My father recently passed away, and I'm looking for the best way to offload this as most of it is sitting in a storage locker that I'd like to empty as much as possible within a month. I thought this might be of interest to the Apple II enthusiasts still out there. He had a small collection of hardware, a slightly larger collection of software, and an equally as large collection of magazines. Most of them are related to Apple II related, but some other classic platforms are represented. A lot of the software is still sealed in shrink wrap, as I believe he intended to start a business selling it, but didn't follow through. To give an idea:
Hardware: There's an Apple IIe and a 5 1/2" disk drive, and some other related hardware components floating by themselves. Unknown if they're actually in working condition.
Software: Very little in the way of games (these were sold off a decade ago), although there are still some empty boxes for those -- mostly I'm seeing word processing, Meca OS, SF Apple Core, and things like Basic, Pascal, etc; some tapes (Bomber!, Tarbell Zapple Z-80 2K Monitor, Air Raid, MCOS Source Code, Bright Pen, and a few that say TRS-80 like Galactic Empire), but mostly disks (I haven't started a list of these yet).
Magazines: They range from in quality from never touched, gently used, to heavy use but still mostly intact. Nibble, Compilist (I think), AppleSauce (seemed to be a newsletter group he was part of), Hardcore, Byte, SF AppleCore (seemed to be paired with the disks). There are also printed copies of newsletters like Tri-City... something, and an Orange County group.
Books: I haven't gone through them yet, but there are a couple boxes labeled Apple books and others that are general computer books, and there are manuals floating around like the user guide for Atari 400/800 (I know we had one in the house growing up, but didn't see it in storage yet--could still be hiding). There was a Z-80.. ZX-80, or something like that manual.
Apologies for the lack of a full list, the specifically named ones are from memory as we sorted through quickly this past weekend. I'll be back to the unit to do a full inventory over the next couple weeks. My current plan: List everything on eBay for auction all at once to get the most cross exposure of items.
For this thread, I'm looking for help from the community to answer these questions:
- What should I be looking for or keeping an eye out to set aside in case it comes to the point of junking everything in order to close the unit (it's costing money every month)?
- Where is this the best place to ask for help identifying hardware and software that may not be immediately obvious what it is?
- Is there a better place than eBay to list everything?
I'd like to find an archivist in the Greater Los Angeles area to digitize the magazines and newsletters if there's interest in doing that. I don't have the time or space to do it myself, and I'd rather not sell it on eBay (current plan) if it means it'd go into another storage collection without being made publicly accessible in a digital format. There's at least 20 banker boxes worth of magazines ranging from late 70s through the 80s. There's also a few tattered general engineering magazines (about the size of old Reader's Digest) from the 60s, not sure if those are of interest.