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wow!

This auction has had an unexpected religeous effect on me. I've gotten on my knees and prayed to win the Lottery. Admittedly, it's praying to win the Lottery, but it's gotten me on my knees to pray.

tachyon
 
This is a pretty neat deal although the only machine that I can see that really makes me drool is the Scelbi. There are certainly some other very cool boxes, but that one is over the top! :)

The real problem is that the collection is HUGE. How do you safely transport that much gear for under 5 figures?

Erik
 
$99,000? Isn't that a bit nuts?

Would cost a mint just to move them all, plus where would you put them?
 
Well, it's over 600 machines of various descriptions. The Scelbi, two MITS Altairs with MITS 8" Disk systems, IMSAI 8080's with IMSAI Disks, Apple Lisa (no suffix, just a Lisa), a pristine Exidy Sorceror and many of the other machines sell for quite a bit these days.

If you want to see more detail on what they have, browse to http://www.thepcmuseum.net/

Moving it would indeed be difficult and costly.

Plus the $99,000 starting bid isn't even meeting the reserve...

All in all, if I were filthy, stinking rich, I'd be on it in a heartbeat. Since I'm not, it's woken the nascent religeon in me.

tachyon[/url]
 
If I was filthy stinking rich i would still buy only the machines and hardware I liked one piece at a time (since money is no object and it's more fun to do it that way).
 
If the purpose were just to collect miscellaneous pieces of hardware, that might be the case, but this collection is is just as significant as a collection as it is as various pieces of hardware.

Advanced Computer Products has been a mail order computer dealer and sometimes parts supplier since the infancy of the microcomputer revolution. Mr. Freeman has been the owner for these many years, and many of his items have histories that are actually verifiable, to wit, the Morrow cards and components could very well have been delivered to ACP by George Morrow himself. Bill Godbout might have delivered or tinkered with the various S-100 machines since it's not that far from Godbout's corporate digs in the early 80's, especially during the Oakland Airport days. Steve Jobs could have brought the Apple /// or Lisa by to get the store to sell them. Some of the computers and software donated over the years might have been carried in by employees of various companies.

A collection like this is more than a collection of individual machines that are interchangeable with other machines throughout the world. It's a delicate web of machines and their relationships with people and to each other that have influenced the development of the world we live in today.

tachyon
 
Its also not much of an acomplishment to just buy a whole collection compared to getting them piece by piece, and your collection will always be known as the freemen collection.
 
I still wonder why The Freeman PC Museum doesn't put a note on their own web page that the collection is for sale to a serious buyer. Rather, it is auctioned on eBay, which I doubt is the place to find a $100,000 worth of museum buyer. Now the first round of bidding has ended, so we'll see if it gets relisted in a few weeks or if they find other channels to find a new caretaker.

And yes, while the collection includes some really odd and rare pieces of computing, I also found it lacks several of the machines I personally would be interested in if I had the money and space to seriously collect. Some of their machines also are in a hacked state (like the VIC-20 with a C64c keyboard). :)
 
eBay is probably the easiest and quickest way to let people know you are selling something. I am sure people who are interested could have contacted the seller directly when it didn't sell the first time around.
 
The point I tried to make is that not all potential buyers may follow eBay (or get tips from friends about ongoing auctions), but maybe that is exactly what all collectors do these days; have a close eye on Internet auction sites, user forums etc.

Somehow, a collection of this size - and it has been mentioned it will be the "Freeman collection" even when someone else owns it - seems more like an investment than an addition or basis for an own collection. Or maybe I underestimate the economical and practical means of the biggest collectors? 8)

BTW: Yes, the collection is relisted again. Twice even:

September 29th, $49000:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5127486984
October 2nd, $49000:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5128227798
 
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