Twiggys [was: Re: ka... ching!]

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Sat Oct 8 07:45:02 CDT 2016


    > From: Fred Cisin

    >> Did you tell the dumpsterers that they'd thrown out stuff worth
    >> thousands of dollars? (I would have made to sure to let them know
    >> that, with great spite.)

    > "So?  Boss said throw out everything in the closets. ..."

Clearly, the Indians weren't to blame. But I sure hope someone told the
chief...


    > From: Corey Cohen

    > As for stuff in vintage computer that is going up, it's not just Apple.
    > It has to do with how mainstream and how rare something is. ... I do
    > agree the rare Apple stuff is growing faster, but that's because it can
    > pull from the business community as buyers who love the comeback story
    > of Apple and what it represents.

Oh, I don't have any issue with Altairs going for $1-2K; I think one can make
a rational case for that; they were a key machine the growth of personal
computers, etc, etc. But I do think that when it comes to Apples, there is a
certain level of irrationality in some/many buyers. ($20K for a pair of
floppies?) There is definitely an Apple cult, which I think is a factor.

Let me make another analogy with cars (which I also used to collect). I think
early Ferraris are really, really cool - and the 330 P4 is, in my eyes, one
of the most beautiful race cars ever built (maybe _the_ most beautiful). But
if I had $10M, I sure as hell wouldn't spend the whole lot on an original P4;
I think better value would be to buy a down-to-the-last-bolt-exact replica,
for say $500K, and have $9.5M left over to buy other cool stuff with.

This goes quintuply for an original GTO, at $50M. One could do all sorts of
amazing things with that much money. Is having an original _really_ worth as
much (or more) than all those other things? Like I said, a certain level of
irrationality.

	Noel


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