If what you want is to preserve the software or hardware for future generations, it should be donations to museums and another organizations dedicated to that, not expensive prices that then end up in the hands of someone with enough money to pay those stupid prices, and it will not contribute anything to future generations because it will be locked in the shelves of an individual.
This would only be valid for unique software or hardware of which there are only 10 pieces or fewer. But the fact is that 99.9% of the software or hardware created has thousands or millions of copies sold, that is, millions of Voodoo cards and millions of copies of Windows and millions of other things that are considered rare until Hundreds or thousands of those things turn up stored in some forgotten warehouse, or you just happen to talk to your cousin's uncle's uncle, and it turns out they have an old computer in the attic, and it has a Voodoo 5 installed.
In the end I think it's just business, nobody has an interest in preserving history except those who create museums and the worst thing is that to make a common good for humanity they have to spend a lot of money from their own pockets and work.
A curious detail is that in my country the national library is carrying out important work to safeguard cassette music tapes that were very common during a time when they were used because they were sold at very affordable prices to liven up trips, but With the disappearance of the cassette tape players, all the tapes began to go to the trash with which their content would disappear in history and an event that marked an era would be forgotten, but thanks to this initiative it is possible that little of this is lost.
What they do is transfer all the content to digital format so that it is not lost.
