What a nice tag sale find! An original Fisher-Price PXL 2000 camera, complete in the box with all the accessories! What makes this camera so special? Well, the PXL 2000 was manufactured in 1987. Imagine the time, MTV was still a music video station, the more AC VH1 cable channel had just hit the scene, and kids everywhere wanted to play with video recording, but Mom and Dad’s $1500 JVC HandiCam was off limits. So Fisher-Price comes along and sells this baby–a video camera capable of recording audio AND video onto a standard Type II audio cassette. Ingenious little idea, but the product flopped. The PXL 2000 was short-lived. Just enough had sold to have some sort of impact, and the grainy, choppy black and white video served as an artsy effect in some contemporary films. Film students and indy movie makers all wanted to get their hands on the unique little video recorder. The market has only grown for this toy, but the availability certainly hasn’t. Today, a used PXL 2000 today sells for $150-300. There’s even an after-market industry for PXL repairs and modifications.

Our friend Fred in Rockcliffe Park, Ontario found a terrific transportable computer by Ottawa-based Dynalogic–it’s the Hyperion and offers some cool features for a 1983 computer, including dual 360k 5 1/4″ disk drives, built-in amber CRT and a video out jack for displaying CGA graphics! The keyboard slides underneath the CPU and locks into place. This machine was driven the DOS 2.11 operating system. Fred also notes that the system appears to support some sort of networking capability, as there’s an unusual network interface in the back. One of Dynalogic’s largest customers was the Canadian Government. Can you imagine they paid over $4000 for these machines? This one was grabbed for $5.00–just a wee bit less than the original price.