In addition to archiving 35 years of TV news, Germantown’s Marion Stokes was also Philly’s Macintosh queen
Early last December, we brought you news about former Germantown Resident Marion Stokes and her 140,000 VHS tape collection of broadcast news taped over the past 35 years. The Internet Archive is currently digitizing those, but it turns out Ms. Stokes was also an avid collector of objects besides VHS tapes—namely, Macintosh products of all shapes and sizes. More than $1 million worth, all told.
Early last December, we brought you news about former Germantown Resident Marion Stokes and her 140,000 VHS tape collection of broadcast news taped over the past 35 years. The Internet Archive is currently digitizing those, but it turns out Ms. Stokes was also an avid collector of objects besides VHS tapes—namely, Macintosh products of all shapes and sizes. More than $1 million worth, all told.
Before her death in 2012, Stokes was an activist, local TV producer and librarian with a penchant for archiving the happenings of the day. Naturally, that's what lead her to record local and national TV news broadcasts from 1977 to 2012. At the same time as she was collecting the recordings, though, Stokes also appears to have been collecting various new-in-box Macs and other Apple gear—much of which still remains sealed and unused.
Cult of Mac breaks the collection down:
"Stokes was a major original Apple investor and a longtime supporter of the company. During her lifetime she also purchased or was given nearly 200 new Macintosh computers, peripherals and interesting items. It is a literal time capsule of Apple and its history over three decades.
Stokes kept the equipment and the videotape collection in several climate controlled, protected apartments – separate apartments from where she lived, used only for the storage of tapes and equipment. At one time she had as many as nine properties. Since these items were not kept in a locker or damp basement for decades, they are in excellent condition. Many of the boxes remained sealed and unopened until Mrs. Stokes death.
The new-in-the box Apple equipment included things like a Lisa 2/10, Macintosh 512k, NuBus PowerMacs, a Workgroup Server 7250, eMacs and iMacs of all styles. Laptops included Macintosh Portables, 68k PowerBooks, clamshell iBooks, G4 Powerbooks and even a Duo Dock. An original Macintosh 20MB SCSI Hard Drive, QuickTake cameras, laser printers and monitors like a Radius Color Pivot Display and Apple 21' Studio Display (a behemoth CRT) can also be found, not to mention dozens and dozens of additional Macs and related gear also new but without original packaging."
The whole shebang is worth more than $1 million in today's money by some estimates. But, no worries, Mac collectors—you can nab the collection on eBay right now for a cool $100,000.
Hey, anything to be part of history. Right?