Yeah, I know what ya mean. How can something that actually works, with any degree of accuracy, be so inexpensive ? But then I start to remember things. Like the 1st "pocket" calculator I ever bought. And I put pocket in quotes because the thing was about 7 inches long, 4 inches wide, and 1 1/2 inches thick, and all it did was basic math. And yet it cost me $85 - and that was considered cheap at the time ! And today they might cost you what - $5 ? And be the size of a credit card and do all forms of advanced math. So yeah, I was thinking along the same lines as you when I bought a small scale similar to that some years ago, it gave 4 decimal places, and paid about $20 for it. But it worked, and it worked quite well, and accurately and consistently. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that cost does not always equal value, nor does something being inexpensive mean it doesn't work. No, it may not have the degree of accuracy that a fine precision instrument in a lab might have, but is that what you're really after when you're trying to weigh a coin ? Given the tolerance levels that all coins are made with, have always been made with, a lab quality scale really isn't required. Especially since weight doesn't prove anything, one way or the other in regard to the coin being genuine, to begin with. All weight is, is an indicator. And close is good enough for that.
If I remember right, the first Texas Instruments calculator cost around $100, and all it did was add, subtract, multiply, and divide. About 20 years ago, I then saw a cheap calculator for .79 cents.
Agree with the above. Price and quality do not always go hand in hand. Years ago while doing craft shows with my wife when an item wouldn't sell we would raise the price and sell out. Go figure. It's human nature I believe. If it cost more it must be better.
Okay, you all seem to be misinterpreting my comment, and understandably so. My sigh was one of regret (and jealousy), because I've been in Fry's, but the closest one is a six-hour drive from here. I totally believe that it's a legit scale, with legit specs. It's just that it's a lot better than my 50-by-0.01g scale, or my 30-by-0.001g scale (just a bit short of a troy ounce), and (was) priced at a third of what I paid for them a few years ago. So, yeah, "sigh". And, @GDJMSP, I won't even start into what a scale of that capacity and resolution would've cost back in the 1970s, when I was a young chemistry geek. For starters, it would've been mechanical, and big. (Although not as big or mechanical as an "adding machine"...!)
You ought to have seen a Univac with paper tape and card operating system. Not to count the support system of card punches, collators, etc.
I had a Smith-Corona in the early 70s that I bought on sale for $125; it went south real quick and was replaced by the TI "MBA" calculator for about the same money.
My first full-time summer job was in a computing center with CDC equipment. I've seen it all. (And heard it -- a 150-card-per-minute automated punch is LOUD.)
A lot of people believe that something being sold cheap must be. You get what you pay for, right? Now I get more memory in my Kindle than I had when buying disk drives for the county MIS department back in the 90s.
LoL - today's cheapest laptop can compute circles around those behemoths and forget about those electric bills
Love the pair of Tektronix 500-series scopes in the middle! I miss the days of being able to troubleshoot computer issues with an oscilloscope. (At least, one that cost less than five figures...)
My earliest "fake" memory is when I was a Freshman in college in 1963 and bought a Sans and Streif (sp) slide rule. II seem to remember some students having TI calculators that cost $100 and added, subtracted multiplied and divided... Can't be true though since pocket calculators only became available in the early 70's.
Maybe, and maybe not. After all, we also use much more computing power these days. Cloud services (Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) require lots of energy - and blockchain infrastructure (think Bitcoin) is not free either. See here for example, and that is BTC only ... Christian
