Yeah I know, CPTBadAss, I am normally in that camp too honestly. The thing is I like to just collect and document most of the time. Most of these keyboards are not compatible with your everyday PC without some serious know-how anyway, so for the greater good, my goal is just to learn about them and share the knowledge/pics with others. The MCRW is a magnetic card reader/writer (I think moreso the latter). I am no expert on the matter but my basic understanding is that you would buy blank magnetic strip cards, and encode them with whatever information your external system requires -- bank cards, identification cards, etc.
intelli78, the two MCRW machines in my possession are literally the only two I've seen on Yahoo Auctions since I started collecting. They are pretty rare. The Sony NEWS on the other hand, I have seen them pop up from time to time but they are also not exactly common. Maybe 1 every six months or so...and usually it's the
5461 variant.
hasu actually pointed out to me though that there is an MCRW-1000 keyboard in the classifieds section. This was a few weeks ago. I am not sure if it is still for sale.