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Comment by gtirloni | Hacker News Reader

My initial thought was "why don't they donate it to another vintage computing museum?"

https://www.geekwire.com/2024/seattles-living-computers-muse...

> The estate previously teamed up with Christie’s for a November 2022 auction of 155 masterpieces from Allen’s extensive art collection. It was the world’s most successful single-owner fine art auction ever, raising a record $1.62 billion.

I'm sure they are expecting a huge payout here as well. Understandable but sad nonetheless.

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It's tough. When the Boston Computer Museum closed down a number of years back, its holdings were sold off and I don't think most of them were ever put on display. Admittedly, a lot was just random "old computers" at that point, but it costs money to display properly. No one is getting any real benefit from putting them in a Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse someplace.

MIT ended up with the K&E slide rule collection at one point. Apparently they've merged it with a recent donation and it may be on display at their new facility but it pretty much sat in storage for years as far as I'm aware.

As far as I know the bulk of the Boston Museum was put on a train to California where it became the start of the Computer History Museum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_History_Museum

Some of it went to the Museum of Science in Boston--I think the Whirlwind was there (not sure if still on display). But, yes, a lot went to the Computer History Museum. Not sure there's much on display. Latterly, a fair bit of the collection was various donations from local computer companies demonstrating things like graphics and the computers themselves weren't necessarily uniquely important or interesting.

Very doubtful that this would raise a relatively meaningful sum...

Indeed, some big, rare and once costly things are just too cumbersome to have a huge market.

Who has the space to store an antique mainframe?

Same thing happens in other markets, industrial grade 12 foot bed CNC lathes can be picked up for similar prices to small hobby machines. Great deal if you have a spare barn, 3 phase power and the logistics to move it. Not many do!

Even at a smaller scale, I'm sure a ton of us have somewhat historically interesting antique computers in our attics or basements and a ton of people here would pipe up to yell "You can't just toss (or recycle) an Osborne!!!" Well I can because it's not doing anyone any good in my attic and I'm not wasting a lot of effort to transfer it to someone else's attic after they play with it for a day.

I bet a few HN folks could honestly crowdsource a purchase an item or two and give it to worthy entities.

"Impressive, very nice. Let's see Paul Allen's graphics card."

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