eightbit, the tough part wasn't so much responding to user messages but rather keeping track of which users were interested in which items. I received messages from different users that made offers on between 5 and 10 items. Frequently, there was some overlap in the list of items different users were interested in purchasing. It quickly became apparent that this approach would be incredibly difficult to manage efficiently. For example, a user would offer, "$100 for the following 6 items." However, other users may have also been interested in a subset of those items (fyi - everyone seems to want the Indus GT drive). I didn't want to have a long exchange of emails with each user to narrow down the list of items that were still available and then agree upon a new price. I suspect if users only made offers on a single item at a time that may have made things simpler.
I don't particularly like eBay as I think their fees are ridiculously high. I chose to go that route because I can list individual items at my pace, as my time permits. Their system will handle the offers, payment, and shipping details automatically. Whether I were to sell the items here or on eBay, I would still need to find the time to package and ship the items. Either way, these historically significant items will hopefully still end up in the hands of Atari enthusiasts and collectors rather than in the recycling bin.
I'm not really sure why you think my original post was BS. Why would anyone pretend to want to sell some vintage computer gear, test most of those items, photograph all of those items, upload those photos, created a detailed spreadsheet, and then .... nothing? It makes no sense. The honest truth is as I laid it out in my original post. All of this Atari gear was my fathers (I grew up using much of it). He can no longer use it. My mother planned to get rid of it all. Being a computer enthusiast myself (non-Atari, sorry folks) I didn't want to see my fathers favorite thing (his collection of Atari gear accumulated over 40 years) brought to the electronics recycler. It just didn't seem right. I thought this forum would be the best way to redistribute my father's collection but it got complicated fast.
Again, sorry if anyone was disappointed with the way my original post turned out. My original intentions were, and still are, genuine. This just wasn't going to work for me but I didn't realize that until after I started getting offers.