Practical question on valuation of old systems

On 16 Nov 2006 at 23:35, Tony Duell wrote: Unfortunately, that's the problem for some of us geezers. We don't have "a few 10s of years" left on the warranty. A fellow I know of was a collector of model airplane engines (not the planes themselves, but just the engines). He'd spent a fair part of 20 years going to swap meets and dealing to get what he thought was a near-encyclopedic collection. Then he suddenly dropped dead from a cardiac episode. His "buddies" descended on his poor widow and cherry-picked his collection, paying the unknowledgeable spouse nickels or pennies on the dollar as regarded more-or-less established values. She didn't know a thing about airplane engines. The reverse can be true. After a tuba-playing friend of mine died, his widow asked me to help sell his instrument. I declined, even though a commission was offered. Why? Because when he purchased it, he told her a whopper--that his horn was worth $15,000 and he'd paid only $3500 for it. The instrument in question is neither out of current product nor is it considered to be rare. A fair market value for an excellent specimen might be $2500-2750. No way was I going to be the one to give her the bad news! Cheers, Chuck