HP 49G+ and HP 39G+ Marketing Samples

[mr womp womp]

I've been a part of the TI community for a few years now over on Ti-planet and Cemetech, but its my first time on the HP forums. I received 2 HP graphing calculators today with stickers that read "pre-release not for resale" and "MARKETING SAMPLE"
The HP 49G+ is dated 03/07/02 and the HP 39G+ is dated 03/07/23.
I don't know too much about HP calculators, but they seemed like interesting pieces for the collection. I'm not sure how rare they are, but I know that for TI calculators, marketing samples are exceptionally rare, hence why I bought them. I'd love to get some feedback from the community, maybe some people here know more about these than I do

[John Keith]

I noticed the tag on the 49g+ that says "not fully working". Have you tested it?

[mr womp womp]

Yes they both power on, doesn't seem like there is a problem to me.

[tuxfish]

Congratulations !
Do these beauties look the same from the front as the officially sold ones ?

[mr womp womp]

(06-29-2020 06:46 PM)tuxfish Wrote:  Congratulations !
Do these beauties look the same from the front as the officially sold ones ?

Not exactly, I noticed a handful of small differences for example, there's no triangle at the top of the screens, the 39G+'s SHIFT key is green, along with the lettering for all the 2nd functions. Also, the lettering on the 49G+'s 2nd and 3rd functions seems very slightly bigger than in the final version.

[Gene]

Green was the initial color for the 39g+. Particularly BAD contrast and it was changed to the orange color.

Relatively rare as time passes. These were sent out early for evaluation purposes.

[rprosperi]

(06-27-2020 02:06 PM)John Keith Wrote:  I noticed the tag on the 49g+ that says "not fully working". Have you tested it?

In the 90's I worked at Sharp and we lost way too many early samples of new machines during dealer evaluations, buyer demos, trade shows, etc. After marking them with similar labels indicating they were buggy, non-final, etc. the rate of theft dropped precipitously. I'm thinking the HP marketing guys were likely just as smart...