The IBM 1400 series is pretty significant in the history of computers and the 1401 was the first of it's line. So why are there so few out there?<p>Simply put, the average IBM 1401 is comprised of roughly five tonnes of gold-rich salvage material that hit the market at a time when old "new" stuff was basically worthless. Yes, antique chairs and china had value then, but not obsolete technology, records, or film. This was a time before VHS, mass market home video, and the notion that old celluloid was anything besides junk. The only surviving copy of Dreyer's cut of "La passion de Jeanne d'Arc" was sitting in closet in a mental institution in Oslo. This was a tough time to be an inconveniently large hunk rich in precious metals!<p>Laboriously scraping the gold off of connectors etc. is obviously a lot of work. That's not how the pro's did things. We're talking chemical baths, electroplating, you name it. I once had a prof who moonlighted as a computer salvager in the 80's. He admitted to being the final death of many large mainframes, including 1401's, that he dearly wished he could have saved if he'd known then what he knows now (or did at the time I took his course)!<p>The worthless becomes the precious. Maybe people with hoarding disorders are saner than we think! (Looking around me, I might have a touch of that myself...)