Hoax or true? Petro could get a batch of 1500x A1200

[spirantho]

A1200s are far from unsaleable - there's a lot of people wanting them still and happy to pay good money. I don't know about elsewhere but here in the UK you can pay £50 for a tatty A1200. A brand new bundled one would fetch £150 without breaking a sweat. I'm tempted to buy some myself for my shop, if Petro can do bulk purchases cheap enough.

[psxphill]

A1200s are far from unsaleable - there's a lot of people wanting them still and happy to pay good money.

I doubt there are 1500 people waiting with good money. Which causes a bit of a problem. The people who have them will want to shift them in one go, but if they sell to multiple vendors then competition will make it hard to make a profit on them. If one company buys them then they still have to be competitive with the price or few people will buy them.
 
I don't know anybody in real life that would buy one.

[danwood]

And no, Petro obviously didn't keep "a hidden stash of Amigas", he sold them to some Indian entity towards the end of "Amiga Technologies", and now it seems like a great deal of them never came to use and remain unsold by that Indian entity, and now Petro has contacted that old customer and put an offer on those machines that clearly *never* will be sold by that Indian company in 2012 (meaning: from that Indian entity's point of view, that worthless pile of junk occupying floor space in some warehouse suddenly got a small value).

Bill McEwen was certainly claiming that a warehouse worth of Amigas went missing when they took over Amiga Inc back in 2000ish.  I remember him saying at Amiwest 01 that inventory had been stolen, they knew who it was and "we're coming to get you".

Basically Bill went to Germany to inspect the inventory that they had bought. But when he got there the warehouses were empty. Apparently Amiga have a good idea where all the stuff went, but would appear powerless to get it back.

http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbthread.pl/amiga/expand/76092

http://www.ann.lu/comments2.cgi?view=1027828288&category=news#message21

Bill was also on the hunt for copies of invoices from Amiga dealers from the Amiga Technologies era:

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=46958

On another note, we have had a very strange request about sales that
occurred from 1996 through 2000 regarding Amiga computers. Now I understand based on the documentation that we have here that the machines were purchased primarily from Petro at Amiga International.

http://www.ann.lu/comments2.cgi?view=1062268363&category=forum

There were also tales of former Commodore plants in the Philippines continuing to produce Amigas well after CBM went under, reports from witnesses say the lights were on and Amigas were still being produced in November 1994, authorised by the Philippines government to try and claw back money owed from CBM under supervision from soldiers!

From November 1994:

http://mobile.google.com/group/comp.sys.amiga.advocacy/browse_thread/thread/44ab8e845fc57b1c/7a662a118332f6a3?#7a662a118332f6a3

   Yes... a friend of mine has relatives that went to the plant
THIS WEEK and reported:

        "The lights are on; they are building computer."

He also stated that they are white colored. We suspected that they
were building A4000's, because people have A4000's with manufacture\
dates after the liquidation, but European suppliers who are receiving
these machines say they are all or mostly PAL A1200's.

 Those soldiers have been overseeing production of A1200's for
weeks now. The government is building the machines and keeping the money
for themselves.

        This was verified by someone who drove 1 hour to the plant
and saw it with his own eyes. This has been proven by people receiving
machines dated over the past few weeks. They are mostly PAL A1200's.
I thpought that some were A4000's or A4000T's, but later was told that
none of them are.

So there are definitely tales and folklore of missing and black market Amigas, and Bill McEwen certainly was on the hunt for some around a decade ago.

[desiv]

There were also tales of former Commodore plants in the Philippines continuing to produce Amigas well after CBM went under, reports from witnesses say the lights were on and Amigas were still being produced in November 1994, authorised by the Philippines government to try and claw back money owed from CBM under supervision from soldiers!

So, since they were owed money from Commodore, who was now out of business...
They decided to best way to get money was to build more machines that Commodore would never be able to buy?

I'm not a business savvy person, but I'm not sure that would be a good idea...  :laugh1:

desiv

[danwood]

So, since they were owed money from Commodore, who was now out of business...
They decided to best way to get money was to build more machines that Commodore would never be able to buy?

I'm not a business savvy person, but I'm not sure that would be a good idea...  :laugh1:

desiv

Presumably from the left over inventory in the factory, I don't think they were selling them to Commodore, they were being sold on the black market to business/customers in Europe from reports.

Apparently there were A1200s/4000s with manufacture dates after April '94 when CBM went under, so this would verify that.

[takemehomegrandma]

A1200s are far from unsaleable - there's a lot of people wanting them still and happy to pay good money.

Pretty much exactly what I said above, right?

[takemehomegrandma]

Bill McEwen was certainly claiming

Which was exactly my point...

[danwood]

Which was exactly my point...

It does make me hope it is true though, the look on Bill and Fleecy's faces arriving in Germany to an empty warehouse and Petro laughing off into the sunset with a truck full of A1200s, fills me with joy

[Heiroglyph]

This is the kind of talk that makes me question why I associate with Amigans.  Why is it hate first and foremost every time?

Seriously, people believe that this was some grand get rich quick scheme all along?  Store a hoard of stolen Amigas (next to worthless in the market at the time) and expect there to be a market for them in 17 years?

The most obvious reason these became available:
A large sale was made to a new market.
The market flopped when Amiga went under and the computers became almost worthless.
Petro inquired as to what ever happened to them or it came up in conversation.
Owner wants to get some of his lost investment back instead of paying to store them.
End of story.

[danwood]

This is the kind of talk that makes me question why I associate with Amigans.  Why is it hate first and foremost every time?

Seriously, people believe that this was some grand get rich quick scheme all along?  Store a hoard of stolen Amigas (next to worthless in the market at the time) and expect there to be a market for them in 17 years?

The most obvious reason these became available:
A large sale was made to a new market.
The market flopped when Amiga went under and the computers became almost worthless.
Petro inquired as to what ever happened to them or it came up in conversation.
Owner wants to get some of his lost investment back instead of paying to store them.
End of story.

There's no hate from me at all, just does seem a coincidence that people were claiming a warehouse of Amigas went missing back then and now suddenly 1500 have turned up.

No skin off my nose if it's true or not, in fact it's quite pleasing if it is true, would mean at least McEwen got some comeuppance for years of conning everyone else.

It's more an interesting/historical discussion rather than finger pointing and accusation. The two stories are going to draw comparisons.

[Lord Aga]

The most obvious reason these became available:
A large sale was made to a new market.
The market flopped when Amiga went under and the computers became almost worthless.
Petro inquired as to what ever happened to them or it came up in conversation.
Owner wants to get some of his lost investment back instead of paying to store them.
End of story.

True. This sequence of events is the most likely one.
Buuuuut...
I like danwood's "truck & sunset" version better, so I'm gonna go with that one and imagine it all happened that way :laugh1:
And no hatin' here. I'm quite pleased it happened that way.

Anywayz, I love ghost stories, and feel mighty proud today just for being a part of this.

Go Petro !

[Karlos]

A1200s are far from unsaleable - there's a lot of people wanting them still and happy to pay good money. I don't know about elsewhere but here in the UK you can pay £50 for a tatty A1200. A brand new bundled one would fetch £150 without breaking a sweat. I'm tempted to buy some myself for my shop, if Petro can do bulk purchases cheap enough.

I wouldn't say no to some NOS A1200 to replace the four I have now while I send them off to be re-capped

[B00tDisk]

I hope the folks who buy them love them but I do wonder what condition they'll be in after having been shipped from the Philippines to India to God knows where else over the course of the last twenty years.

[number6]

@thread

So many conspiracy theories, so little time...

Let's keep it simple. Bolton Peck:

What happened is that Bill didn't do his due diligence well enough before he bought into Amiga. Petro had a 'sweetheart deal' with the Germans and in fact was contractually prevented from being fired by Amiga-they couldn't get rid of him. Petro was a very smart guy. He also was the exclusive recipient of OS 3.9 revenues, not Amiga, and this was also unknown to Bill when he signed on, and he found out later to his dismay

Petro didn't like American Amiga companies much (can you blame him?) so he pretty much did what he could to stick it to them. See the 060 deal, where he subsidized Phase5, selling them 060 CPUs for two hundred bucks less per chip than American companies, such as DKB, could get them. Suddenly, Phase5 060 boards were much cheaper than the Wildfire! Ask any American Amiga retailer, of which I was briefly one, and they'll tell you about how Petro sold European companies A1200s for literally hundreds less per unit than American companies could get them-sometimes American vendors would buy them from Euro vendors as it was still cheaper than getting them direct. Thanks, Petro!

At least you could get Petro drunk and he'd give you Amiga stuff like tie clips, lighters, etc. Petro was more fun to party with..

Anyway, yes, Petro did kinda stick it to Amiga and it was a bad deal for them. Sales of Amiga hardware were subsidizing things like paychecks. I don't know if Bill really could have known all this when he signed on, as in, it might have been very difficult for him to find it all out, and Petro took major advantage of that fact.

This was the followup inside explanation that followed Bill McEwen's statements concerning the issue on this very site in his answer to the 25 questions. Bill had stated:

Think of my surprise when I learned that all of our inventory was sold for $75,000.00 to a company in India, when we were generating more than that on a monthly basis. This created a big operational hole for the company and caused us great harm in our ability to move forward. This hardware was not even put up for bid or auction, and nobody was consulted in the process.

If you choose to believe Bolton Peck's account, then Bill's response is easily dismissed as "the usual".

sources


#6

[Lord Aga]

Even if these were real i'm not sure they are an investment. Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy an FPGA Arcade from MikeyJ? Also faster!

Personally i think we should all ignore these new 1200's and support the FPGA instead. When the Amiga community finally releases new hardware we turn our backs on it?

Why can't we have both

[number6]

@thread

Saw a number of requests here for the original text.
I see Franko supplied

a link

#6