Selling keyboards without the terminal

[Ian Primus]

Ugh - this is super frustrating to see. Especially since I have a 3101
here with no keyboard. And the reason *why* it has no keyboard? It got
bought out from under me. I bought this terminal, complete, on eBay.
It arrives... with no keyboard. I complained to the seller, he
refunded all my money and just said, basically "Sorry, someone gave me
a whole lot of money for the keyboard alone, you can keep the
terminal".... Great. So, now I have a useless terminal on my shelf
waiting for me to get extremely lucky and find the missing keyboard.

What's even worse is this wasn't even the first time this happened to
me. I have an Infoton here that's missing it's keyboard for the exact
same reason.

Collecting computer terminals has gotten horribly frustrating, and
really, these keyboard scalpers have sucked a lot of the fun out of
the hobby for me.

-Ian
On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 11:34 AM Bill Degnan via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> Here is a great example of why the keyboards and terminals are getting
> separated
>
> https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-3101-beam-spring-keyboard-purchased-new-in-1982/123422383512?hash=item1cbc8c1d98:g:sCkAAOSwfbhbwQvU
>
> Note the price $2000 so far.  How could one blame the seller.  I wonder if
> this is the terminal I sold to a buyer in California years ago when I sold
> my Series/1 computer.  All he wanted was the terminal, I donated the rest
> to what was the MARCH museum.  At the time I remember having a few words
> with the buyer who would not also take the Series/1 system (2 racks) or the
> manuals.
>
> There is a naked terminal up for grabs if you're out his way.
>
> Bill