Subject: NASA Auction

From: "Feldman, Robert" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon May 5 16:05:01 2003

Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt MD: http://sales.gsfc.nasa.gov/catalog.cgi?salenumber=80322620030009.

Lots of PC's, Macs, monitors,printers, and office equipment. Fair amount of HP, Tektronic test equipment, various tape transports and hard drives. Some Sun, SGI, DEC, Next. Two Concurrent 3280mps.

Unfortunately, divided into big lots.

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From: Eric Chomko <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri May 9 08:19:01 2003

I work there! I have been to many an auction and fixed price sale. The
former
is big lots by the pallet, whereas the latter is sold by the working and
tested unit. 

I used to attend every sale/auction and did lots of reselling after
fixing up stuff. But then it became more trouble than it was worth. And
gone are the days of finding anything that would be considered classic
(S-100 prototypes, Commodore PETs, etc.).

My best find was probably getting a keyboard for a PC (you get to pick
KBs out of a huge bin for each PC that you buy at auction). The KB I
picked turned out to be a working Atari 520ST complete with NASA
sticker. ;)

Also worthy of note is that the catalog listings can be misleading. You
are better off actually inspecting the lots as the catalog listings
tends to be somewhat misleading, incomplete or flat out wrong.

Wednesdays used to be the inspection day for auctions but with tighter
security after 9-11 all is done the same day.

Eric