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Hoarding

In 20 years, I suspect that LCD and plasma TVs will be collectors' items. LED is coming in a big way and probably will be pushed along if the Federal government has its way with energy standards.

We've been pretty silly with energy and computers. I was tinkering with a system that had been off all night and I put my hand on the PSU case and was startled to discover that it was warm. It seems that gear that's supposed to be "off" isn't anymore. The 5150 had a 62.5 watt PSU and even later Pentium systems did fine with 150W PSUs. The machine I'm sitting at has a 500W PSU and "soft off". Nothing green about that, no matter what the marketing literature says.
 
CRT's are one thing I don't have a pile of (save for the associated 1701,1702,1902 C=, Apple III, etc) Probably 10 or 15 total in the keep pile. I do have 2 really nice big ones, a 20" Sony and a 22" LaCie I have for future reference. I use a really cool 20" Dell as one of the 2 monitors on my main computer that has dual inputs and a button on the front to select so I can use it as an off window on my main system and as a test bed for a box I am working on with the push of a button

Since my orginal post I have spent a fair amount of time out in the shop moving stuff around (mainly trying to get the elCamino body back on the frame to free up some room) I suspect that in a few weeks when the weather finally catches up with me and I can't do my regular scrap business as much I will probably be offloading a good portion of what I have accumulated here and on ebay.

-Lance
 
I don't think plasma TV's will be collectable in 20 years because most will be dead by then (shorter tube life).

OLED is/was supposed to be the best thing since CRT, not sure whats going on with those.
 
Since they were introduced I've been waiting for the film type display but so far nothing.

I also have about 15 monitors for systems, but don't keep many around-- they go to people who need them or to the local charity for distressed children. Not goodwill, either. Anyway. Still waiting on the film-based displays.
 
If it's better than what I already have, i keep it. Otherwise, it goes to my dad where he can use the monitor at work. Wouldn't mind a 17" LCD...
 
Well there was that Sony OLED TV awhile back, but its price pretty much said that it was an experimental thing. Sony has stated that it plans to go OLED on its Walkman and Vaio "Real Soon Now".

On the other hand, Samsung has been burning up the newswires with plans to market OLED TVs and mobile devices.

I could see OLEDs on mobile devices--the working life of one of those would make the limited display life a non-issue.

In 10 years, I suspect we'll be looking back at LCD devices and thinking of them as "quaint'.
 
I'm trying to get my hands on enough LCD monitors so my oddball vintage machines like my SGIs will still be usable (hopefully) in 10-20 years. They're cheaper and easier to store than CRTs. Even though having CRTs is more reflective of the times, odds are my LCDs will live longer.

I'm a bit of a hoarder but my wife is breaking me of that. So I'm forced to stick to hardware I can hide comfortable under my desk or in a box somewhere. So far, so good. Gotten rid of some stuff, acquired some new stuff.

I think all hobbyists suffer from it from various degrees. I can't claim true hoarder status since I got rid of my storage unit that was half full with old hardware.

Matt
 
The subject of holding (hoarding?) for future value has come up a few times. I was talking with a friend today about the value of cars (I have a few classics floating around) and how certain cars from the 80's are starting to appreciate and whether we should be investing in them. I mentioned this thread and some of the stuff thats been discussed here and he made a relatively good point. Take 1957 - Chevrolet made 1.5 million cars total. In 2007 that number was closer to 10 million. The sheer number of cars built lowers the long term collectibility as there will be more of them floating around out there - Like say an Imsai 8080 and a C64. Neither are super crazy rare, but they made TONS more C64's so they are much cheaper. The chances that a P2 or new computer will be of any real value is slim just based on the fact that there will be thousands upon thousands of them in garages, basements and attics for years to come. By the time you get to P4 class computer you have a machine that even tho quite old by technology standards, it still a very viable daily use computer (I myself am using a p4 2.8HT still)

Also, computer prices have come down year after year. I paid nearly 1500.00 for my first 486, and have maybe a third of that in my current box. There are just so very many of them in the market compared to the early years of personal computing

Unless something is a really rare, obscure tech piece with a tight following (like the BeBox) The chances of a garage full of P2 up stuff being a retirement account is probably quite unlikely.

A bitter pill for me to swallow :) But all in all this thread has done me a great service, I can now offload the mid range stuff with a clear conscience and concentrate on what got me here in the first place, obscure old tech

-Lance
 
Right, I'm in that predicament a bit also. Needing to free up space and offload the duplicates and/or non-rare systems. I'm just lazy about it (I guess the actual problem is I'm lazier about getting things out vs getting things in).

Mad-Mike has a great point and that's what I tried to adhere to as well. Having a huge collection/pile of non-working fix-it projects becomes too overwhelming and undesirable (for me). Maybe my lack of ability to fix some things is a part of it but it's fun on an appropriate scale, but more of a problem when you end up with "the pile"/stack of projects that you never get around to. Once you have 10 or more things on your fix-it pile the desire and length of time it takes to get around seems to start getting exponentially larger.

I see the point with the Penium II+ systems, and similar to any "newish" system with the lack of charm and customization it's hard to see all Beige clones as collectible.

Collecting anything though is a similar crap shoot. Just recently I was humoring myself looking at collection cards (like basketball or baseball cards, or I suppose geekier would be Magic the Gathering or Pokemon or something). Something that was gold when I was younger and would SEEMINGLY be a great expense sounds like they're mostly worthless now. Not sure why or what happened but it looks like the bottom of that market fell out.

Then you have things like any old stuff will be a classic/vintage later which doesn't always prove successful. I mean you save some stuff hoping later it'll be collectible and end up with a used Ford Pinto and suddenly you realize not all things are destined for collectordom.
 
I think the later P2/3/4 machines will be collectable not for the machine itself but for the people who want to play computer games or run other software on them. I think the popularity of 486/P1 machines is mostly from DOS gamers. Sure there are millions of C64 systems around, but they still sell (cheaply) on ebay for people who play games on them.

While older 386/486 systems were made in the millions, they tended to cost a few dollars and people hung onto them for ages (some still do). Today with the speed evolution people are dumping machines in a few years and most get recycled directly (trying to be green). I think you will find machines made after recycling kicked in will be rarer then machines made before that date down the road.
 
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