And $500 gets you...

Jules Richardson wrote: I do see the occasional interesting item crop up. There were some "internal" Atari 400/800 design docs (specs, schematics etc) on there a little while ago. They looked real and I've not seen their like before (although I'm not interested enough in such things to have a clue as to their provenance ... I would be interested enough to pick them up for nowt if someone hasn't already scanned them though :-)). So some stuff does crop up. The (often but not always) high(ish) prices do not cause me a problem though. I doubt that local scrapyards have noticed in general (the car ones I've visited lately certainly have not ...), I've not found ridiculous prices at car boot sales, and fellow collectors generally trade or sell for shipping (or give away). So the only effect of high prices that I can envision is that a) more stuff comes out of the closet and appears in the bright lights of ebay and b) if someone has paid ?50 for some books, there is a chance that they'll keep them in decent condition or at least remember that there is a chance of getting some of their money back when they tire of the item. As for rare/good stuff looking after itself, I've heard of too much good stuff heading for the tip before now just because noone thought it was of any use. I know of three accumulations of UK electronics mags from the 1970s (and maybe a bit before) heading for the tip without being mentioned to me. I still don't think not knowing me at the time is a reasonable excuse :-) No great loss and I'm not going to scour ebay looking for such gems, but it would have been nice to read through them. Reminds me that car-boot season starts again soon. Must see if I can pick up some of those R at RE Spectrums or such like !! -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini at iee.org