Statistics
Through the years, I have been monitoring the sales of calculators and keeping track of the prices. It is interesting to see which model would be the most expensive, the most sold, etc. Here are some numbers:
Highest price paid (for one device, not average price): Stats from 2019-05-08
The first PULSAR are not really a surprise as these watches have a lot of gold inside. Add this to the fact that they are quite rare, and you end up with a very big selling price. If the watch is working fine, on top of this, you reach even higher
HEUER is a well known brand of fine watches, and this particular model has a slide rule crown. This is why it is in my list of calculators
ALPINA
There is a special page for this small calculator that was meant to be a competitor of the CURTA machines.
Some less known models are in this list, such as:
CENTIGRAPH: made by American Adding Machine Co.
This is a simple column adder, meaning that you can only add one digit. On top of this, there are only 5 keys, so if you want to add a number bigger than 5, you need to use a combination of 2 keys. The prices shown here combine auctions from Ebay and from other private sites.
HART Mercantile computing machine
This is a small adding machine that was patented in 1878. Of course, there is very few of them surviving and this explains the high price paid for such a device.
HOHENRECHENSCHIEBER MHR1 : This is a cylindrical slide rule similar to the K&E but again this is a rare item as few of them are available for sale.
Down in the list, not shown here because the price is "only" $2333.00, we have the SUI President. I was curious to see what this is exactly, and here it is in all its splendor:
When looking at the picture above, you wonder: so? what is so special about this one?
If you try to order it online, the website is: https://www.japantrendshop.com/sui-president-series-calculator-p-2636.html
Here is the description:
The Sui President Series Calculator is an exquisite office tool made with a hairline finish and buttons so perfectly rendered you may not even want to touch them. Sui is a series of a deluxe aluminum office equipment crafted out of sophisticated metals, born out of modern design and traditional Japanese approaches to monozukuri craftsmanship. Every Sui Calculator is made to order, a process which can take several weeks. But the wait is worth it when the results look as good as this.
No wonder...
Now let's look at the Most popular calculators, in numbers of sales:
Obviously the Texas-Instruments are on the top, as they are very popular in high-school and college. However I was suprised to see that the HP-12C was not far behind. This was the most popular model of HP small business calculator, used by many realtor agents.
The next surprise was the HP48GX. This is an older model and I didn't expect the number of sales to be in the 4000....
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