New Book for Computers

It’s a good thing Fred Brown isn’t color blind. Otherwise, it might be difficult for him to tell his own Brown Book from the Kelley Blue Book.

Although not as widely circulated as the yellow pages, or even Redbook magazine, the Blue Book is oft referred to by car dealers, buyers and sellers to establish fair value of used cars.

Brown thinks his brown-covered book, first published a year and half ago to list initial retail, “street” and current market prices of microcomputers and printers, will get worn black and blue in the next month or so.

Brown’s Santa Barbara companies publish the Brown Book and act as a broker to sell used, unsold or outdated computers. The Microcomputer Inventory Exchange, or MIX as one of the firms is called, is planning to stage the biggest--and best color-coordinated--sale of computer goodies ever.

The sale, pooling unsold inventory from many ComputerLand stores, will be held April 5-13 at a warehouse at 1929 St. Andrews Place in Santa Ana. Brown, whose rosy estimates of the inventory’s value have been doubted by some, says that between $18 million and $25 million worth of goods will be for sale to the public and dealers.

First task, said Brown, is printing out 100,000 labels to stick on the boxes of computers, parts and accessories. Each must be the proper color, of course. The reds will be computers, the blues, printers, and so on. The labels will match banners, directional signs and other guides in the big warehouse during the sale.

The Brown Book will be used to set the initial selling price. In addition, Brown thinks that plenty of customers will turn to the Brown Book to identify those once-in-a-blue-moon deals. Best of all, Brown’s company gets 10% of the receipts, minus costs, from the sale. By his reckoning, that’s about a million greenbacks--enough to tickle Brown pink.