[Opinion] It's getting harder to get LED Spices

[Allen]

(01-09-2023 11:26 AM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  Hello,

in my opinion it is getting harder to find _any_ vintage calculator in decent condition....

Add to that the lowest build quality one can imagine ... and it is no wonder that only very few survive to this day. ... even the cosmetically good ones are now mostly sold "for parts or restauration"...
Regards
Max

I agree with Max!

When I was younger my parents gave me a wonderful wooden puzzle called the "hexadecimal puzzle" by binary arts. Supposedly there were only 7500 made, and through some sleuthing these past 18 years, I've managed to buy 7 of them. I know many are already "locked" in collections (model of nitrogen fixation where they exist but are not available), but think there is a parallel between rare puzzles and some calculator models.

I propose the frequency of rare things (not just calculators) appearing on ebay is a function of some obvious and NOT obvious variables.

Obvious variables:

• Initial quantity and duration of production run. 28C versus 28S.
• Time since end of production There seems to be a half-life function to older things being available for sale.
• Initial cost- the higher the initial cost, the more likely it will retain value later
• Quality/durability- Most of HP's calculators are (mostly) working after 30-40 years.
  

Less obvious:

• Drop in sustained demand- example: slide rules
• Limited look-back period for pricing - e.g. hexadecimal puzzles
• Rising price of shipping- Rare but large/heavy things get thrown away
• No UPC/ISBN numbering system - e.g. some pre-1980 books not compatible with Amazon search product registration
• Non search-friendly model numbers "HP48G+" or anything that does not search well. Have you ever tried buying a 48g+ on amazon?
• COVID
  

SPICE
Having owned nearly all the spice models at one point, I decided to part with them because the quality is SOOOOO poor compared to the preceding HP67 or the HP41 NUT series that came later, I found nothing useful about the entire series. The ABS plastic was thin and brittle, practically ALL of the battery tabs I saw were corroded or broken (when someone forced AA batteries in the case, usually) , and second only to the HP 28 battery door design, ranks among some of the poorest made calculators HP ever produced.

However, I support 100% both the nostalgia and the collection-worthiness of this important (though low quality) time in HP's calculator history. I suspect 2 things have overlapped to make these hard to find.

First, the quality aspect of the Spice series can't be overlooked. Chances are very high if you find one today online or in person that it is broken/chipped/corroded in some way.

Second, a limited price history (90 day window for most things on ebay) actually hurts the chances that it will migrate from a rummage sale (where only 20 people may see it) to an online forum where others might have a chance to add it to their collection. I fear some treasured hexadecimal puzzles may be resting in the dump, not because they were broken, but because there was no price history available to to establish the worth. I believe 1-3 units of the hex puzzle come up for sale each year, which means for about half the year there is no sales history to compare to. I see this sometimes with cyclical demand of HP calculators. If the "strike" prices of a calculator is unusually high or low, it can effect supply/demand for a few months.

With rare items, the best case is some become available and the strike price is below "fair market value", but I'm convinced that some items never enter the market because of lack of pricing data.

A cursory search through the "sold" items on the bay shows a price history for 38 spice calculators in the last 90 days, most of those were not working/parts.

• 31e - 3
• 32e - 4
• 33e - 8
• 33c - 1
• 34e - 6
• 37e - 3
• 38e - 6
• 38c - 7
  

For comparison the HP67 had around 24 items during that period, and the HP 55 had 8.

COVID
Having watched the calculator market closely since about 2005, (see my previous articles with pricing and inflation data), something very strange happened in mid-late 2020 that I've never seen. Although ebay's quarterly revenue was down, I suspect due to excess time at home and perhaps some premature deaths among the age group that typically uses older calculators, a larger-than-expected amount of "rare" things came on the market during 2020-2021. American basements coughed up several items during the first 2 years of COVID that had only available once or twice in the preceding 15 years.

In my opinion, it also seems that in 2022 after the COVID lockdowns have mostly concluded around the world, many "rare" items are even more scarce because they were already sold while people were locked in, compressing several years worth of "rare sales" into a narrow 1-2 year period.