Considering Bidding (Apple Lisa in box on eBay)

Alexandre Souza wrote: The question is really how much is someone willing to pay for a Lisa like that. :-) Apparently ~$1K was the right price range, but the seller didn't want to part with it at that price, and wanted about 4-5x too much for it. Lisa 2's aren't really that rare - the unopened software (which, again, wasn't clearly listed), the original mouse, the packing materials, and the rare Desktop Calendar software were the only high priced factors there. IMHO, if you want a Lisa, get a run of the mill Lisa 2, ones whose NiCad battery pack has been removed before it leaked, and try to either find a working Profile drive, or one of the X/Profile replacements, then preemptively replace the large capacitors in the power supply. The X/Profiles are probably a better way to spend your money since they're far less likely to die anytime soon than a real Profile or Widget hard drive. - Yeah, a working Widget drive is rare, but it's unlikely it'll last a very long time, and so far we don't have a way to low-level format them. There is a way to low level format Profile drives if you also have an Apple III (or II) with the Profile card and the proper ROM and software (which at some point was available on the net.) But right now, there's no such thing for Widget drives. So once the sync/ID markers on the tracks go bad, you can't fix them even if the media itself isn't damaged. So while Widgets are great things, practically speaking, you're better off with a Profile, or X/Profile, or building an IDE::File. A Lisa 2 in good working condition with an X/Profile will still cost roughly $1000, and you won't get the unopened software, original mouse and packing materials. So it's less of a collectors' item, but far more reasonably priced. But you'll get a very usable Lisa 2 which you can enjoy for many years, and they're still wonderful machines. Sadly, perfection is very expensive.