On Mon, 1 Mar 1999, John Foust wrote:
> At 02:21 PM 3/1/99 -0800, Sellam Ismail wrote:
> >Its the rape and
> >pillage of this once serene hobby of collecting retired computers and
> >bringing some life back into them for fun that I don't care for.
> >
> >I never got into this for the money.
>
> No, you got into it for the groupies and the fame. ;-)
>
> Or maybe you got into it because you saw highly under-appreciated
> old computers selling for next to nothing, which is another way of
> saying that you're wise and anticipated a market that hadn't
> reached its full potential.
Well, since you brought it up, there were two reasons for the VCF:
1) I needed a way to turn this hobby that was sucking tons of money out of
my pocket into a tax write-off and,
2) Upon realizing there were many, many people interested in this hobby
(that realization came when I first subscribed to the newly formed
ClassicCmp mailing list) I wanted to create a yearly convention where
collectors could gather to share their hobby with others, see and hear the
people who made the stuff they collect, and be THE place for finding that
one computer thing you've been looking for all year. In fact this was
initially the primary motivation...to have stuff come to me rather than
having to go out searching for it. In reality, what happens is that by
the time the VCF opens, I'm so broke from organizing everything that all I
can do is drool over what I see in the flea market and envy the people who
actually get to take home the goodies.
So far, as far as being THE venue for buying/selling/trading old computer
things, I say that the VCF is second only to eBay. But the advantage of
the VCF is that you can get stuff MUCH cheaper than you would have to pay
on eBay. Last year all sorts of excellent stuff got sold for very
reasonable prices. Due to anonimity concerns I can't be specific, but an
Apple 1 was sold at VCF 2.0 for a franction of what it would have went for
on eBay (no, don't e-mail me privately for more info either, I can't say
any more :)
And of course I'm very wise and anticipated a market that hadn't yet
reached its full potential.
And the chicks really dig it.
So there you have it, the real story.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always hasslin' the man.
Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0
See
http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 02/15/99]
Received on Mon Mar 01 1999 - 16:58:00 GMT