collectors vs. enthusiasts

I agree with this. I think the people on this list are at one end of the collector spectrum. They want all of their machines to be working and usable. I think the real difference is with the people who view old computers as an investment, and these are the people who are driving the prices crazy on eBay. They think they are going to go up dramatically in value over the short term. This spoils it for the people who are really interested in collecting, since it makes it that much harder to get things. Back quite a few years ago I was an avid book collector (I actually read the books too, so maybe I was an enthusiast :-)). Every 6 months or so there would be reports in the paper about the selling price of some rare book at an auction. After that there would be a bunch of "investors" at the local auctions bidding up all the books over 10 years old! They would gladly pay 10 to 100x the real value of the books thinking they were getting a real bargain. The sad thing about it is you knew those books would never return to the market, none of the investors would admit that they made a mistake and would hold on to them until they died. This was a real problem for collectors. Do you bid against them, so you can get the book you need, which will just move the market up more. Or, ignore them, and loose the chance the complete part of your collection. I think we are seeing some of the same thing in computers, and eBay (and other auction sites) make it easy for them. Hopefully this is just a passing fad. If enough of these "investors" get burned they may not return. -- Dr. Mark Green mark(a)cs.ualberta.ca Professor (780) 492-4584 Director, Research Institute for Multimedia Systems (RIMS) Department of Computing Science (780) 492-1071 (FAX) University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H1, Canada