Re: Fire damages -> Help needed

hwarin@neuf.fr wrote:
>
> Hi, all
>
> An important part of my computer collection have been damaged by a fire caused by a clothes dryer. I actually need help on 2 points :
>
> - Insurance expert asks me to evaluate the value of damaged items - most of them are pretty rare ... My hope is to motivate the expert to make a good clean at least on most interesting things.
>
>
> - The cleaning compagny don't wants for the moment to clean
>
I am sorry to hear about this.    I have an insurance policy called an 
"umbrella" policy and I have listed important computers in it so that I 
am covered that way.   I would not want a cleaning company to clean my 
old stuff anyway, I'd just take it slow and complete the job yourself as 
you can.  Your collection is worth thousands, but the best way to get 
values is to check for similar items on Ebay, and for those you can't 
find, ask persons who curate computer museums for assistance because 
they'd have authority that an insurance company would acknowledge, in 
addition to the Ebay prices.  It's going to take some work.

*     *     *

There has also been another vintage computer-related fire of a 
French-born historical figure.  Claude A.R. Kagan - he's OK and in good 
spirits, but lost was his historically irreplaceable Burroughs 205 
mainframe and some other similarly old things. Fortunately a lot of his 
other items including a PDP 8 "straight eight" was moved about a year 
1/2 ago.

http://www.trentonian.com/articles/2009/12/04/news/doc4b1888f3ca007384474191.txt

HOPEWELL TWP. Windswept flames 50 feet high yesterday destroyed the 
local barn where computer programming first flourished, beneath an 
imported stage that was first used at the New York Worlds Fair of 1964.

The 50-by-100 foot building on the property of computer pioneer Claude 
A.R. Kagan, now 85, gained a reputation in the late 60s and 70s as a 
hangout for misfits from Hopewell Valley High and Princeton kids whom 
Kagan said he pulled away from pot and turned on to computers.

Early members of that first 1967 computer club in New Jersey, known as 
the RESISTORS, wrote programs in SAM76, Kagan's own early computer 
language, and even wrote a primer about the language, said an ode to 
Kagan when he was honored as 2007 Hobbyist of the Year by the Amateur 
Computer Group of New Jersey.



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