How much to ask?

[lucky]

Hello,

I'm cleaning out the basement of the house I'm selling, while my husband is three states away looking for work.  I have permission to sell his Amiga 2000s.    He can't seem to come up with any specifications other than, "It worked at the time it went into storage."  There is a second one (2000 HD) he had around for parts.  The second one pretty obviously does not work.

Without knowing anything else about these, what would be a reasonable asking price?  I'd like to sell locally, as I'm busy with the move, otherwise, I'd put them up for auction.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[QuikSanz]

Hi,

If you can, pop the top off of the 2000s and take pictures, any other stuff too.

Chris

[Amiduffer]

Do something very important, before you sell them. Unscrew the covers and take them off. Check to be sure that the clock battery (should look like a little blue barrel) hasn't turned into a little white furball and leaked acid all over the motherboard, which in most cases, will destroy it.

If everything is fine there, try and hook it up to a monitor, and take a picture of the screen, being sure that the numbers at the top of the screen are clearly read, so folks can see the amount of memory available and what version of the operating system. Note any cards that are inside too.

[orb85750]

If you are not willing to put any time into it, you'll have to sell as "may or may not be fully working -- untested," in which case $60 is reasonable IMO.  If you are willing to open it up, test it, etc., you can get more.  If it has some expansions (that you have not mentioned), it might be worth much more.

[lucky]

Here are some pics of the one that was working at time of storage.  The blue barrel did look dusty, but I wouldn't have said it was covered with fur.  So, I don't think I know well enough to judge.  More photos of the other one next post.

The two drives in the last picture are for his Commodore 128.

[lucky]

Here's the second one, the Commodore 128, a trackball and joysticks, and some games.

[terminator4]

Your location?  
1st Amiga 2000:
Ram board (SLOW, useless to me) market value $10-18
Amiga board shows battery leakage already (worthless to me, i'm willing ot pay you for the chips in it though) you may get $30 for it
2 1571 Disk drives if they work $15-25 each.

2nd Set:
Amiga 2000 with 2091 $30-50 (I can't help but wonder if the batttery didn't corrode the motherboard either).
a yellowed C128 - $20.

and those values are pretty fair given the condition this stuff is in.  All my stuff looks 1000 times better, and i can post pics to prove it.

[xPhilx]

@terminator4
A yellowed C128 - $20?  I seriously wanna live in your world. ;-)

[terminator4]

@xPhilx

Well how much for yellowed C128 in your world?  Did you see Ebay?  $30-50 but you can't expect to get the same price on forums.  Anyway, at least I gave the poster some direction and tips, lets see you provide some prices? ;-)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130311390832

[Plaz]

If I wanted to sell some thing locally and I wasn't sure of the going value, I would post it to craigslist.org in your local section, place a price I would like to get and simply add.. "or best offer". You probably won't get top dollar, but it would be the easy way to go in such a case.

Since these thing are unknown condtion, I'd say for quick sale you'd be looking at $35-$60 for the 2000's and maybe $40-$70 if you sold the 128 as a lot with the floppy drives, paddles and other various bits. Auctions would probably bring a bit more, but then there's shipping and all that trouble.

Plaz

[spirantho]

I think you're being a bit low on the estimates there for eBay though....

Classic Amiga stuff can get nice prices still, even for slower stuff. A Trumpcard SCSI card just sold for >$100 I believe, for instance, because it had 8MB RAM on it. Admittedly that's rarer than a 2091 but it's still a slow Zorro-II only SCSI card.

Point is, you could get much more than those quotes at auction - but you quite possibly won't. That's Amiga dealing for you!

Not just Amiga stuff, either. Those 1571 you mentioned that were said to be $15-$20 tested? Well, one just sold on eBay.co.uk untested except the light came on, and sold for £50 (that's what $80?).  A C128 that was for spares+repairs sold for $20.
If you sell the cards seperately,  particularly, be sure to sell them worldwide on eBay. That stuff is worth a lot more over here in the UK, for instance.

[Plaz]

I think you're being a bit low on the estimates there for eBay though....

Yes , posting untested equipment on craigslist is normally going to bring less than it would on an ebay auction. On ebay you never know how it's going to end though. One week an item goes for $20. At another time when the right people are looking and bidding, the same item, same condition goes for twice or more as the previous item. But you do get a bigger potential audience on ebay to up the price.

As my own example, I saw a CPU card sell on ebay for ~$350. 2-3 months later I tried to sell my exact same card on craigslist for $225 (if memory servers) and couldn't get a buyer at all. There may always be a serious gap between the top theoretical value of your item, and what will it actually sell for this month.

Plaz