On Wed, 6 Mar 2013, Evan Koblentz wrote: I suspect those articles might prompt people who are prone to hoarding to start collecting any piece of computer crap they might come across. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

-----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Evan Koblentz Sent: Wednesday, 6 March 2013 6:11 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Oy vey! Gross mischaracterizations of our hobby. was grossly misquoted by the financial site Bankrate.com, re: any value in vintage computing. http://www.bankrate.com/lite/smart-spending/collecting-items-as-an-investmen t.aspx You got it wrong about C64s - they are regularly going for well in excess of $100 (here in Oz - which is unusual as this was one of CBM's biggest markets) - and remember our dollar is worth more than the USD too. Lance

----- Original Message ----- From: "Evan Koblentz" <evan at snarc.net> To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2013 2:11 AM Subject: Oy vey! Gross mischaracterizations of our hobby. I posted here a little while ago about an original model 5150 IBM. The reason I got one was because it along with a TRS-80 Model 3 were the first computers I ever used (back in highschool math class that also housed a small computing lab in the back of the room). Not that many kids in the early 80's had a 5150 to get all nostalgic about, but millions had 1998 PCs running Windows 98. And while it seems people stuffed 5150's in the attic and forgot about them, those K6/K7/P2/P3 systems from 1998 are all getting recycled as fast as possible to make a lot of people some badly needed money. You have no idea how scrappers get a hardon when they find a Pentium Pro or 486 chip now. So once those kids get old and nostalgic they will be looking for that crappy old emachines/dell/gateway P3 system to mess with (or more likely to play games on), and there won't be many to be found. While they will never be worth what an Apple I is, there will be some value to them (look at what the Apple IIgs gets these days when a few years ago you couldn't give one away). Its just supply and demand at work, and it takes time for demand to surface while supply gets decimated. Hell someday people might even want a heavy boat anchor of a CRT monitor on their desk even with LCD monitors being so abundant and cheap ( and probably all widescreen which sucks for vintage gaming). Do I recommend filling up a warehouse with common 90's machines, nope. But I do have to admit I have a bunch of them mostly to house all the different generations of early 3d video cards I collect. Way before ATI (now AMD and who knows who will buy them out once they go bust) and Nvidia owned the market there were companies like Permedia, Matrox, S3, 3DFX, etc that made cards for gamers and people will eventually pay a few bucks for them. People like to collect stuff when there was a wide selection to chose from before the inevitable consolidation happens. People here love the stuff that came before the PC ruined everything, well the same thing goes for the old desktop before laptops ruined everything, or laptops when internet ready phones and ipads ruined everything etc. We know MARCH was created before the whole "an Apple I is worth how much?" thing happened, but there are people who will look at that and think there is money to be had, and a simple cheap hobby will turn out to be a cash cow for people flipping machines and parts down the road (happens to every hobby with speculation).