What is " lowball"

I myself saw an ad for a pair of Straight wire interconnects for 75.00 OBO. I contacted the seller and made an offer of 65.00. He did get back to me with a very somewhat nasty email claimimng he was selling for 75.00. I wrote back that if he was insulted? Than to darn bad his ad said OBO and that gave me the right to make an offer.

Why get aggravated? If you get aggravated over whether or not an offer is a lowball, do you really want to do business together? Nasty email/no email/lousy offer--my answer is the same. Chill out, put on some tunes, and find a deal elsewhere.

No Don, I, for one, would not agree.

Viridian, I'm not sure I understand your viewpoint, and I want to. As an example, let's say twelve CD players of identical make and model have sold within three months for an average of X dollars. One sold for 20% less than X and another sold for 20% more than X, but the other ten sold for +/- 5% of X. Would you agree that the market has determined the value of the CD player to be X? And, if this is the market value, then wouldn't an offer of 50% of X be "lowball"? Or, are you suggesting that the market value is determined anew each time one of these CD players comes up for sale, and the offer of 50% of X is just a starting point to determine the new value?

Yes Tvad, I am suggesting that, with a limited pool of buyers for a specialist product, the market determines a "spot" price for the item, which is different for each like item sold depending on the supply and demand at the time of the sale.
Marty