How many collectors?

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Sat Aug 4 01:43:33 2001

At 10:44 PM 8/3/01 -0700, Ernest wrote:
>I think that I read in one of the articles about VCF east that Sellam
>thought that there might be 500 serious collectors....I'm interested
>in peoples opinions on this. Also, this post is NOT about
>Sellam's exact quote, it's about the idea behind it.

The number certainly "feels" right. It is a fairly small community. Go to a
few VCF type things and you'll see the same bunch of folks.

There is certainly the question "What is a 'serious' collector?" and one
cannot easily define that term. In my opinion a serious collector is
someone who does the actual work behind researching a particular aspect of
computers. Then they collect artifacts that are relevant to that research.
Just like art collectors will focus on a particular artist or period,
serious computer collectors will focus on a particular machine, technology,
or some similar aspect.

Casual collectors are people who are unwilling to throw out anything, so
they have developed a "collection" of a bunch of old computers, but by the
same token they've never gone out and bought anything after the
manufacturer was out of business and/or not supporting their stuff anymore.
If you are the original owner (or someone in your immediate family is the
original owner) of all the stuff in your collection then you are a casual
collector.

Speculative collectors don't know anything about the machines they have
collected except what the last one sold for on Ebay or at some other place.
The fact that they are trading in computers is more a coincidence with
their perception that computers will appreciate faster than the inflation
rate than it is because they actually love computers.

Of course in the commercial hardware there is a group of people who have to
support "old" machines and they don't collect so much as stock spares. They
may or may not appreciate the machines they buy and sell, generally they
are pretty knowledgable about them.

--Chuck
Received on Sat Aug 04 2001 - 01:43:33 BST