Where to sell?

[Lewis.Photography]

Hi I have a Topcam TC-800 which I believe is the first digital camera or one of the first? I don't know where to sell it or its proper name because I cannot find it on the internet. Can someone please help me?

 

[Designer]

On TPF there are two forums that might be a good place to post this:

"Buy and Sell"

"Collector's Corner"

If you already know how much to ask, post it in buy and sell, If you need input, post it in collector's corner.

You can also post your ad on e-bay, but you'll have to arrive at a price on your own.

 

[qleak]

Hi I have a Topcam TC-800 which I believe is the first digital camera or one of the first? I don't know where to sell it or its proper name because I cannot find it on the internet. Can someone please help me?

I highly doubt it's the first digital camera. Maybe the first consumer marketed digital camera in some category. I'd try ebay, but I wouldn't expect much.

 

[petrochemist]

From the look of it, I doubt it's even in the first 50 models. It may be a relative early model, certainly the manual doesn't look like a later model but I don't see any reason to think it's worth the postage cost alone.
Your photo shows you have the manual, a quick look in that should provide a date. Kodak's first digital camera was from 1975 but very much a prototype commercial cameras started around 1990.
I think this is something like a 1MP camera from around 2000.

 

[Buckster]

First, look in the manual and find a copyright for it. That will give you an approximate age of the manual and thus the camera.

It's not cited anywhere as one of the first digital cameras, nor even one of the first commercially available digital cameras. At 1 full megapixel, that puts it quite a bit further along the timeline than the first digital cameras as well.

In comparison, my first digital camera was only .8 megapixels (point eight), and it was nowhere near one of the first either. In fact, I think it was about the 3rd version in that line, and the first of that line wasn't anywhere near the "first" or even "one of the first" digital cameras either. It came out in the fall of 1998 and I bought it for myself for Christmas that year.

A full 10 years earlier than that, the Canon RC-250 came out in 1988. According to the digital camera histories one can find online, it actually is credited as one of the first digital cameras commercially available, though also not THE first. As a camera collector, I tracked one down and acquired it many years ago, complete with it's own unique little floppy disc and charger, still working.

BUT even that is more than 10 years after the very first digital camera that holds the title, which is the Kodak in the story linked here: Digital Photography The Power of Pixels - IEEE Spectrum

Where to sell it? Probably ebay. How much it's worth? No idea, but I suspect not much. I would say set up an auction. Start the bidding at 1 penny to attract potential buyers. Set the lowest actual sell price you'll take to something stupid high and run it for a month, and see how high you can get the bidding on it. That'll tell you what the potential is. At the end of the run, if the highest bid price is acceptable to you, even if it doesn't meet the sell price to put on it, you can offer it to the highest bidder anyway.

 

[480sparky]

I'd think if it was truly the ground-breaking, earth-shattering camera that was 'the first digital', the internet would be filled with search results.

It appears to be a rebranded Mustek MDC-800. Ebay can't even find where one sold there, so that means one is not worth much of a 'fetching price' for a supposed piece of history.

I'd say what you have is a one-off camera of limited production and distribution. More of a toy that will be forever relegated to the backwaters of the industry.

 

[KmH]

History of the camera - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

The first commercially available portable digital camera in the United States was the Dycam Model 1, first shipped in November 1990.