Re: price on //e

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article buggie@ben07.unm.edu (stephen e buggie) writes...

>Mitchell Spector (spec@vax2.concordia.ca) wrote:
>In article Tom Kruesel <cmu320@freenet.mb.ca> writes...
>>
>>>Am buying one for a friend.  What's a //e and 80 col. card
>>>worth?  (Cpu only)
>
>>    Most of the time they're given away free (one school out
>>here in Montreal was trying to get rid of over 100 Apple IIe
>>computers, and in the end sent them to a recycling plant--I
>>did try my best get them donated to a charity, though I doubt
>>they followed my advise). If you want to know how much it is
>>worth, I would say roughly about $5.
>
>When the price drops this low, its all a matter of the seller's give-away
>philosophy.   Certainly, a working IIE is _worth_ more than five bucks!

    It is all too often people obscure the difference between a
computer's MONETARY WORTH and its actual WORTH to the USER. The
two are very often quite conflicting. Personally, my Apple IIe
holds more worth to me than five or so one dollar bills--and for
that reason I'm not about to sell mine--but I certainly don't
carry any illusions about what it is worth if I did try and sell
it.

    Truthfully, a bare-bones Apple IIe CPU box is worth about
$5 (sure I could take it apart and sell individual pieces as
parts, but I could make the same arguement about a rusty old
car that's being sold for scrap; and no, I'm not making a direct
comparison here). If you add a floppy drive, a couple of slot
cards and a monitor it is worth more, maybe $15 or so. An
Apple IIgs isn't exactly worth a much either these days, and
it is no surprise when you have more powerful 32-bit computers
(PCs/Macs) equipped with hardrives and VGA class monitors
selling for around $50+. I often see 286 AT's with 3.5 and 5.25
drives, 1 MB+ RAM and 40 MB hardrives selling for $5 each (I
turned up a 386DX-25 for $5 myself), so it is no surprise people
are now giving away old 8-bit machines like the IIe. How do
you justify an Apple IIe or IIgs being worth the same (or even 
more) than a 386/486 machine or a high-end 68K Mac?

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca