I’ve wanted one since god knows when I first learned of the prototypes being in the wild, should have bought one 10 years ago when they were merely expensive, rather than bloody mental.

They’re definitely beyond my disposable income now, aside from winning the lottery anyway.

Already 1 retracted bid for 10,000 so it’s possible there are a few shadow bidders waiting to snipe the shit out of it.

Last 30 seconds should be a blast to watch as the heavy hitters and oil barons join the match !

11,000 USD .. looks like a heavy hitter has joined the game.

This damn thing may go for $100k at this rate. How foolish! Can't believe people exist that will pay a year's salary of "normal" people money for one 20+ year-old video card.

zyzzle wrote on 2023-02-06, 09:40:

This damn thing may go for $100k at this rate. How foolish! Can't believe people exist that will pay a year's salary of "normal" people money for one 20+ year-old video card.

we havent seen the Oil Barons join the fight yet, the truly rich guys will wait till the end and then just drop stupidly huge bids for it, then have it hand delivered to them in the UAE via their private lear jet.

For a late model prototype in fully restored working order .. one of the rare models that had all the SLI bugs worked out and was pretty much RTM ready .. to some its worth the crazy expense.

zyzzle wrote on 2023-02-06, 09:40:

This damn thing may go for $100k at this rate. How foolish! Can't believe people exist that will pay a year's salary of "normal" people money for one 20+ year-old video card.

100k a year salary???? in wich country??

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-02-06, 10:28:

zyzzle wrote on 2023-02-06, 09:40:

This damn thing may go for $100k at this rate. How foolish! Can't believe people exist that will pay a year's salary of "normal" people money for one 20+ year-old video card.

100k a year salary???? in wich country??

Australia ..I work in heavy industry ..100k+ isn't unusual for a qualified worker and there are many more that earn considerably more than that. In many countries 100k isn't odd either if you have the qualifications, if however you have some arts degree or one of these bullshit liberal degrees then ..well you done studied the wrong damn thing.

I mean, how else do you support as hobby that can be as expensive as this one without the missus killing you?

Slight point on the salaries: to us Europeans salaries upwards of USD 100k sound impressive - but there are huge differences in taxation, pensions and benefits, which mean that you need a higher gross salary in say US to obtain the same standard of living as in Europe. So you can probably compare USD 100k to EUR 70k. Oh, and TrashPanda's probably referring to AUD, and AUD 100k would be closer to EUR 65k anyway.

Still, whichever way you dice it, it's an obscene amount of money for a bit of PCB - but really these things should be compared to fine art. Not because they are works of art as such. but because their value is equally disconnected from the intrinsic value of the object. The wood, canvas, oils and pigments of one of van Gogh's Sunflowers are worth peanuts, but the picture... slightly more.

I don't think someone with an annual wage of $100K will buy this when most people have less than $20K in savings. The average collector is crazy but not THAT crazy.
$100K is not a big deal in most Western countries if you have a valuable degree but these people usually live larger so cost of living is much more for them. They can't just shell out this much without risking the family budget. The chance of wifey finding your replacement after you blew 20% of your money on a fcking GPU is quite high.
The buyer is going to be someone with tons of disposable cash. He could be from any country, even one with $10K average wages because the top 1% is still filthy rich no matter where you live.

dionb wrote on 2023-02-06, 11:09:

Slight point on the salaries: to us Europeans salaries upwards of USD 100k sound impressive - but there are huge differences in taxation, pensions and benefits, which mean that you need a higher gross salary in say US to obtain the same standard of living as in Europe. So you can probably compare USD 100k to EUR 70k. Oh, and TrashPanda's probably referring to AUD, and AUD 100k would be closer to EUR 65k anyway.

Still, whichever way you dice it, it's an obscene amount of money for a bit of PCB - but really these things should be compared to fine art. Not because they are works of art as such. but because their value is equally disconnected from the intrinsic value of the object. The wood, canvas, oils and pigments of one of van Gogh's Sunflowers are worth peanuts, but the picture... slightly more.

Spot on with that conversion, the exchange rates have certainly taken a hit of late, 100k USD is 93k Euro so pretty dang close to parity but the EU has better standard of living for the most part.

Mandrew wrote on 2023-02-06, 11:21:

I don't think someone with an annual wage of $100K will buy this when most people have less than $20K in savings. The average collector is crazy but not THAT crazy.
$100K is not a big deal in most Western countries if you have a valuable degree but these people usually live larger so cost of living is much more for them. They can't just shell out this much without risking the family budget. The chance of wifey finding your replacement after you blew 20% of your money on a fcking GPU is quite high.
The buyer is going to be someone with tons of disposable cash. He could be from any country, even one with $10K average wages because the top 1% is still filthy rich no matter where you live.

There are a lot of Oil Barons out of the UAE that are huge collectors (Yup many are also right into tech like us here) and something like this card would be something they would drop cash on .. simply because none else would have one.

I'd like to think that, even as a billionaire, I would never spend this much money on an object that I would literally just use once... and then keep it as a trophy in my big ass billionaire's storage space (or even in my personal bank?).
But, truthfully, I'm probably just fooling myself... I mean, jeez, even as my normal self (i.e.: very-far-from-being-rich person), I still spent a pretty hefty amount of money on retro hardware (which I mostly keep stashed in my small, poor person's closet 😁 ). So... there's no reason to think I would be able to control myself when seeing a Voodoo 5 6000 for sale on eBay. 😁

I can't afford a second mortgage so will have to make to with my Voodoo 5 5500 pci

dionb wrote on 2023-02-06, 11:09:

Still, whichever way you dice it, it's an obscene amount of money for a bit of PCB - but really these things should be compared to fine art. Not because they are works of art as such. but because their value is equally disconnected from the intrinsic value of the object. The wood, canvas, oils and pigments of one of van Gogh's Sunflowers are worth peanuts, but the picture... slightly more.

Very well said, sir !
It's a fascinating piece of engineering and i totally get that.

This is also what motivates me in my collection.
I'm not only collecting top gaming hardware but also hardware that failed to become successful :
Bad early 3D chips (Laguna3D, Trident, Virge, i740, SiS...), weird storage solutions (Microdrive, WD Raptor, iRam), Killer NICs, Ageia Physx
A lot of people are also interested by ES/QS CPUs
It's the same thing...

Regarding the amount, yes, it's a lot, but well... if it's your dream, Why not.
We probably all know people who own A ["boat", "vintage car", "pool", "holiday cottage", "motorbike"] (pick one). And everyone is fine with that.
I'm currently training to get a private pilot licence (PPL). And for a similar amount of money, i prefer to fly than to have a V5 6000. The top bidder on the V5 6000 could probably argue that it's a stupid amount of money to kill yourself in a plane crash...

The most i shelled for was a diamond monster sound MX300 (134$), i work in the field of CG and 3d printing but as a startup even if the income is good i can't justify something like that and to be honest i usually don't collect to keep the object as a trophy but to use it actively (i used every single PC i have in rotation without stopping for 1 year before i had to stop streaming), so i care more about consumer retro hardware that can be found for relatively cheap or normal prices and that was commonly used at the time.

This is an extreme item for an extreme person and for extreme uses, there you go, it may sound weird but it kinda explains the absurdity of that price.

Looks like I need to set up a printing press! No other way I can even afford a V5 5500 😀

Currently at $12,500 USD, it is way more expensive than the auctions around a real AdLib Gold sound card. 😳

That's purely because Adlib Gold is not hyped to hell like 3dfx.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-02-06, 14:35:

That's purely because Adlib Gold is not hyped to hell like 3dfx.

Good point.