24 Jan
1999
24 Jan
'99
1:36 p.m.
On Sun, 24 Jan 1999, Marvin wrote:
I don't know if you noticed or not, but the email
address of the seller is
at spies.com. For those of you who might not be aware, spies.com is one of
the largest repositories of arcade game related materials. The guy who runs
it seems to be very well regarded in the collector circles.
That's the guy. He's also well regarded by Alto collectors:
http://www.spies.com/aek/xerox.html
So, don't worry, if you don't pay him $5K, it'll still have a good home.
$5K seems like a reasonable price, BTW (assuming he doesn't have a $20K
reserve). Only 1000 or so were made. It's historic. It would be easy to
justify. Who's gonna do it?!
Not me! I have absolutely no desire to spend $5K on the thing. And this
confuses me a little. It's near the top of my wanted list, and I can
afford it, but the prospect doesn't interest me even a little bit. For
some reason, I find the idea somewhat offensive.
I guess it's because I think of an acquisition sort of like an "adoption".
I'm willing to house the thing, and spend a good chunk of time trying to
get it working, keep it working, and make it accessible to others. Why
should I have to pay $5K on top of that?
$500 seems to be my limit for what I consider a reasonable acquisition
fee. Maybe that will go up as this crazy price spiral continues, but to
pay more than that, I think you really have to be in the speculative
investment mindset, and I'm not.
-- Doug