Vintage 701C - selling advice ?

[Tpad-Howie]

Hello, hope a question here is appropriate. I am thinking of selling my very first ever computer, an IBM ThinkPad 701C "butterfly" keyboard design, and wondering if there's much of a market for that model, and whether it's something to post here or rather on eBay? What sort of value would be suggested?

It's functional (wiped the original 720MB drive and just have basic PC DOS installed.) Good screen with no bad pixels, original AC adapter but no battery, 'upgrade' to 24MB RAM, CMOS battery apparently still fine, as it boots and keeps internal date and time. Have original floppy drive, parallel cable adapter, and multiport adapter.

I have some photos here: http://s882.photobucket.com/albums/ac28 ... ad%20701c/

Thanks for any input and/or advice!

[JohnD.]

Hi Tpad-Howie,

I can tell you that I am looking for one. I have one already in similar shape as yours but you have more memory I believe. When you have a price for the 701c, let me know. I am interested in purchasing the unit.

Talk to you soon,
John

[hwattys]

In the last year or so I have refurbished about half a dozen 701Cs and sold them on eBay. I used rfguys (ebay seller) replacement motherboards or soldered on new cmos batteries so there is no system error so that all were working perfectly. The last one I sold was purchased by an outfit that buys for the Japanese market through eBay and I got $200 for a unit with 24 megs RAM and a 360 hard drive, no floppy or other accessories but AC adapter, but with a good working and configured pcmcia NIC so that it is useable out of the box. It had some cosmetic issues but everything worked fine. I am a 701C enthusiast and still have a fully working unit with a 4 gb hard drive and 40 megs RAM and all accessories I keep for myself. I watch all the 701C auctions on ebay and I am sure you can get at least $250 for yours. If it were mine I would not sell it at all. It is in beautiful condition and belongs in a museum. If you decide to sell it here I might consider getting in on it myself. By the way, I do have one extra 32 meg memory module if you wanted to upgrade yours to 40 megs.

[JohnD.]

Hi hwattys, I just sent you a PM.

Thank you and have a good day,
John

[Tpad-Howie]

Hi hwattys, thanks very much for the feedback. I only saw your post now. Independent of your information, looking at the condition of other 701c units that have been sold on eBay, I figured that $250 was probably the price point I'd aim for.

It's just astounding to find my old receipts from 1996 and see that this laptop cost me over $3,000 at the time, (was retailing from $4,000-$6,000) and just the 16MB (sixteen Megabyte!) additional SODIMM purchased separately cost $430 !! Probably wasn't wise to look up those numbers, however.