Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
Dave McGuire wrote:
> On Dec 30, 2008, at 7:41 PM, William Donzelli wrote:
>>> Still, considering that someone snatched that one up with a
>>> buy-it-now
>>> option instead of waiting out the auction tells me that they aren't
>>> common on ebay either.
>>
There is no telling where these buyers come from. I'd sell some parts
of my collection to them at the prices they pay, and find other things.
Also this was probably a nice specimen if you really wanted a working
keypunch.
The one I found was in the Pennysaver here in Orange County, Ca, and a
friend called me about it, so it was overlooked long enough for someone
to actually call me about it.
>> Lots of people, including some of the
mainframe collectors (big guns),
>> still think that the 029s and 129s are really rare. I suspect they are
>> not looking past their screens. For those of us that are actually
>> doing the legwork, the things just come around.
>
I trolled at the TRW swap meet and some of the vendors there would come
to me with things they found I would like. Sometimes the items come
find you if you ask a lot of people, not the other way around.
If you think about it, these items are large and if the vendor realizes
what they have they may not store that well at the vendors location, so
they must be moved quickly before they get damaged or lost in the
operation for as much as possible. If you are lucky enough to have a
vendor remember you, you get a phone call, and get your treasure.
I fear that now with the new recycling frenzy going on to be "green"
that a lot of this simply is thrown in the pile and ground up, and lost.
The earlier efforts to recycle, such as the Kansas City Surplus Exchange
was nice in that the original operators would try to seek out people who
could pick out bits to save and find buyers for the equipment rather
than breaking it up.
I think now the mentality is to just grind everything back to its base
material and w/o brains, much the way that most operations are run these
days. The process is the driving force, and usually does not include
people who have unique skills, such as knowledge of old computers and
equipment to pick out bits and pieces.
I'd sure
like to know what planet you're on in which 029's "just
come around". Perhaps you'd be willing to share the wealth a bit? ;)
He's not that far from Poughkeepsie.
Peace... Sridhar