A lot of us put less value on IIes today because of how cheap they were not too long ago. I got three of them for nothing from a schoolteacher nine years back (who had wanted to give me a dozen but I didn't have the room for them). These IIes came with monitors, floppy drives, mice, serial cards, the works. They were enhanced but there was a platinum in there too. I kept one of the enhanced machines and got rid of the others. Around the same time, IIes went for a buck or two on eBay and often went in bulk lots for very little. Shipping was high, of course, but the low cost kept complete systems at $50 or less, usually more like $35 unless there was a printer included.
Once school surplus had been depleted, IIes stopped showing up on eBay all the time. Because of the scarcity, sellers starting raising prices. This is especially true for those selling former home machines, which tend to be valued higher both by collectors looking for examples in nice shape and also by the folks selling them. (Of course, if the machine is from your alma mater, you may value it more, as I do with my Mac Classic). School surplus started dwindling away to nothing about three years ago once all the IIes from schools had been retired (many chugged on well into the 2000s in classrooms, especially in areas such as math support where the large software library worked to the advantage of the teachers--they could find a program that would focus on a particular skill a student was struggling with or wanted extra practice in). There are still a few II series machines in schools today--I saw a IIGS in use in a learning support room last year--but given the small number of these computers you'll never find them in the same number or at the same price level as you did in the early 2000s.
Once school surplus had been depleted, IIes stopped showing up on eBay all the time. Because of the scarcity, sellers starting raising prices. This is especially true for those selling former home machines, which tend to be valued higher both by collectors looking for examples in nice shape and also by the folks selling them. (Of course, if the machine is from your alma mater, you may value it more, as I do with my Mac Classic). School surplus started dwindling away to nothing about three years ago once all the IIes from schools had been retired (many chugged on well into the 2000s in classrooms, especially in areas such as math support where the large software library worked to the advantage of the teachers--they could find a program that would focus on a particular skill a student was struggling with or wanted extra practice in). There are still a few II series machines in schools today--I saw a IIGS in use in a learning support room last year--but given the small number of these computers you'll never find them in the same number or at the same price level as you did in the early 2000s.