How many collectors?

At 10:44 PM 8/3/01 -0700, Ernest wrote: The number certainly "feels" right. It is a fairly small community. Go to a few VCF type things and you'll see the same bunch of folks. There is certainly the question "What is a 'serious' collector?" and one cannot easily define that term. In my opinion a serious collector is someone who does the actual work behind researching a particular aspect of computers. Then they collect artifacts that are relevant to that research. Just like art collectors will focus on a particular artist or period, serious computer collectors will focus on a particular machine, technology, or some similar aspect. Casual collectors are people who are unwilling to throw out anything, so they have developed a "collection" of a bunch of old computers, but by the same token they've never gone out and bought anything after the manufacturer was out of business and/or not supporting their stuff anymore. If you are the original owner (or someone in your immediate family is the original owner) of all the stuff in your collection then you are a casual collector. Speculative collectors don't know anything about the machines they have collected except what the last one sold for on Ebay or at some other place. The fact that they are trading in computers is more a coincidence with their perception that computers will appreciate faster than the inflation rate than it is because they actually love computers. Of course in the commercial hardware there is a group of people who have to support "old" machines and they don't collect so much as stock spares. They may or may not appreciate the machines they buy and sell, generally they are pretty knowledgable about them. --Chuck