Are you sitting down?

You're going to want to. =-D All right, it's not THAT earth shattering but here's the scoop. I have in my garage: (1) PDP-11/34 with RK05j and RK05f (1) PDP-11/84 with RA80 and TU80 (3) PDP-8/I, one with high speed paper tape punch reader and one with DECTape (1) ASR-33 which goes with the 8/Is RSX-11 manual set, full schematic print sets for the 8/Is, OS8 and other utilities and things on paper tape and several manuals for the 8/Is. There is also lots of miscellaneous stuff that goes with these including some spare parts etc. I would like these machines to leave my garage, preferably all at the same time, and travel to someone else's place who has: 1. Enough space to give them a permanent home 2. Enough time to restore and preserve them as they SHOULD BE 3. Enough love for them to not turn them into some kind of weird investment scheme for EBay 4. ...and Enough money to bring an appropriately sized vehicle with a lift gate to Des Moines, Iowa to retrieve them BUT, before I do this, this is an important transfer and it's VERY important to me that these machines end up somewhere they'll be loved and appreciated by someone who understands what it takes to care for them and feed them. I understood this when I got them. Fortunately, my career went in an unexpectedly profitable direction that unfortunately leaves me with inadequate time in the foreseeable future to restore these beautiful machines. I want to see them get restored and be preserved properly, which I just don't see myself being able to do. I feel I need to stick to smaller machines, like S100 boxes etc that are within the boundaries of what I can reasonably do. At any rate, I intend to only sell these to someone on ClassicCmp. They will NOT appear on Ebay, Usenet or any other forum frequented by people who are not necessarily collectors. The 8/Is are 3 out of a set of just under 4000 ever produced. I am not interested in some investment weasle grabbing these to put on Ebay. So, with that in mind, I would like to recupe (sp?) at least enough money to cover my costs in retrieving them. Would it be better, in your minds, to auction these to ClassicCmp members or to set what I feel is a fair price and see where things go from there? Which would be more ethical? My costs were about $700 all told, just to be totally honest about it. I'd like ideas, suggestions, etc. If anyone REALLY, REALLY wants these and just know you have to have them, and you have the above characteristics and you have money, trades, etc. I'm willing to consider that too. Basically, I just want to do the right thing by these machines and end up breaking even either financially or in some way that makes me feel that it was all worthwhile. Thanks... Anthony Clifton PS: I'm not getting out of collecting. I just think it's more realistic for me to focus on S100 boxes, CP/M machines, MicroVaxen and MicroPDP type machines...given my time constraints.