Rare systems register

It occurred to me that the classic computer community could more actively adopt the model used by car collectors to track survival, rarity, and provenance/history of their objects. Has this been tried? Say something like an HP 211x or early DEC PDPs register for instance? Has anyone had experience with the success, or utility of this type of thing? What got me thinking along these lines is the difference between perception and reality over the relative rarity and value of systems. People often make judgement calls base on personal affinities rather than anything empirical. I've noted the disparity between people saying like, 'wow a straight PDP 8', and opposed to ... 'ah that's just a Xerox word processor.' One measure is their presence in the marketplace. How many 860s do you really see compare to PDP8s? In my world I actually can put hands on three of the former and only one of the latter. Just an example of course, but we all talk about relative rarity with only production statistics to go on, and sometimes not even that. Oddly, sometimes that is a poor indicator of survival, and therefore rarity. Thoughts? "Zane H. Healy" <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote: -- Colin