5 Mar
2003
5 Mar
'03
10:37 a.m.
On Wed, 5 Mar 2003, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
I've managed to get lots of my things for free to near free, but I'm not
going to go claim that they're not worth anything. Of course, there are
things that are worthless to me that aren't worthless to other people.
What things are worth depends a lot on who's buying them.
Got about 3
moving boxes full of assorted software just a few months ago.
All that was headed to the dumpster (I intercepted it on the way). About
half Mac, half PC. I also got 2 paper case boxes of IIgs software not
much before that, probably 20 or so titles, most in their boxes. All free.
Congratulations. That is quite a score. However, the original question
was "what is a fair value for this stuff?" It would not be reasonable to
say, "Oh, Chris just got three moving boxes worth of software for free, so
therefore I would value that portion of the lot at $0." Ok, to each his own, but the point of collecting
computers is to preserve
them and their history. Well, it turns out that much of that collective
"history" is represented by the manuals and software, especially the
originals, because the artwork on the box and the miscellaneous stuff that
comes inside are all telling of the culture of computing at the time the
software was published and also lend use to various avenues of research
that we may or may not realize right now. Future generations may glean
something useful out of the packaging that we don't today. Therefore, it
is important to save.
I think this is a possible difference between two 'camps' of collectors:"
those who want a collection to display, and are very much interested in
history and authenticity, and those who rather have a machine that they
can hack on, and is functional. Most collectors probably fall somewhere
between, but tend to gravitate towards one or the other. I seem to fit
more into the second category; however, that doesn't mean that I could
care less about the history... a number of things in my collection I got
because "they're cool" or "I wished I had one when I was a kid".
But to
me, if the machine doesn't function, it's worthless as an item in my
collection - it's either going to get fixed, junked to repair other
things, or thrown out if it's too much hastle to attempt a repair. Of
course, the amount of hassle it is also depends on how much I really want
it to work.
Pat
--
Purdue Universtiy ITAP/RCS
Information Technology at Purdue
Research Computing and Storage
http://www-rcd.cc.purdue.edu