TAS has made the market less transparent

[John R]

(06-10-2014 03:26 PM)Katie Wasserman Wrote:  Without trying to be judgmental on this topic, I do think that this activity has pushed up the perceived values of most (all?) HP calculators and many other brands significantly. It potentially makes what we all have at least some of more valuable but it makes it harder to acquire. One could look at this as the maturing of a fledgling collectable hobby or the demise of an experimental one.

From the perspective of somebody who is a relative latecomer to HP collecting, TAS has actually made it significantly EASIER to acquire a collection, albeit more expensive per acquisition. TAS is a clearinghouse for all kinds of buyers and sellers; some care only about making a buck, while some have a genuine interest in (or even love for) the things they buy and sell. Whatever their motivations, the volume of calculators sold on TAS is easily hundreds of times the volume sold here and in other forums -- which means that it provides hundreds of times more opportunities to acquire various models or parts that would otherwise be effectively unavailable to a newcomer. It would be orders of magnitude more difficult to build up a sizable collection from scratch without TAS (or something like it).

(As with Katie, there is no intent here for judgment, and hopefully no implicit judgment is inferred.)