The Timex Sinclair 1000
That's my first personal computer which was a Christmas gift from mom in 1984 or so. I believe it was sold at the time for about 100 bucks at Boscovs in Wilkes-Barre, PA. At the time that was the probably among if not the cheapest computer on the market. But man, did I make the most of it. Those keys are worn flat by my trek through learning BASIC, or at least Timex Sinclair's version of it (not sure anyone anywhere ever learned whatever the "pure" form of BASIC might have been). It led to bread and butter for the rest of my life.
There were a lot of these on the market so it's not a valuable artifact of early computing; they can be found on Ebay for about 50 bucks. I am not sure of the whereabouts of the one above anymore.
The "Timex Sinclair 1000" was actually the British "Sinclair ZX81" and was fascinating more for its cheap price and able capabilities if you didn't want to do too much and were also able to put up with the flimsy engineering just 100 bucks got you. It was in every sense of the word just a way for someone who wanted a computer for computing's sake with respect to learning and experimentation.
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