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Re: Apple III - price check
On 2011-11-17 10:12:16 -0700, Mike Maginnis said:
On 2011-11-17 01:29:22 -0700, Moose said:
I'm negotiating to buy my first Apple III and wanted to check price
ranges before laying down the cash.
Anyone know what an Apple III complete and working might be worth ?
What about non-working ?
TIA. :)
As with most vintage computer stuff, it really depends on the condition
of the unit, the "extras" and what you want to do with it.
Assuming it's in good working order, how much memory does it have?
128K, 256K or the hard-to-find 512K add-on? Does it have a ProFile
drive? Is it a 12V or 5V machine? Does it have the clock mod and/or
the interlace mod installed? Does it have any peripheral cards? Does
it come with a monitor? If so, is it the standard Monitor /// or an
RGB monitor?
If you just want it to sit there on your desk and look cool when
friends come over, 128K is probably just fine. Most useful
applications require 256K if you want to do anything with it, though.
The UPIC and ProFile controller cards are the most commonly found these
days. Other cards are harder to locate and are worth more (Titan
emulators, Mcrosoft Softcards, etc) and third party addons from
companies such as Micro-Sci and ON THREE tend to be more rare than
add-ons directly from Apple, as most of that stuff was produced after
Apple discontinued the III and was produced in low numbers.
And a couple more things to think about.
If you're getting this from a "collector" standpoint, you're probably
going to want the earliest version that you can get your hands on, so
in that case, an unmodified 12V machine with 128K is going to be more
desirable. Those tended to be the ones with all the problems that made
the III so infamous.
A 12V machine with a serial number lower than 14000 is extremely rare,
as Apple recalled and replaced almost all of them because of those
problems. Finding a working one may be nearly impossible at this point.
For usability and reliabiltiy, a 5V 256K III is probably what you want.
The III+ is the most capable of the family obviously, but because they
were only on the market for about 4 months, they are rare and tend to
fetch more than the standard IIIs.
And I forgot to mention that having at least one external 5.25" drive
makes life much easier when dealing with the III. You can daisy-chain
up to three external drives to the main unit.
--
- Mike
Podcast: http://open-apple.net
Scans: http://apple2scans.net
Blog: http://6502lane.net