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What Should I Do With This SE/30?

F

Felasco

Guest
Original poster
Oct 19, 2012
372
2
Hi guys,

One of my wife's clients recently gave us her SE/30. I guess she decided it was finally time to upgrade. :)
I don't know what to do with it, and thought I'd ask your advice.

As best I can tell, it's in good to excellent condition. All the original manuals neat and tidy still in packaging, a printer etc.

Is this old Mac worth anything? Or is it not quite old enough? Or?

What should I do with it? I hate to just toss it, especially given the care the original showed for it. But it doesn't really make sense to give it to a poor friend etc, as it doesn't connect to the net, which is mostly what people want computers for these days.

I'm not sure why I even accepted this Mac. Curiosity I guess, as I didn't enter the Mac world until after this model.

Anybody have advice?
 
Hey, thanks for the fast reply. That's good news, I guess we'll work on that. If $500 is a possibility it's worth it to dig in to it and find out exactly what we've got.

What's funny is that she also gave us an old G3 Candy iMac, which is much more useful, but worth close to nothing. Donate that one I guess.

Thanks for the advice, appreciate it.
 
Most collectors wouldn't pay $500 for a 128k, let alone an SE/30! I would say $50-75 would be more reasonable, maybe up to $150-200 if you have the complete box, etc. Does it boot? That always helps.

For reference, I paid $50 (after shipping) for an SE about two months ago.
 
Ok, let's have an informative debate! :)

Hmm..... $50 is another arena. It hardly seems worth dealing with the sale at that price point.

I haven't fired it up yet, but I'm almost positive the lady we got this from would have said if it didn't boot up. She's a nice little old lady, long time client of my wife, and she gave it away, and so had no reason to misrepresent the machine. But, it's time to fire it up, so I'll do that next.

I see it comes with an ImageWriter 2, which I assume is a printer from that era. Will test that too.

The manuals are still in the original styrofoam box they came in. How cute!

I'm pretty sure I have way better System 6 icons that most of you guys. The jealousy must be driving you mad... :)
 
Actually, I'm seeing SEs and SE/30s going for $250-$500 since earlier machines' availability dries up. There's even a thread here about it.

The SE/30 was the Rolls Royce of it's time, upgradeable to an unheard-of amont of RAM for it's day.

Biggest problem is the surface mounted capacitors on the motherboard, but a person with excellent soldering skills can replace these with Tantalum surface mount capacitors that will never leak. It's tedious work, and would take several hours to do.

If it has the original box and packaging, and is in as perfect exterior condition as you say, I'd say $500. If not, maybe $400. That would be top dollar, and any collector wanting to buy one would be trying to knock you down.

If you don't get any bites, then you can lower the price. It's that simple.
 
I see working parts of SE/30's go for $100 on eBay. Non-working parts machines are usually $50+ depending on what's wrong with it. A collector will want to see as much of the original product as you can put together: boxes, packaging, documentation, accessories, etc.
 
I'm pretty sure it's worth at least $10,000. After all, it takes floppy disks which hold kilobytes of data! :) Seriously...

I just bought a new (used) laptop for $450. If the SE/20 works as good as it looks, I think I'll list it for $450, and just wait until somebody wants it at that price. Toss the printer in as a bonus.

I'll make a web site with video to document everything, and to show buyers I'm not a member of the Ukranian mob etc.

Thanks much guys, you've given me a game plan.
 
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