Value of a NIB x31?

[aroundincircles]

I bought and probably over paid for an x31 new in box. Security seals intact.

I WANT to open it, but how much is it worth (regardless of what I paid for it, and how much damage am I doing by opening the box…

https://i.redd.it/3rjj6cxsii6a1.jpg

[unix_joe]

It's worth however much you were willing to pay, since I imagine there are less than a handful of X31's sitting in an unopened box 19 years later.

FWIW, an iBook G4 from 2004, still in box sold for a little north of $400 earlier this year. That's probably as close as you'll find to what you have now.

Personally, I think it's a bad investment if you just want to hold it to make money. There just aren't museums or whatever that want this as a display piece. $400 is less than a day's work, but to the right person who isn't motivated by money, that kind of condition machine can bring years of joy.

I would open it and use it. There are a couple of excellent condition X32's, more rare than the X31, on eBay for the past year at $300 that haven't moved. I'm tempted to get one for running HaikuOS but I told myself I would declutter and get to a place where my youngest kid isn't throwing my machines around and stepping on the screen before I get another laptop.

Congrats.

[mikemex]

Open it up. Life is so short...

P. S. Don't forget to make a video review of it.

[aroundincircles]

Open it up. Life is so short...

P. S. Don't forget to make a video review of it.

Oh I opened it, and I am 100% making a video. It will be up on my channel later tonight/early tomorrow.

[aroundincircles]

Well I opened it up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE5dqZE9II8

[unix_joe]

Really cool to watch that video. Use magic eraser on the lid, it should remove the stains.

As for the OS, there are lots of cool systems from that era that you can probably get working reasonably well.

[solidpro]

I have a few NIB thinkpads of a similar era - T40/T41/T43 machines with NIB docks and they're all worth about £200 each to someone silly enough as me to pay that.

I doubt there are many others out there on the planet that would pay that much for what is essentially a relatively inconsequential piece of computing history.

A NIB 701c or 700 on the other hand...

Having watched the video, it's a shame they couldn't come up with a protective film to go over the lid/base like they do with the shiny bits. I have hundreds of thinkpads packed away and I lay awake at night thinking about how all the plastic protection touching outer cases are gradually adhering to everything and ruining it all....

[aroundincircles]

Hundreds packed away? I thought I was bad just owning a half dozen or more different thinkpads. (my daily is a T25).

[solidpro]

189 at last count. About 10 of them probably are of the IBM/Lenovo transition era but everything else is IBM only and I've no more than about 4 of each model. Mainly trying to get 1 for each. The 8xx series is the only model range that truely evades me.

Also the odd Z50 Workpad, PC110, N45, N51, CL57 thrown into that count. A couple of Zenith-based one and iSeries things for trivia's sake.

Finally what isn't counted is all the different IBM portables / L40SX machines, which are also tucked away showing the evolutio towards the laptop/notebook thinkpad.

[mpcook]

Well I opened it up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE5dqZE9II8

Thanks for recording this. My wife walked by and thought our fascination with a 20 year old NIB laptop is just insane. I owned a couple of X31's, and X30 and an X32 so interested in this era. Good luck getting it up and running!

[solidpro]

I've got a question to which I've never really got a decent answer to. In your video we're all disappointed to see how the case coating has started to go bad and had stuck to the plastic wrapping.... did it feel sticky?

I ask because today I dug out a T40 and T41 I have which are also brand new in box, because I wanted to check if they had suffered the same. And the weird thing is that despite my machines having been stored in clearly bad conditions (the cardboard boxes are all warped with damp and look like they've suffered some mould) they are not sticky or tarnished at all. I took them out of the plastic and the surfaces are perfect.

Your one look like it was stored in much better conditions than mine, it's of a very similar era with a very similar coating, so why difference... is it maybe humidity over time?

I've reached the conclusion from this forum that the biggest factor in accellerating the stickiness is storing a susceptable machine with something 'touching' it. Which makes it very difficult to store a lot of machines without taking up a huge amount of space!!

[mikemex]

189 at last count. About 10 of them probably are of the IBM/Lenovo transition era but everything else is IBM only and I've no more than about 4 of each model. Mainly trying to get 1 for each. The 8xx series is the only model range that truely evades me.

Also the odd Z50 Workpad, PC110, N45, N51, CL57 thrown into that count. A couple of Zenith-based one and iSeries things for trivia's sake.

Finally what isn't counted is all the different IBM portables / L40SX machines, which are also tucked away showing the evolutio towards the laptop/notebook thinkpad.

I hope you have them properly stored and not just a plain mess. Having a hoarder in the family can disrupt everyone else's life.

[RealBlackStuff]

Whenever I have spare Thinkpads, I always store them vertical on their back panel, like books.
Takes up a lot less space than flat/horizontal and they barely touch one another.

[solidpro]

I use a mix of storage strategies.

With all earlier machines, they're all stripped and rebuilt, cleaned of any battery leakage and all batteries removed and stored in a sealed plastic bag. If caps have leaked, they're replaced. If they haven't, I don't.

For 3xx, 5xx, A, R and iSeries machines, they generally have a strong but brittle plastic case which does not degrade but is brittle. So they're bubblewrapped and stored upright like books in small boxes.

For most 7xx machines, X2x, X3x, most T series and other machines with 'early' rubber coatings, if the degradation is really bad, then the rubber coating is stripped off back to the satin black underneath and they can be stored also in bubblewrap. For ones which have not (yet, perhaps) degraded, I find a way to store them without anything touching (like other thinkpads or bubblewrap or anything) and then put silica gel packs to try and dehumidify their environment. In some cases I've created 'shelves' inside a cardboard box where the thinkpad sits in the centre and more stacked ontop but with a big airgap.

X4x, X6x, later T series machines which do have a kind-of rubber coating (usually a fresh one has a sparkle to it) I'm not sure these do degrade like the older ones did so these are also bubblewrapped.

All the machines are inside a central heated house which is not humid at all, apart from perhaps short periods in midsummer. Can't really help that.

What I'm trying to do really is have 1 of each thinkpad stored and 1 out for play and working on. In some cases where I've found more than 1 machine which is the height of the model range (e.g. 380Z or X24) I will keep more than 1 in storage, just because when I run out of money, they'll be the ones people want to buy for their collections....

[Tom81]

Whenever I have spare Thinkpads, I always store them vertical on their back panel, like books.
Takes up a lot less space than flat/horizontal and they barely touch one another.

Man is learning all the time
I need to repack my Thinkpads. And do you pull out the batteries for storage?

[RealBlackStuff]

And do you pull out the batteries for storage?

No, because I check those machines once a month.
Usually they don't stay very long with me anyway and get sold on.
Currently I have only 1 "spare" and another one will arrive end of this month.
Before, when I lived in the States, I had a lot more, but the market here in Ireland is extremely limited.

[Tom81]

And do you pull out the batteries for storage?

No, because I check those machines once a month.
Usually they don't stay very long with me anyway and get sold on.
Currently I have only 1 "spare" and another one will arrive end of this month.
Before, when I lived in the States, I had a lot more, but the market here in Ireland is extremely limited.

I read on the forum that you saved many machines from recycling
I run some thinkpads once a year, usually in the winter when I have more time.
Yesterday I noticed that R52 crashes a few minutes after starting winXP.
I suspected a RAM or HDD failure, but it turned out that when I remove the battery, it works fine.
I put the battery with R51 and it turned out to be charging and everything works fine.
I did not know that the battery can cause such trouble.
I will store the R52 without this battery.

[dr_st]

Oh, yes, bad batteries can cause all sorts of issues. On the *60 generation it has also been reported that running with a dead/faulty battery can cause lockups and glitches.

The consensus seems that it is better to have no battery attached at all than one which is completely dead.

[Tom81]

Oh, yes, bad batteries can cause all sorts of issues. On the *60 generation it has also been reported that running with a dead/faulty battery can cause lockups and glitches.

The consensus seems that it is better to have no battery attached at all than one which is completely dead.

Thanks for the information.
All batteries will eventually break down
Without batteries, the laptop looks incomplete, I wonder if it is better to remove the cells from used batteries.

[dr_st]

All batteries will eventually break down
Without batteries, the laptop looks incomplete, I wonder if it is better to remove the cells from used batteries.

If the battery is completely dead and you OK with being without a battery, and have no plans to re-cell it, then it is probably easier to break or seal off the electrical connector on the battery, so that it makes no contact with the laptop. It will sit there physically to avoid the gap, just not connected.

I have laptops even 15+ years old which still have somewhat functioning batteries. They may be very weak, but as long as they are not completely dead, it is usually OK.