Subject: Univac $$$ on E-OverPay

From: Joe <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 11:28:00 2003

Well, the auction closed. You DON'T want to know the closing price! However it didn't meet the reserve. Does anybody know who the high bidder (TSSWEEN) is? The seller must be nuts! Or else he just wants a new Mercades!

   Joe

---

From: "Stuart Johnson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 12:26:01 2003

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 10:07 AM
Subject: Univac $$$ on E-OverPay

>    Well, the auction closed. You DON'T want to know the closing price!
However it didn't meet the reserve. Does anybody know who the high bidder
(TSSWEEN) is? The seller must be nuts! Or else he just wants a new Mercades!
>    Joe

$11,099.99 was less than the reserve?  What on EARTH was the reserve???
Also, who has that kind of money for a hobby - knowing that it will require
tremendous effort to bring the system back to life?

It seems to me that the seller either wasn't serious about selling - or is
quite greedy (the latter, I think).

Stuart Johnson

---

From: "Erik S. Klein" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 13:04:41 2003

> quite greedy (the latter, I think).

Or he wants to bypass eBay's fees and conduct a private sale to the
highest bidder.

We'll see if he re-lists the item or not.  Maybe I'm too much the cynic!

Erik S. Klein

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
On Behalf Of Stuart Johnson
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 10:22 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Univac $$$ on E-OverPay

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 10:07 AM
Subject: Univac $$$ on E-OverPay

>    Well, the auction closed. You DON'T want to know the closing price!
However it didn't meet the reserve. Does anybody know who the high
bidder
(TSSWEEN) is? The seller must be nuts! Or else he just wants a new
Mercades!

$11,099.99 was less than the reserve?  What on EARTH was the reserve???
Also, who has that kind of money for a hobby - knowing that it will
require
tremendous effort to bring the system back to life?

It seems to me that the seller either wasn't serious about selling - or
is
quite greedy (the latter, I think).

Stuart Johnson

---

From: Adrian Vickers <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 13:25:01 2003

>tremendous effort to bring the system back to life?

That's if it *can* be brought back to life. It may have been kept under 
cover, but it's not had a storage life without suffering (judging by the 
front of the cabinets).

>quite greedy (the latter, I think).

I personally think the latter - the whole auction seems to have been set up 
not to be seriously winnable (72hrs only for payment? Massive reserve? 
Buyer to arrange *entire* shipping?). I suspect his "better half" has said 
"sell it", and he's had what (on the surface) looks like a good crack at it.

IMHO, if he was serious about selling it, he'd be auctioning it through a 
"proper" auction house (ala Christies), and be looking for $100K minimum. 
It is, after all, possibly the oldest surviving large electronic computer 
on the planet...

-- 
Cheers, Ade.
Be where it's at, B-Racing!
http://b-racing.com

---

From: Bryan Blackburn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 13:27:00 2003

Greed maybe, the seller has a feedback rating of 1. I suspect we have a 
greenie here; he probably thinks it is going to be put into use as the 
primary system for some large corporation!

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 14:06:00 2003

Hello Adrian,

 > 72hrs only for payment?

This is easily doable. Certified cachier's check by FEDEX Next Day Air
gets that done, at least within the same country, or direct bank to bank
wire funds transfers. An overnight letter is only about $10.00, and a wire
transfer is only about $30.00

 > Buyer to arrange *entire* shipping?

This is also doable. Immediately contact a national moving or shipping
company, show them the info, get a quote ( though they might have to survey
the equipment first ), and just tell them to get it done. I'm sure the 
seller would
check the local directories for the buyer and over the phone, pass on the phone
numbers of these moving or shipping companies that were in the area where
the equipment is located. Then the buyer just starts making the phone calls.

 >>quite greedy (the latter, I think).

When it comes to the sale of large ticket items, eBay's 10 days sometimes
isn't enough time for organizations or companies to go through the proposal,
approval, and authorization process. Perhaps the seller knew that he might
need to run it more than once to make it's availability more widely known, but
not immediately have it end in a legally binding sale, in order to try to 
do the
best they could with it. I once listed a Sun StorEdge Array for a company, and
had some companies that were interested, and they described how they needed
to go through a lot of "process" to get approval. With the kind of level 
that bidding
on that item went to, it probably wasn't the average home user that was 
involved
in it near the end. But if a museum, ( say the Smithsonian? ) wanted to 
purchase
it, it would take time. The seller having a high reserve that wasn't met 
can give
it that time.

Best Regards

---

From: "Andy Holt" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 14:09:00 2003

> It is, after all, possibly the oldest surviving large electronic computer
Possibly ... but doesn't the Science Museum (London) have an ICL 1900 system
squirrelled-away in its warehouse?
(But I bet it doesn't have the necessary software - and if it doesn't do
something soon the relevant expertise will also be missing)

Andy

---

From: Hans B Pufal <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 14:15:01 2003

> It is, after all, possibly the oldest surviving large electronic computer 

I suspect that CSIRAC in Australia is a tad older. It was turned OFF for 
the last time in 1964.

http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/csirac/

   -- hbp

---

From: Robert Borsuk <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 14:31:00 2003

Actually I think this is a "Monkey shines" bid.  If the person was 
serious about it they would have bid more.  the 99.99 told me that they 
wanted to be part of the auction but didn't want to make the reserve.

Rob

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 15:02:01 2003

Hello Robert,

That was the second to the highest. But their previous bid, the third 
highest also,
was a little more normal. Perhaps they were just about at the max they wanted
to go on it, but still slightly undecided, just wanted to test the limits. 
There was no last
second bidding on that one. Looks like every bidder ( relatively ) 
rationally was making
calculated decisions ( as long as all bidders were legitimate bidders ).

Best Regards

At 03:28 PM 3/6/03 -0500, you wrote:
>Actually I think this is a "Monkey shines" bid.  If the person was serious 
>about it they would have bid more.  the 99.99 told me that they wanted to 
>be part of the auction but didn't want to make the reserve.
>
>Rob
>
>

---

From: "Eric Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 15:30:01 2003

> company, show them the info, get a quote ( though they might have to

Sure, if you don't mind it getting destroyed.  If I paid that kind of
money for anything, I'd move it myself.  I've seen the results of
letting moving companies deal with such things, and it would be a gross
understatement to say that it's not pretty.

And it basically would not be possible to get any real insurance on
such a thing.  Oh, you might be able to get some sort of insurance, but
when the system winds up destroyed, the insurance company will claim
that the value of the equipment was only the scrap value to begin with,
and pay a trivial amount of money to "settle" the claim.

---

From: "Erik S. Klein" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 15:43:00 2003

The Univac is back.

The starting bid is curiously familiar ($1 more then the high bid on the
auction that didn't hit its reserve.)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3405163151

   Erik

---

From: "Rob O'Donnell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 17:06:01 2003

>be part of the auction but didn't want to make the reserve.

I know I tend to put my max bid on ebay in at a few pennies over a whole 
bid - if I happen to think something is worth 10.00 say, I'll bid 10.03 
just in case someone else also thinks the same; the auto bid will only go 
up to your max, even if it's less than an increment over the previous 
highest bid ...  I've won a few auctions that way over people putting last 
second bids in.

---

From: Hans B Pufal <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 17:19:00 2003

> something soon the relevant expertise will also be missing)

I'm sure there are one or two around somewhere but I must admit to not 
knowing where. On the software front, the folks at Leeds have gotten 
George 3 to run again on an emulator.

http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~ecldh/ccs/george3.html

   -- hbp

---

From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 21:06:00 2003

> Or he wants to bypass eBay's fees and conduct a private sale to the

That used to work, but now you get charged fees based on the reserve price
(those tricky eBay bastards caught on ;)

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

 * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

---

From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 21:07:01 2003

> It is, after all, possibly the oldest surviving large electronic computer

You obviosuly haven't been to the Computer History Museum ;)

--

---

From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 6 21:13:00 2003

> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3405163151

Retarded.  Why doesn't he just ask the high bidder of the first auction to
add a buck to his bid and buy it?

Unless either one of two things:

1) The high bidder on the previous auction realized how carried away he
got and refused the offer.
2) The high bidder on the previous auction was a shill.

--

---

From: "Andy Holt" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 7 01:00:00 2003

> http://www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~ecldh/ccs/george3.html
Those pages have been unchanged for a couple of years now - does anyone know
if there has been further progress?
Have any copies of Operators Executive, George 2, and Maximop been
discovered?

Andy

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 7 02:09:00 2003

Hello Sellam,

 > (those tricky eBay bastards caught on ;)

Darn, I see they made the reserve fee 1% of the reserve price. It used to be a
maximum of $2.00 ?

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sellerguide/selling-fees.html

Best Regards

---

From: Brian Chase <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Mar 7 16:03:19 2003

On Thu, 6 Mar 2003, Adrian Vickers wrote:

> IMHO, if he was serious about selling it, he'd be auctioning it
> through a "proper" auction house (ala Christies), and be looking for
> $100K minimum.  It is, after all, possibly the oldest surviving large
> electronic computer on the planet...

You should visit the Computer History Museum in Mountain View,
California.  They've some pretty nifty stuff in their visible storage
area.  The Johnniac comes to mind.  When I visited in January, I
jokingly mentioned to my gf that the Johnniac looked like it was made
from 1950s era supermarket display refridgerators.  Later during the
tour, we found out that it was.  Other items on display included large
chunks of a SAGE system, the WISC computer, at least one of the
ILLIACs, and a rack from the ENIAC.

I'm looking forward to when they finally get settled in their new
location which used to be the SGI headquarters building.

-brian.