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What is an IBM Series/1 Worth?

Well they are rare, niche machines, but that doesn't make them valuable....
... bottom line is that computers don't have any intrinsic value. If it was a silver salver, then the silver has a scrap value, a clean diamond, then again a value you can write down...
.. but an IBM Series/1? Well its intrinsic value is that of the scrap metal, which, it it is in heavy racks might be significant. In fact the racks might be worth more that the machine.

Looking deeper, they were specialist machines. They speak SNA not TCP/IP (as far as I know there was no TCP/IP). The software was always licenced so none has escaped onto the internet.
.. in my personal opinion its value is probably little more than its scrap value, but the vendor will say "it cost $10,000 new how can that be so" well ask him what a 20 year old pizza delivery truck is worth...
 
Brings back memories, I went to a "few" days of training on the Series/1 back when it was a new thing. Our CDC division supported the CDC OEM disks. particularly the 9762/9766 models, that were everywhere in the late 70's, including hooked up to some Series/1 systems. I remember writing a series/1 assembly program to echo characters to/from a non-ibm crt terminal.

If a series/1 turned up in my vicinity I could get mildly interested in it.
 
Every Series/1 I ever encountered was being used in some kind of real-time application such as manufacturing process control or SCADA. I understand it was possible to run Unix for smaller general purpose computing installs but IBM sales people vigorously encouraged small system customers to choose something in the System/34 line due to the built-in support for business computing.

I am an IBM collector but I would be reluctant to find storage for a Series/1 even if it was free.
 
I never saw one with UNIX, but there was also RPS and EDX. They were really useful for Interfacing to S/370 because you could get channel cards. We used them to get X.25 networking traffic into VM before SNA was available in VM. Yale used them to connect multiple types of ASCII terminals into S/370 making them look like 3270. IBM later produced the 7171 which did the same but was cheaper...
 
NeXT said:
Quick research keeps pulling up that one lady in the UK who found one in storage and made the rounds in the press about it going for sale on ebay. The original listing is https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/272586383279 however it appears that even with the media buzz it failed to sell at £5,000.00.
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She is still trying to sell it, or was a few months ago. Now on facebook...

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/569770000153187/

and the price has gone up. I would say she is totally insane.
 
I mean, I love the cleanliness of the front panelling and IBM's subtle design themes but that's just not the kind of money I would pay for such a system, even on this side of the pond.
 
It is part of the confusion "rare<>valuable". With software and terminals, I suspect someone might be interested but other than museum hardware it is just a floor space filler. IBM was into obsoleting machines around this time. It was the way it was done.
Dwight
 
I had an interesting message from my brother today - it turns out he knows the woman with the Series/1 and she is still trying to shift it. Having failed to get £5000 for it for 7 years now I suspect she might take significantly less for it but I have no idea just how much less. I'm mildly interested myself but just don't have anywhere to put it at the moment. Thought I'd poke this thread in case anyone's interested and would like to make an offer!
 
i don't think there's a single piece of surviving software for the series/1 so any potential buyers would have a hell of a time getting anything running... fancy writing your own OS?
 
Commodus_Imperator said:
I am trying to buy an IBM Series/1 on Craigslist, but I do not know what it is worth. Does anyone have any idea of its value?

Thank you
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Based on what I've seen, depending on the system config and peripherals, somewhere between $500 and $2000 would be reasonable. $2000 would have to include an IBM terminal of the era, disk drives, etc to be worth that price.
 
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