A moment of silence, please

On Tue, 12 Aug 1997, Marvin wrote: The problem I see with this view, is that it does not fully take into consideration the class/capabilities/intent of "people" who are throwing these outlandish amounts of money around! The 'speculators' who are out to try to make a quick buck on these machines while having no regard for their preservation or history will only make life much more difficult (and expensive) for those who would preserve both the machine and its history. Once the percieved value of a given item is (publically) driven up, either by speculators with too much money to spend or too many badly out of touch New York/L.A. Times articles, it can take a very long time for the prices to return to reality (if they ever do). And once an item is in the hands of one of these money oriented types, it may well languish in a vault(sic) until someone will pay the 'proper' prices, or when the novelty has worn off the item may still end up in the trash rather than being released for a more reasonable price. (don't laugh, I regularly deal with a *lot* of these types!) There has got to be a balance somewhere, I'm just not sure how to get there. Are *you* prepared to pay $500US for an Osborne or a TI99-4a ??? -jim --- jimw(a)agora.rdrop.com The Computer Garage - http://www.rdrop.com/~jimw Computer Garage Fax - (503) 646-0174