1 Feb
1999
1 Feb
'99
11:09 a.m.
Hi,
At Sat, 30 Jan 1999 06:25:14, Derek Peschel wrote:
There are calculator-collecting lists out there, for
both mechanical and
early electronic calculators. I'm tempted not to say this... calculator
collecting so far has been a very quiet hobby. (I hope it stays that way!)
Hmmm, I suppose that depends on your point of view. With the
"collector's guide" for pocket calcs coming out in '97, and the
message traffic of stuff for sale on some of the web sites,
seems to me there is quite a lot of interest in pocket calcs and
prices are going up very quickly. I've been active in this stuff
now for about a year & a half. I see lots of new names bidding
on calc stuff each month, FWIW.
That doesn't mean things are cheap, or that you can
always find what you
want. But the list I'm on has very light traffic and a very high S/N ratio.
Very true, I'm not sure why there isn't much traffic on the lists.
I know quite a few folks who collect calcs, and there seems to be
a lot of private e-mail exchanged, but not nearly the volume of postings
as on this list, for instance.
The Web sites I've seen are informative and rather
"gentlemanly". Use of
eBay doesn't seem to be encouraged.
Seems like the trend is towards eBay, however - on the web sites
that provide calculator classifieds it seems like more & more of
the calcs for sale are listed on eBay rather than at a fixed price.
Now... to bring this message back ON-TOPIC, can anyone
suggest some URL's
or a mailing list for collectors of _electronic_ calculators? I already
know about the MOSCOW site, but others might not. And I'm sure there are
other interesting resources out there!
Well, another calc-related URL is for my site:
Calculator History & Technology Archive
http://aknight.home.mindspring.com/calc.htm
I have a bunch more calculator links on my site, and am a part of
the Web ring that Andrew set up.
FWIW, I'd set up an "egroups" list for calculator discussions
and you'll see a link to that from my web site, but there has
been no traffic and due to the difficulty of using egroups I
may discontinue it altogether.
On my site right now I'm leaning more towards coverage of early desktop
calculators - they seem to have more in common with classic computers
(particularly micros) than do the pocket calcs, and plan to expand
coverage to certain early computer stuff as I can. One of these
day's I'll show ya'll the insides of my H9 terminal, man what a lot
of ICs. Maybe even my homebrew pre-PC 8086 machine...
Regards,
Alex