On 12/04/2012 02:03 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: ...or, playing devil's advocate here, rich people with a much better idea of an item's value than this (notoriously over-the-top cheap) crowd. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On 12/04/2012 01:23 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: You have to stir up a feeding frenzy based around some vague notion of whatever you have to sell being somehow ground-breaking or "first". It seems to help if examples of your crap have been seen in a movie or two as well.

And how do you define 'value'? I know how _I_ define the vlaue of soemthing like this. It's in terms of how much enjoyment I wil lget out of it. So an Applie 1 is worth about $10 to me. On the other hand I recently bid a few hundred dollars for a part of an HP peripehral for one of my m,achines (and fortunately got it for much less) becuase that would provide many hours of entertainment. -tony

On Tue, 4 Dec 2012, Tony Duell wrote: I thought that the value of an Apple 1 was already preset at 2/3 of a thousand dollars (penny truncated, not rounded) I think that it is prob'ly worth that.

Sure, these are criteria that affect the value for most 'collectables' (Acutallly, isn't just about anything collactable?). But they don't, IMHO, expalin why the Apple 1 gets such a high price Yes, the Apple 1 is rare. But not _that_ rare, given the numebr that seem to turn up for sale. I can certainyl name rarer machines (3 of whcih I can see from where I am sitting) wehich don't attract anything like that sort of price. I can't beleive that many people are nostalgc for an Apple 1. Not that many people had them when they were new. And therefore IMHO it is not a culturally significant machien _otehr than the fact it was the first machine madee by Apple, a company which is still going_. Which tends ot mean cosnmetic condiiton. Seems ot make very littile difference. Most collectors don't care, they would never turn it on anyway. Hackers don't care eitehr, they can fix it. Yes, for some odd reaso nhis is important. I have never understood why, other than presuambly ahving the machien and box is less common than having the machine, so a boxed one is rarer. Does that make much difference. Hackers who want to run the machine will get the manuals from bitsavers or wherecer. Otherwise, having the manuals makes it rarer, I guess -tony

On 12/5/2012 1:48 PM, Tony Duell wrote: having a complete artifact is important. It is accepted practice to require the original packing, and a statement as to whether it is opened or not (Irrelevant here, but important in cases of a lot of toys, and "collectibles") This would include any documentation that would have come with the original shipment. It is likely that technical documents, etc., might be classified differently for collection purposes as a separate item from the item itself. Such as the original prototype, development notes, and other things that would make an article stand out from the normal stream. Also provenance as to ownership by someone noted and associated with the item. such as if Wozniak or Jobs had a special pet Apple 1, and office / development notes. I suspect with the hype around the Apple 1 it would improve the value, but such things may decrease the value in other cases. Like an autographed book with a generic signature from the author is more valuable than one with a personalized sentiment, unless the person so addressed is useful too. jim