Re: [Completed Voyager] Collection Announcement Message #4 Posted by Walter B on 30 June 2006, 2:13 a.m., in response to message #3 by Palmer O. Hanson, Jr.
You are lucky to find such calculators in garage sales so often. Enjoy!
Here in good old Germany, HP calcs were far less popular at their time. Dominant reason was they were quite more expensive than in USA and people were travelling overseas far less than today. For a reason I don't remember, TI priced their equivalent calcs always considerably lower than HP, gaining a good share at universities, even in branches where a calc was a bare need and used extensively, so quality could show. Most HPs were therefore bought by companies (which disposed them after some years, directly into the garbage bin), or by professors and scientists at universities and institutes, where they tended to run down the hierarchy until breakdown.
The only vivid market for used calcs I remember here was in the late Seventies and early Eighties, when new models quickly outperformed previous ones. So, when I found I needed (and could pay) a repaired HP25C to replace my TI SR 50, and later, when I bought a new HP11C, both times I found some younger student to take my old calc for a reasonable price still, although far less than the price I paid years before. BTW, I found my customers by placing a paper (!) note with a photo print cut out of a paper (!) ad on a huge wooden (!) blackboard below our central cafeteria on the campus, stating my office phone number - no internet nor cell phones, kiddies!!
The probability to find a vintage HP on a "Flohmarkt" (flea market, corresponding to your garage sales) here and now is < 1E-04. I've never seen one there so far.
Edited: 30 June 2006, 2:21 a.m.
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