12 Nov
2007
12 Nov
'07
5:37 a.m.
People might think I am cheap, but every cent I put
into my collection I
consider gone forever. I think investing in hobbies is a scam, a few people
with money toss it around driving the price up so they can sell at a profit
until the hobby implodes (every hobby has gone through that and most never
recover from the inflated prices). All this does is keep people with shallow
pockets from enjoying the hobby as much as they could have otherwise.
This would be an extremely risky investment. Really, the market for
investing in classic computers has come and gone. The boat has left
port. The days of picking the real raries up for nothing has ended
(mostly*), especially on Ebay.
5000 dollars is a lot of money to many folks, but for an investor, it
is small change. Will he be able to beat the S&P 500 with classic
computers these days? Not a chance. Ten years ago, yes, when you could
still pick up Altairs for a song. Investing in antiques and
collectables is generally not a good idea, unless one can get in at
the _very_ begininng of the curve in interest. For vintage computers,
that was sometime back in the late 1990s.
Likewise, it may come to a shock to many of the people on this list
(but it should not), but the collectors with the deep pockets are
generally the BEST collectors. They are the ones that know how to take
care of the things they spent a bundle of money on - proper shipping,
proper storage, proper use. They generally do not have their
collections arranged as stacks in the spare room, but as properly
displayed artifacts. And GASP, yes, they actually use them as well!
Frankly, the whining about deep pocket collectors really just sounds
like sour grapes to me. If you can not play with the Big Boys, too
bad. NOTHING is stopping you from playing.
*Yes, I know it still happens if you do the legwork.
--
Will