I hope I am posting this in the right thread as I am no computer wizard at all.
We are in the process of clearing out my uncle's estate. He was a real computer / tech guy, and therefore has quite a lot of vintage computer stuff.
I was hoping to get some info on this exidy sorcerer lot.
-Are there things that I need to check? I have not tried to power it on. Nor have I got a clue on how to test it/ hook it up.
-Could someone give me an estimate on the value of the entire lot?
The top 4 pieces of documentation are in Dutch. The rest is all in English.
(I reallly like the old advert btw)
Thanks for helping me out.
Hello,
That is an amazing collection.
There is material in your Uncle's collection that has never been preserved and is therefore historically incredible valuable to people like us who care about the history of old computers - what you could sell it for in purely financial terms is a different matter of course.
While the Sorcerer was manufactured in the Netherlands and was popular there almost none of that history is accessible. In particular no Dutch manuals have ever been scanned so it would be great if you were open to allow that to happen before the sale, or somehow selling to someone who is open to that - or donating to a Dutch museum.
The are also at least two rare ROMPacs created by the Dutch ESGG user group in the collection (and I would imagine some of their ESGG newsletters which while some have been scanned the quality is very poor).
If you simply want to sell the entire lot for the most amount of money then yes as suggested ebay or marketplaats.
You would need to do a detailed inventory of all the items - it is impossible to read the titles of the documentation for example.
I cannot see any cassette or disk software which seems odd?
There are no RIFA capacitors in a Sorcerer so if you have a composite monitor or even a camcorder with an analog video input connection just connect a cable to the VIDEO socket on the back of the Sorcerer and turn it on - they are reliable machines and it will probably show you something meaningful on the screen and is unlikely to burst into flames.
A nice Sorcerer system unit (only) recently failed to sell on ebay US for USD500 which surprised me so I guess that gives you some idea of how interested people are in owning one. Individually a ROMPac (ie the cartridges of which you seem to have at least four (two beige and and two yellow) might sell for USD100 each.
Yours is exceptional because you have so much original and unique documentation (some in Dutch, some in Exidy binders) and you have the original box etc so it is very nice. I would love to know how your Uncle used it.
So if you added it all up such a large and interesting collection might be *worth* USD1500 or more to a Sorcerer fan (like myself) but that doesn't mean you will someone who can justify paying that - but you might be lucky - particularly if you are prepared to be patient.
A dealer in the UK has in the past sold a number of smaller collections of Sorcerer material. He gets the machines professionally serviced and then puts them up on his website and I have good reason to believe that he is an ethical operator so if you wanted someone to take the problem off your hands and pay you up front
http://www.antiques-atlas.com/eddintheclouds/
