The price of retro hardware

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by alexh

Prices are the highest they are ever going to be. They are going to start going down soon

Curious as to why do you think that might be?

[alexh]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

Curious as to why do you think that might be?

I have an extremely large (museum size) classic computer collection so I do tend to watch prices. (Not for resale purposes, I keep and use all my computers and I will gift them to a museum eventually)

I have over the years predicted Amiga price trends that have come true.

e.g.

• Increase in prices as owners get 1st jobs and have disposable income.
• Drop in prices as Amiga owners get married & have kids
• Increase in prices as Amiga owners kids leave home
• BIG increase in prices as Amiga owners retire.

The next change is a BIG drop as Amiga owners die and demand drops considerably and stays low from then on.

I honestly believe that the all-time-high for 80's hardware is now. Maybe it still has a few years left but not long.

There is a similar all-time-high price for 80s classic cars today. Whereas the classic car prices of (the majority) of cars made in the 40's and 50's have dropped like a stone. I'm sure this is due to to the deaths of the people who owned these cars (and to some extent their children) and had 1st hand nostalgia for them.

[Flimbo]

Somebody leave me their Amiga hardware in their wills please ha ha

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by alexh

The next change is a BIG drop as Amiga owners die and demand drops considerably and stays low from then on.

I've heard this retro owners die-off price drop theory before, but I'm not sure whether it will pan out exactly this way. It might become true for some more niche brands, whereas others will stay in-demand for a long time. It's true that some vintage things go out of fashion, but others still remain pricey and collectible - eg baseball cards or old coins.

Not sure where this puts Amiga, probably on the side of the less desirable (as opposed to Sega or Nintendo stuff, for example). Nonetheless I think this drop off is still at least decade or two away. We're old, but not that old My personal prediction is that the prices will keep slowly rising, as the availability becomes lower and lower, and then eventually might burst when the nostalgia-driven big collectors die and kids sell the stuff off. Still, some models/items might remain in demand even then.

But for now, I see A500's being offered in A1200 prices from a year or two ago...

[Flimbo]

I suspect that this energy crisis might increase supply and lower demand of retro gaming items in general. Fully capped Sega Game Gear consoles with new screens appear to have plateaued in price on eBay.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by dreadnought

but others still remain pricey and collectible - eg baseball cards or old coins.

Didn't the baseball cards market crash very badly in value?

[Jope]

Elvis records also had a bell curve. :-)

When thinking about games consoles, the most recent bell curves I can think of were Atari 2600 which is cheap again and to some extent also 8-bit NES, which is on its way down.

[Leon Besson]

Unfortunately Bromigos! It’s NOT the old guard which are demanding the high prices these days. It’s the resellers who have cottoned on that anything with a Commodore or Amiga badge slapped on it demands a high price.
Have heard a certain one who donates on here has tried it on in the past with EBay sellers by
Tempting to buy peoples Amiga stuff really low and then flogging it high!
The only way to get prices lowered is not to pay the prices. Also with the cost of living crisis kicking in around the world. I don’t think people will have the spare monies to spend on such luxuries soon. So the prices may have to come down for those who sell to make a living.

[UberFreak]

As with any market, as long as there are those willing to pay, prices will not drop.

I was lucky to build most of my collection during the 90's and early 00's, when prices were dirt cheap, but still my wanted items list is quite long.
My collecting has nearly stopped dead in the last 10 years due to the insane price increase and local flea markets drying up.

I'm (not so) patiently waiting, either prices start to drop or I drop...

[alexh]

Moderator please split this into two threads then Turrican3 can have his thread back

[Jope]

Ok, now split and the original for sale-ad-veiled-as-a-hardware-question moved to marketplace.

[alexh]

Thanks

[Mathesar]

I am observing something similar (price drop) for antique tube/valve radio's. 20/30 years ago the really old or nice ones were fetching a few hundred euro's. Now, If I look on marktplaats (https://www.marktplaats.nl/q/buizenradio/) people are bidding 25..35 euros.
My theory is that the few (tech savvy) collectors that existed for these radio are now at least 80+. "younger" people don't care for these old steam radio's.
I have no doubt the same will happen with Amiga retro hardware.

[QuikSanz]

Speaking of steampunk, how about some skins for our old Amiga's

Chris

[BigD]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

...My theory is that the few (tech savvy) collectors that existed for these radio are now at least 80+. "younger" people don't care for these old steam radio's.
I have no doubt the same will happen with Amiga retro hardware.

So if I wait long enough I can get a pristine C= A4000T model (between 200 and 2000 manufactured) for £200?! I think not. All this stuff will get rarer and be sort after by museum's etc.

[Jope]

I don't think museums play such a big role as they might seem. These are mass produced articles and there are only so many computer museums.

[dreadnought]

Computers and videogames are not going away anytime soon, unlike radios. I'm pretty sure there always will be a strong collectors market for items from these fields, just maybe not on a scale as big as it is now.

Also, the artificial "graded" videogame bubble is bound to burst. WATA et al are just speculectors but the fuel the craze which has been going on for the last year or two, and it's simply unsustainable. I believe similar thing happened in the aforementioned baseball card market.

[Jope]

Thank heavens the graders/grading customers are only interested in video games that were part of the USA canon. Hope no-one invents the grading scam for European nostalgia.

[Ami_GFX]

I pretty much dropped out of the Amiga world for a few years. Before that, I checked eBay listings several times a day. This year I came back and, holy crap, prices are completely absurd for big box Amigas. That doesn't seem to be the case for high end accelerators and RTG cards which seem to be selling for about the same as before and the wedgie Amigas seem higher but not absurdly high. I don't know that they are going to go down soon. A4000 auctions have huge amounts of bidders which they always did but they're going for thousands of dollars, Euros or Pounds, not hundreds. When I watch youtube Amiga videos, the people making them are too young to have been seriously into Amigas in the 90s. I just wonder where the money comes from to pay over 8000 dollars for an A4000T. I kind of suspect that those who made money on crypto currencies are looking for real world goods to invest their profits in and Amigas have always been desirable retro tech items. I'm seeing similar things happen with our local real estate market and it's basically young people with loads of cash who are driving up the prices along with some corporate investors.

Even when prices were cheap, there were lots of greedy dealers and resellers. That really hasn't changed, just the prices they can get.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by Jope

Elvis records also had a bell curve. :-)

When thinking about games consoles, the most recent bell curves I can think of were Atari 2600 which is cheap again and to some extent also 8-bit NES, which is on its way down.

Indeed, I have noticed the same around here. Atari 2600 is affordable again and so are NESes and SNESes. Most certainly the mini consoles helped very much in letting prices drop.