Selling keyboards without the terminal

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Doc Shipley

    > You guys want people to stop scavenging those irreplaceable treasures?
    > Ante up, pure and simple. 

That works for keeping stuff out of the hands of scrappers (who are, after
all, business-people) - but not for fetishists who will pay totally
mind-blowing sums for them.

Sorry, I'm not paying $5K for _any_ keyboard. You can buy (for example) a
complete PDP-11/70 for that much money.


    > In the end, that system is worth twice as much as desoldered parts as
    > the best offer I got. 

But will _all_ of the constituent parts sell, or just some of them - the rest
being destined to sit on a shelf, un-sold, until they are pitched?

There's a similar debate in other areas of collection - e.g. antique Japanese
woodblock-printed books. One can usually make more money by taking them
apart, and selling them a page at a time, as opposed to selling them as
complete books. (At least all the pages do tend to sell.) Some people
consider this vandalism - destroying a 200-year old artifact to maximize $$.
I can't say they're wrong...

	Noel