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Most valuable vintage machine?

Well, if he's the original owner, he got to clean his closet and make about $6,400 over what he paid. Not too shabby. :)
 
I can give you the same experience for a tenth of the price. ;) And I've got most of the boards he had. :)
 
I have to say my old 1976 Casi Apollo VP2 S100 bus Computer Photography System is worth the most just because only about 300 were made, only a few still exist. Because it is awesome printing 120 column ascii text photographs and because I have one.

Also the fact that it cost over $25k originally makes it seem collectable to me, Now I just need to get a more usefull printer
(the one for the unit and that works more than 10% of the time)
and the original keypad for it and take it back to the state fairs where it belongs making wanted posters.

Sadly I doubt anyone else would find a 31 year old computer portrait system with 8kb of SRAM exciting.

The one big upgrade on this portrait box was the text overlay ability, that alone was a $1500 option, they used to recommend $0.25 a letter to add text and talked of the amazing ability to make your own custom t-shirts, ooh.

An interesting piece of trivia is the name of the Apollo is from the space mission because several of the individuals that helped nasa make the imaging system on the apollo helped make this computer system.
 
I wish I was about 10 or 15 years earlier, back when most of the stuff was still cheap. The collectability of these things has made them scarce and driven prices up.

Yes, me too. As I have a job and family that takes up a bit of time, I can't devote too many hours to vintage computing (roll on retirement). My computers sit in cardboard boxes for the most part in the study, although the desk is always occupied by whatever model I'm playing with at the time.

However, the reason I've started collecting those computers mentioned NOW (rather than in 10 years or so when I WILL have more time) is that well-kept units they are getting rare. They will be even rarer in the future so best get the stock now while I still can.
 
Who knows? The white-box 486 clones may become the hot item of the future. The way we throw them out these days, they might actually become ***RARE*** a few years down the road.

--T
 
Hm. Once in 1996, I went to a place to pick up some free computers. The donator offered me a whole pallet full of unopened, thus boxed Olivetti 286 PC's. We had the truck full of other stuff and neglected the offer.

I wonder how much one of those 286's would be worth today, given that it had still remained unused. Or how much they would be worth ten years from now.
 
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