosure is made as to the state of the product, there is nothing inherently immoral about using Ebay. That is to say, it is possible to make a moral transaction of mining equipment using ebay.
Full disclosure often does not happen with miners.
People often seem to sell them but they don't do what they buyer has intended. Some are so disgraceful that they even say they will delay sending it for weeks after the miner has been bought because they are "busy mining with it". LMFAO.
Creating a marketing scheme to paint a rosy picture of a bleak scenario in order to move product at inflated prices is immoral.
"Passively" Auctioning something in the hopes that it will go for an absurd and non-useful price to the other person is immoral. (my standard may not be yours)
Whatever the reason, the sellers and distributors knew what they were doing.
They even defend their practices vehemently to this day. Shielding themselves under many pretenses that "the impossible" or a "miracle" might happen for their customers to get a useful intended purpose out of their resold miner....at too high a price.
Most of the blades were auctioned here. So I consider that selling into an informed (if not rational) market.
Well, there are also people buying BFL 600Gh/s blades. So not everyone is educated. We both know that much.
There is a caveat with the USB miners. Selling one or two as a novelty item is fine. Like numismatic coins that contain a little gold, they are a terrible investment, but are shiny and pretty. I bought a gold plated buffalo coin for far more than it was worth, because my daughter wanted one. Also, the USB sticks are a reasonable way to democratize the bitcoin network. Selling them at 2BTC was ludicrous, but I could see $40 or so being reasonable.
People made a small fortune from reselling them at ludicrous prices.
Resellers who were stuck with merchandise when the price was suddenly lowered were throughly looking for "a fast moving idiot" to sell it to at a high enough price to buy the new stock at the lower price point.
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Someone please, help Josh! 
