On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:55:31 -0500
William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> wrote:
The point is not to actually give away the
collection, but to appoint
someone to give it away (or sell it).
That's it. A few years back a friend of
mine died. He had quite some
PeeCees, VAXen, PDP11s, Alphas, ... and some random "computer gear".
His family was lost in all this stuff. They had enough work to care
about the normal things like clothes, furniture, domestic
appliances, ... They didn't know what to do with all this "computers".
Some friends of the deceased person jumped in and liquidated all that
computer stuff for the family. We took everything away, "soled" some it
to our self or soled it on ebay. We returned the money to the family
to cover part of the furneral costs. The family was very glad and
thankfull to have this help.
My solution is to pick somebody who is knowledgeable about classic
computers, and shares some of my other interests too, both as executor and
prime beneificary (and I shall hopefully formalise this is a will before
it becomes necessary :-)). Said person knows that a C64 is as common as
dirt, whereas an HP9831 most certainly isn't. And that while a random book
on BASIC programming is quite likely to he uninteresting, an autograpphed
copy of 'Automatic Digital Computers' is something worth keeping. Since
I have no dependant family, this seems to be the most sensible solution.
Under UK law, you can't benefit from somebody's will if you are convicted
of murderign them (and I suspect it's the same in other countries), so
the chap has no incentive to bump me off. Not that he would...
-tony