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My Altair 8800b turnkey with floppy drives and Beehive terminal

myOldAltair

Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2012
Messages
12
Location
Los Angeles
Hi everyone, I'm new here. Thought you might like to see some pics of my Altair. My dad acquired it in the early 80's from a company that went out of business and we've had it ever since. He said it worked and he wrote programs on it. We still have many floppy disks and handwritten logs of something or other and manuals that say MITS and Pertec. Any idea how much its worth? I put it in the for sale section and will try ebay maybe. Thanks for your input.
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I'm suprised others on here didn't try and trade family members or organs for it.
Looks amazing, best of luck with the auction.
 
All the offers were via PM but he settled for auction format to be fair. j/k Anyway, here's the auction.. BTW, you'll get a trickle of bids leading up to the end but just so you know the real bids will start during the last few minutes of the auction. Good luck! (you won't need it)
 
barythrin, thanks for linking to the auction. I am a little nervous about starting it at 88 cents but hopeful I'll get a good price, whatever that may be. I got some very good interest and offer but just feel that the auction is the best determinant of what its value truly is. Thanks again everyone at this forum.
 
Heh, not quite. I hope we don't give your hopes up but you do have the largest audience looking and able to bid so you should get a good value no matter. Values go up and down and sometimes are completely surprising. A turnkey 8800b with no accessories went for $2200 a month or so ago, later another regular here put a very nice 8800b (non-turnkey) WITH a floppy up and it only sold for just under $1700 which is honestly a steal and way under the norm. No idea why either it was a great auction with pictures and details.

The only oddity like I said is weight which does restrict the bidding a little, although if anyone wants it bad enough they'll pay to freight it (if possible) or road trip it and get it themselves (probably the best option). I think about the only way it could be any better would be if it was a front panel Altair but in all reality the turnkey was the practical and historically sound way to go, so it has it's rightful place in history and any collection.

I'd love to come across the table some day, as well as one of the tables for the trs-80 model II series. Actually, I would just love (wife wouldn't) some more computer/furniture heh.. Cray 1 (yeah right), formica pdp system, Honeywell kitchen computer.. etc.
 
Well, interesting. I'm surprised it only ended at $2,090.00. Was it anyone here that one by chance? I would guess that the weight had a consideration in the end pricing, driving from here to there would have still run me personally probably ~$600 or so in gas, not counting hotel costs. I know shipping seemed to be in a higher ballpark than that.
 
12 bidders, 10 of them did not want to pay more than ~$1503, that seems to be a more reliable valuation than the final price.
 
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