You have probably reached this site because you either collect, or are interested, in those small hand-held devices that before 1971 were the realm of science fiction only: the electronic calculators.
If you are looking for a vintage calculator to buy for yourself or as a gift, please visit our “For Sale” page.
My first programmable calculator, a Casio fx-201P which was programmable in a FORTRAN-like language. This was in 1976! And yes, I still have the machine, and it works very well.
There are many sites on our wonderful Internet that have information, images, articles on this issue. There are forums, some of them, with many followers, have existed for 10 or even 20 years. Why a new site?
Well, the simple answer is because none of the existing sites wants to do what we want: make it easy for someone to showcase his/her collection, and facilitate direct, private communication between collectors.
What we do:
- Allow collectors to showcase their items. “Items” can be calculators, articles, books, pieces of advice – basically anything of value for a calculator collector or for someone who might have an interest in the domain. The items displayed might or might not be for sale or exchange, that is up to the owner.
- Facilitate communication between people. eBay, which is the most used platform for trading vintage calculators, goes out of its way to prevent the seller and the buyer from being able to talk directly. They have a point: if the seller talks to the buyer, further exchanges might be outside the platform itself (eBay) and they lose money.
- Provide information about issues of interest to the calculator collector. Manuals, if possible, or links if they are already available. How-to procedures for the DIY type. News, if we have them, even if it is difficult to imagine the words “vintage” associated with “news”.
- An “Items wanted” area. This is one thing that is not available anywhere; anyone will be able to place a request on this page.
The site is at its beginning so a lot of procedures will need manual action. In particular, for the moment all comments will be moderated by an administrator, including the requests placed in the “items wanted” area.
How it all works:
You have something to show, sell, say, or a question? Use the “Contact” form at the bottom of this page to send a message to the administrator, and make absolutely sure you enter your correct email because otherwise we will not be able to answer. We strive to answer all inquiries.
Please note that this site does not sell anything. No, it does not sell your email either, if you give it to us. But we will use the email to send you news, typically once per week, for as long as you wish to receive them. Sometimes it might be once per week, sometimes once every other week, and sometimes more often – it depends if we have anything to share or not.
If the owner of an item shown on the site wants to sell or exchange the item, he/she may or may not specify a price or conditions in the listing itself, but there will be a “contact” form on the page to allow potential interested parties to contact directly the owner. The site does not facilitate payments either and does not take a fee from the sale price, any payment arrangement will be made directly between the buyer and seller. Beware that the owner of the item will receive the contact request, but is in no way obligated to answer.
Very important: we value your political opinions but this is not the forum for them.
A very important question arises: what guarantee has the buyer that the seller is genuine? Does the site offer such a guarantee?
The answer is no, the site does not. We will only allow known collectors access to display their items, but we can in no way guarantee everyone’s behavior. But we recommend that if you choose to enter in a transaction, you use a payment service that DOES offer that guarantee, like PayPal, or any other payment service that vets their merchants. Remember, any transaction is strictly between the buyer and the seller, this site does not take part in the transaction in any way.
Have fun exploring!