I keep manuals for everything I ever bought new. When I sell something I give the OM's with it. But Millennials will just give you copies of OM's (sometimes even bound), as they keep the original.  Same thing when you buy a used car these days...the OM's are gone. Eventually, they all wind up on eBay for the most part.

I think I have original OM's for everything from the G to the Diamond J....except maybe the Super J.

Kevin

But that's exactly my point; WHAT happens to OM's....do they just wind up filed & forgotten or inevitably thrown away??

Somebody gives me a 'copy' of an OM's, they better not tell me they have the original, or try to hold me up for more money. You can get copies of most anything on the Internet, so  I don't consider that, part of the 'deal'.

Kevin

I really think it's a huge paradigm shift in how buyers & sellers relate to each other today.......and I don't mean that in a positive way.

There's a SM for a particular chainsaw I have that has been floating around on the Internet forever. There are still posers trying to sell it in PDF form, if you're dumb enough to fall for it. The pictures are all dark and unusable....looks like melting chocolate. My guess is that decades ago someone posted the SM for that saw from a file made from a microfiche copy.....hence the dark pics/illustrations. I once had the original SM and I can tell you it was perfectly fine to use.

Moral to that story is I HATE people who own original manuals and don't give them up with the sale.

Kevin

To me it's a matter of conscience....I would want/expect the original manuals to go with whatever I bought/sold. I'm not gonna hold them for ransom later or make PDF copies to sell on the Internet. 

Tom's case is different with vacuum manuals because of the museum...he's preserving history. Some of those manuals  may be beyond rare. It's very possible that the museum may have the only surviving copies someday. OTOH, if you're selling a snowblower and you keep the OM, you're despicable if that's your natural inclination.

Kevin