Seen in Best Buy this weekend

[Mike Morrow]

(05-20-2014 05:36 AM)Steve Simpkin Wrote:  Wow! That is high! I realize there can be quite a markup at a university book store but that is outrageous.

Those high prices in many college bookstores reduce sales, which paid off for me. In 1995 I missed hearing about the discontinuance of the HP 42S, so I started looking for one immediately. There were none to be found anywhere.

Two years later (in 1997) I walked into the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) bookstore and found two NIB HP 42S units in stock for $114 each. They had been there apparently since 1993. Even though the batteries were long dead, I bought both and today I consider it the best calculator deal I've ever come across (except maybe for the red-dot HP-35 I got in trade for a TI-58 in 1978, but I didn't know the value of that at the time).

One wonders about the sales philosophy found at many college bookstores...in this case, keeping unsold stock from 1993 that had been discontinued in 1995 on the sales shelf in 1997, still at the original posted price for all those years. It paid off for me, though.

The HP 42S became very desirable (and unobtainable) as soon as its discontinuance was announced. It still surprises me that there were no knowledgeable HP calculator fans at UAH (an engineering/science-oriented school) to recognize the prize that was available at the bookstore.