eBay and online auctions

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Thu Jan 29 21:33:27 1998

>I don't think PC clones (apart from a very few) will ever be collectable.
>Certainly not the no-name machines.

They will be, eventually. An interesting parallel can be made to now very
collectable radios from the 1920s and 30s. Both they and PeeCees were
built like crap, worked like crap, often built by shakey companies
violating all sorts of things, and have almost zero engineering value.

I think laptops will be hot collectables, as they are small and often
clever.

>Suns and SGIs, probably. Acorn RISC-PC's, probably. Alphas, again
>probably

I say yes to all of these. High quality things of any nature tend to
become collectable as soon as they fall out of popular use. Look at the
Sun-2 and 3 lines - they are now way obsolete, yet are still very popular
machines amongst the Sunheads.

>I suspect the real collectables will be the really obscure machines -
>development systems, parallel machines, experimental machines, etc. No
>idea if any will ever turn up second-hand, alas.

I know someone that could have purchased a CM-2 for $800. There was also
that Stardent machine that was mentioned on the list a few months ago.

Never say never.

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Thu Jan 29 1998 - 21:33:27 GMT