13 Oct
1999
13 Oct
'99
9:50 a.m.
In response to my rant:
That's because eBay is where
"collectors" hang out. Not people like us,
for whom collector is an insufficient/inaccurate term.
Tony Duell <ard(a)p850ug1.demon.co.uk> replied:
Agreed. I maintain that I am _not_ a computer
collector. Sure I have a
number of old computers around the place. But I have them to learn about
(how they work, etc), to restore, to use, etc.
For want of a better word to describe what we do (as opposed to "collect"),
I used enthusiast. But if anyone has a better suggestion, I think it is
quite useful to make this distinction.
I certainly don't have them as an investment.
Quite simply I'd be _very_ happy if the prices of all old computers fell
to 0 tomorrow. 'Collectors' would be very distressed if that happened.
I've never been into coin or stamp collecting, so I don't know whether
there are actually different mindsets for people collecting them as an
investment vs. some other reason. Since I've put my rant up on my web
page, maybe I should think about this some more and expand upon it.
At VCF I spoke at some length with someone who writes for Wired (but not
the person that wrote their VCF writeup). I told him my analogy of
coin/stamp vs. classic car collectors. I'm hoping to see it in print
some day.