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5150 for 335 $?!

mbbrutman said:
IBM handed out BIOS upgrades for earlier PC owners. It was needed for early network adapters that did remote booting, hard drives, and anything else that might have had a ROM BIOS extension. So it is entirely possible that an early machine could have a hard drive, but it was either booting from floppies or the BIOS of the machine had been upgraded.
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As noted yesterday, it was free, not for sale.
 
A side note to the original topic of this thread; the highest bid on this particular IBM PC has now rised from $335 to $455 with 25 hours to go.
 
Although one bidder with 61 positive feedbacks put in a $450 bid it seems? For what it is worth, people could have monitored eBay for years, know their stuff and typical value, but never participate in the bidding so they look like total newbies. The other three bidders registered their accounts in 2001, 2003 and 2004 but haven't used it much.

We'll see if there will be a last minute bid rally. If it already is considered much overbid, perhaps not much more will happen.
 
There was a broken 5150 in the UK at the end of July. The monitor was tested OK, but the computer was silent and didn't power up the monitor. It ended at £9.99. Another one sells an untested 5150 spare parts machine with a broken, aftermarket PSU. Despite being relisted several times, it hasn't received a bid, starting at £0.99.

Sure, you can't compare broken units or spare parts with a fully working computer in nice condition, but let's assume you could've combined the two above to one working 5150 in good condition for £12 + domestic shipping. That is quite less than $450 + overseas shipping. Dongfeng also wrote earlier in this thread that he had been offered a complete system for equal to $85. It would be a private deal, maybe special friend's price, but I dunno if the seller could get 3-4 times as much if sold on e.g. eBay UK.
 
carlsson said:
There was a broken 5150 in the UK at the end of July. The monitor was tested OK, but the computer was silent and didn't power up the monitor. It ended at £9.99. Another one sells an untested 5150 spare parts machine with a broken, aftermarket PSU. Despite being relisted several times, it hasn't received a bid, starting at £0.99.
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The seller that had the £9.99 machine actually had two, the other one ended up as mine ;) But for £9.99, mine also worked...

The seller with the untested 5150 with broken PSU and broken disk drive tried to sell it about 6 months ago. In the other auction he also stated that the mainboard had a blown capacitor, but when I asked him about it this time he simply said it was untested. Basically the only useful thing on that machine is the case.
 
I'm still chalking it up to the inexperience of the bidders. Of course, as for 'doing thier homework', I did search eBay's ended auctions, and only came up with two of them being offered in the past 60 dayz, one of which died without a bid ($399.00), and the other of which was a 16-64K board, and came with an expansion chassis as well. Someone else doing the same search might conclude that they are 'rarer' than they actually are.

--T
 
Sorry for spamming, but now it is $510, from a bidder who in the last two hours managed to complete another auction and gain one feedback point. :) What are the odds this one will end on $600+ and result in a dozen people go through their garages to find half functioning IBM PCs auctioned with starting bids at $300 in the next month?
 
Damn, I would accept that for my whole pre-PS/2 collection. Still waiting for a Kaypro craze to peddle my Kaypros which was a much more interesting and sexy machine IMHO and with Uniform could run Dos.

Lawrence W. :RB, Hrc, INF.
 
carlsson said:
Sorry for spamming, but now it is $510, from a bidder who in the last two hours managed to complete another auction and gain one feedback point. :) What are the odds this one will end on $600+ and result in a dozen people go through their garages to find half functioning IBM PCs auctioned with starting bids at $300 in the next month?
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That's not always a bad thing. Two Kenbak-1s popped up shortly after I bought mine on eBay. One may or may not have traded hands (the owner contacted me directly) but the other was an eBay sale as well.

Micom 2000 said:
Damn, I would accept that for my whole pre-PS/2 collection. Still waiting for a Kaypro craze to peddle my Kaypros which was a much more interesting and sexy machine IMHO and with Uniform could run Dos.
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Hehe. I'm not sure I'd accept money for anything I didn't want to sell, but at these prices my systems are more valuable than I thought.

What do you think an original 16K system with all IBM parts (2 5.25" drives, IBM 256K expansion card, IBM Mono card, IBM CGA card, etc,) DOS 1.0, Guide to Operations 1.0, BASIC Manual 1.0 would go for? :D
 
It's up to $530 with 15 hours left...17 bids!

There are seven different usernames listed in the Bid History...I think some of them might be sock puppets registered just to incite a bidding war...but who knows!

BTW, Terry: That $399.99 IBM 5150 was a buy-it-now, and since the price is listed in green, that means somebody actually laid down the $400 + S&H for that one. Looks like I need to prepare one or two 5150's for eBay pronto!
 
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Well, the front of the case says "Personal Computer", the back of the case says 5150...it has a severely upgraded PSU (150W) and a 20MB HDD...

What gets me is that he calls the PC an XT about a dozen times in the auction description...and calls the keyboard an ultra-rare XT keyboard to boot...

Heck, I'd bid on that one for the keyboard alone!
 
Erik said:
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What do you think an original 16K system with all IBM parts (2 5.25" drives, IBM 256K expansion card, IBM Mono card, IBM CGA card, etc,) DOS 1.0, Guide to Operations 1.0, BASIC Manual 1.0 would go for? :D
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Well my remaining PC other than my Inboard model is not the early 64k model, but I could likely come up with the 2 FH drives, likely a expansion card, and both video cards, even a FH black-face HD, and the rest including a still shrink wrapped Basic manual, not sure about the DOS 1.0 and including both relevent IBM monitors, not to mention a FH IBM1gig SCSI drive(never even tested it). But I do respect and fear the fickle tendencies of EBay. Sometimes even the extensiveness of your offerings is enough to scare off even the most intrepid bidders when they consider the actual cost of shipping.
 
Erik said:
I'm not sure I'd accept money for anything I didn't want to sell,
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Someone was interested to buy three quite uncommon VIC-20 cartridges from me. I'm not particularly interested to sell, but quoted him an insane price ($70+ each), and he said yes.. maybe.. next month. We'll see what happens.
 
LOL!
Price is really high, look now how many 5150's are on ebay now! About 9!

This thread should be moved to General Discussion I think...
 
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