Value of plotters ?

[agodwin]

I have a couple of HP flat bed plotters (7220 style). At least one of them doesn't work (drastic fuse-blowing problem, probably aged power supply capacitors).

I saw one on ebay, advertised at a silly collector price - is this just wishful thinking on the part of the seller or are these something rare that I should preserve ?

I could hack them up to use for building things (pcb handling stuff) but this is something I wouldn't do for calculators. Should I recycle old plotters ?

[Dan Grelinger]

As with beauty, I find that the value of many 'low volume' HP items is very dependent on the 'eye of the beholder'. That means that the value can be highly variable from sale-to-sale and from listing to listing.

For example, I have heard of Option 3 (HP-IL) HP7470A Ploters listed for sale at $1000 and actual sales completed at close to $500, and I have seen a sale occuring at $25.

The other-interfaced 7470A plotters never seem to command much interest and lanquish on ebay if listed at high prices. There seems to be more supply available than there is demand.

[Garth Wilson]

How is the availability of the pens for these plotters?

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Quote:

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How is the availability of the pens for these plotters?

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No problem at all! Search google or eBay for "HP plotter pens" and you will find dozens of suppliers.

Somewhere in my garage is an HP9872C flatbed plotter in A3 size. I still have some unopened bags of pens (they come in bags of five pens). There is currently a non-working one on eBay for 355$. Mine is working (or was working when I last tried it out) and I would not sell it for less than 1000$/Euros. They cost new around 5.000$ in the mid eighties.

Edited: 11 Feb 2013, 5:30 p.m.