Re: Fake HP calculators on eBay? Message #26 Posted by uhmgawa on 17 Sept 2010, 8:19 p.m., in response to message #1 by Peter Matthews
Quote: I just bought an 11C over eBay and received it.
Congratulations.
Quote: It looks pretty "fake" to me. I have an 11C which I bought originally in the 1980s. This "mint" one I just received seems to work functionally but the whole thing looks fake.
I studied your pics fairly closely. I don't see anything
obvious on the calc which screams out fake. The sleeve looks
a bit different compared to the disintegrating 16C's garb I
have here. Then again I just bought a 15C which arrived in
a sleeve too good for the number of years it has presumably
been on the planet, so go figure. The heat sealed edge on
the mouth of your sleeve looks to be spaced a tad far from the
open edge compared to what I've seen, but that's hardly
conclusive.
Quote: The HP calculator cover is too new. And it has the HP logo on both sides. The material is too rubbery.
The "new" 12C vinyl sleeves sport an HP logo on both sides.
But the material itself is nothing like the vintage voyager
sleeves and IMHO could easily have been recycled from "free
gift" Harbor Freight duffel bags.
Quote: The 11C itself is too clean for such an old calculator. I can't really tell but the keys don't SEEM to be double-shot to me. I don't have my original 11C with me right now but I am comparing it against a vintage 12C and it just does not look "right" to me.
AFAICT for the legacy voyagers, the double shot mold is that of the key
body and the white central legend. The blue sub-legend is printed on
a key's diagonal facet. Get a 10x jeweler's loupe (which is probably
a required tool at this point) and have a close look at a key. You can
clearly see the molding seam between alternate mold injected portions,
contrasted with the surface deposited blue paint of the lower legends.
Compare to that to the current vintage 12C which has been cost
reduced to the point of criminality, where all legends are printed.
Quote: I am wondering if there's a market now for knocking off these vintage calculators by creating them from the factory that makes the modern 12C and sell them for high prices on eBay.
I hope so, as I'd like to buy a few at the presumed knock off prices.
Particularly if China, Inc. produced an accurate knock-off of
a 15C build on a 12C AT91SAM7L128 frame. I doubt that wish will be realized as
sadly there just aren't enough voyager geeks to justify a market.
Quote: I don't want to rip out the rubber feet to open it and check the insides but it also feels slightly heavier than the 12C and what I remember of my original 11C.
Toss it on a jewelery scale and quantify it. I don't have an 11C but
this is what I can offer for those I do:
hp-15C: 117.95g
hp-16C: 115.05g
hp-12C: 120.66g (new ARM7/CR2032x2 version)
All the above are with batteries as I didn't want to risk nailing
the SRAM. But that shouldn't add too much uncertainty.
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