It's the pokimon card collector types driving it.

Just look at their communities and how ...horrible collecting shiny bits of paper has become, now they are slowly infecting other hobbies.

Yep. It's just the cross that any hobby must bear if it becomes popular: people who join because it adds points to their social cool-o-meter and not because they actually love it - and that's the exact type of person who will sneer at you instead of being helpful.

King_Corduroy wrote on 2025-04-26, 19:35:

Part of the problem seems to be "investor" types and ebay sellers who are collecting everything for value, as a person who used to pull the same stuff people are now having graded and put in acrylic out of the trash 10+ years ago I just don't get where these people are coming from.

You know, I have seen many cases, some even in this very forum, where some people would get outraged and offended at the mere suggestion that the asking price for some retro item is ridiculous. My theory is that they're just not interested in the hobby itself anymore (assuming they even had any interest at all) but are stuck with a lot of old trash that they expect to sell at some point, so they get annoyed at anything that could cause the value of that junk to go down.

They also tend to dismiss or reject people who have the ability to repair this old stuff, as more things being repaired negatively impacts the "rarity" aspect of those items.

I have a few retro items that would be considered very "valuable" today, but I wouldn't be angry or annoyed if their price suddenly plummeted due to a large NOS shipment being found somewhere. On the contrary, I think it would be great as more people would get to enjoy that! I guess I'm not interested in being the "King of the Hill" because I have some unique item, but some certainly feel that they are.

King_Corduroy wrote on 2025-04-26, 19:35:

Sucks the joy out of a hobby to see something that was 5 dollars before covid jump up to 40$ post covid.

In fact, one of the coolest things about the hobby is that it had a very low entry cost (and to an extent it still does, but nowhere near what it was years ago) and pretty much anyone could get into it. And getting items which once cost fortunes but are now useless for just a few bucks is weirdly satisfying!

With the barrier of entry being higher, less new people enter the hobby, which probably makes the "only for profit" people seem more prevalent in the community.

TheMobRules wrote on 2025-04-27, 04:06:

You know, I have seen many cases, some even in this very forum, where some people would get outraged and offended at the mere su […]
Show full quote

King_Corduroy wrote on 2025-04-26, 19:35:

Part of the problem seems to be "investor" types and ebay sellers who are collecting everything for value, as a person who used to pull the same stuff people are now having graded and put in acrylic out of the trash 10+ years ago I just don't get where these people are coming from.

You know, I have seen many cases, some even in this very forum, where some people would get outraged and offended at the mere suggestion that the asking price for some retro item is ridiculous. My theory is that they're just not interested in the hobby itself anymore (assuming they even had any interest at all) but are stuck with a lot of old trash that they expect to sell at some point, so they get annoyed at anything that could cause the value of that junk to go down.

They also tend to dismiss or reject people who have the ability to repair this old stuff, as more things being repaired negatively impacts the "rarity" aspect of those items.

I have a few retro items that would be considered very "valuable" today, but I wouldn't be angry or annoyed if their price suddenly plummeted due to a large NOS shipment being found somewhere. On the contrary, I think it would be great as more people would get to enjoy that! I guess I'm not interested in being the "King of the Hill" because I have some unique item, but some certainly feel that they are.

King_Corduroy wrote on 2025-04-26, 19:35:

Sucks the joy out of a hobby to see something that was 5 dollars before covid jump up to 40$ post covid.

In fact, one of the coolest things about the hobby is that it had a very low entry cost (and to an extent it still does, but nowhere near what it was years ago) and pretty much anyone could get into it. And getting items which once cost fortunes but are now useless for just a few bucks is weirdly satisfying!

With the barrier of entry being higher, less new people enter the hobby, which probably makes the "only for profit" people seem more prevalent in the community.

It's weird because it used to be the other way around. Most people used to be outraged at the high asking prices of some people, with a few other slugs defending it because they were doing the same.
I miss the days when you could find old games in thrift stores, boxes of floppies, old computers being given away at flea markets etc. I mean I bought my first "retro" system in 2008 for 10 bucks and it was a complete PCjr setup with the original boxes and loads of extras. These days that'd probably cost you 500$ and when you asked if they would take less they'd say something like "These are very desirable to collectors!" and you'd just shake your head and walk away.

I'm of the same opinion as you though, I don't want to be king of the hill. I sold all my computers and software back in 2018, and then again recently thinking I was finally done with the hobby. Silly me though, I can't give it up despite it being more for people with insane amounts of disposable income these days seemingly. Luckily I gave a few computers and some software to a friend to hold onto so I'll be getting my Macintosh Classic II back soon. That should keep me happy at least, a good compromise as it's a small system that's interesting enough without needing to dump oodles of money into parts and software. 😜

It wasn’t that long ago I could go to the recycle center and the guy there would look at what I’d found a little funny and just say “uh, like five bucks I guess?”

I got a lot of great items this way that are now $200 on eBay.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-04-27, 04:59:

It wasn’t that long ago I could go to the recycle center and the guy there would look at what I’d found a little funny and just say “uh, like five bucks I guess?”

I got a lot of great items this way that are now $200 on eBay.

Same before covid I was buying stacks of cards and beige box machines for scrap weight. Now they've caught on locally and are charging ebay prices. Last time I went to my local scrap yard I had to pay 250$ to rescue two Atari ST computers and it was just the computers, no cables or anything.

To answer your question: yes. I'm reverting back to fora like this for finding answers or to help people fixing their vintage stuff. I really don't like the FB/Reddit groups anymore. As I know a lot of people through Facebook, I'm not yet giving up my FB account.

As for the ridiculous high prices for vintage hardware... Parts have become rare and once a piece of hardware is reviewed by a Youtuber, everyone wants it and prices are going up. On the other hand, as I collect Amiga's/Atari's too, these are wanted in both dedicated communities and people pay premium prices. Luckily we have Amibay, but I'm noticing eBay prices on there too.

I have a friend who knows a recycler and sometimes we're able to safe rare hardware. Lucky for us, they don't ask premium (yet). Last month I paid 50 euro for a working Atari Mega ST.

I'm now in a 'get what I can before it comes too expensive'-mode. I've given up on rare hardware because it became too expensive. I have the Atari ST lineup I want, but on the Amiga side, I'm still missing an Amiga 3000 (let alone the tower models). I know for sure I will never own one.

Indeed. The retro hobby is getting really bad. People are so greedy. Many "collectors" are just ebay sellers, with no passion for retro. Greedy people that just collect for the "cool factor" and the "wet dreams" of getting rich with old junk. Some disgusting exemples:
On ebay, some poor soul has gathered over 300 Voodoo cards hoping to get rich, and now is selling defectives 3dfx video cards at ridiculous high prices.
Other one, on ebay, was scammming people with a Unysis network card described: "ultra rare, the only one left in the world" or something, for hundreds of dollars.
On FB, some dude was selling a 386 Laptop for 500 dollars, but many people commented that last year they bought the same model for 60 bucks. And when I checked ebay, the same model was sold for 70 bucks this year.
On FB groups, when someone sells for a decent price, either the "collectors" will buy it fast to resell it on ebay at triple the price, or they will post links with theirs ebay shops with high prices, telling the decent seller that "this is the real price of that item and he is a sucker for selling that low, ruinning their market with low prices".
The worst part is their attitude when you ask for a lower price. They think they control the market. Some rude answers are:
"If you can find a lower price, go and buy from there and tell me where, I want to buy cheap from there too" (ironic)
"If you are poor, you have no right to enter the retro hobby". (straightforward gatekeeping)
"I paid 500 dollars for my Voodoo 3 back in the day. Of course, now I want to sell it for 600 dollars."
The explanation the vintage parts are getting rare and that is why the high prices is WRONG! If that would be the case, when an item apears at high prices, it should be selled quick. But NO, it remains for a very long time at that high price and nobody is buying it. So the phrase "high demands and few offerts" is just BS.
There are still a lot of vintage parts, but just few people gathered too many wintage parts/pcs, in hoping to get rich one day.
Greedy people, man!

The quality stuff has major demand and prices show it. There are many more people in the hobby then when I started over 20 years ago. Once something goes mainstream people will try making a buck off of it.

People have been complaining about prices for more than a decade, it's nothing new. What I do find are people who spent quite a lot of money (they probably didn't have) on some rarity for bragging rights seem to get all bent up if prices drop when they need to sell.

Unknown_K wrote on 2025-04-27, 22:04:

The quality stuff has major demand and prices show it. There are many more people in the hobby then when I started over 20 years ago. Once something goes mainstream people will try making a buck off of it.

People have been complaining about prices for more than a decade, it's nothing new. What I do find are people who spent quite a lot of money (they probably didn't have) on some rarity for bragging rights seem to get all bent up if prices drop when they need to sell.

"The Quality Stuff" come on... quality really? Everything is about 10x more expensive than it was 5 - 10 years ago. Everything from a mundane Tandy 1000TL/2 or a lowly Macintosh Classic is now 150 - 250$ or more and when you get into "quality things" aka weirdo systems like the Amiga that didn't sell super well in the U.S. it goes up into the thousands. This even goes for games like POD which used to be common as chips, you could have a copy in the box shipped to your door for 10 bucks 15 years ago whereas now it's 15$ for just the CD in a broken jewel case. People are complaining and rightfully so. Of course a lot of it is due to rise in interest due to youtuber's but a lot of it is value hoarders and ebay sellers just jacking up prices across the board which effectively blocks entry into the hobby unless you happen to have 250$ for a yellowed mediocre PC that may be broken and is probably missing a drive and even more to shell out for parts and software. It's absurd, in 2008 - 2017 I was pulling these things out of the trash for nothing or buying them for next to nothing.

I do agree with the value seekers complaining though about falling prices or clone stuff. Especially when it comes to say chinese clone carts of NES, SNES, N64, GB and GBA games people seem to hate it with a passion and I suspect it's some purist /investor mindset who thinks they should stay at an absurdly high price.

King_Corduroy wrote on 2025-04-28, 00:59:

Unknown_K wrote on 2025-04-27, 22:04:

The quality stuff has major demand and prices show it. There are many more people in the hobby then when I started over 20 years ago. Once something goes mainstream people will try making a buck off of it.

People have been complaining about prices for more than a decade, it's nothing new. What I do find are people who spent quite a lot of money (they probably didn't have) on some rarity for bragging rights seem to get all bent up if prices drop when they need to sell.

"The Quality Stuff" come on... quality really? Everything is about 10x more expensive than it was 5 - 10 years ago. Everything from a mundane Tandy 1000TL/2 or a lowly Macintosh Classic is now 150 - 250$ or more and when you get into "quality things" aka weirdo systems like the Amiga that didn't sell super well in the U.S. it goes up into the thousands. This even goes for games like POD which used to be common as chips, you could have a copy in the box shipped to your door for 10 bucks 15 years ago whereas now it's 15$ for just the CD in a broken jewel case. People are complaining and rightfully so. Of course a lot of it is due to rise in interest due to youtuber's but a lot of it is value hoarders and ebay sellers just jacking up prices across the board which effectively blocks entry into the hobby unless you happen to have 250$ for a yellowed mediocre PC that may be broken and is probably missing a drive and even more to shell out for parts and software. It's absurd, in 2008 - 2017 I was pulling these things out of the trash for nothing or buying them for next to nothing.

I do agree with the value seekers complaining though about falling prices or clone stuff. Especially when it comes to say chinese clone carts of NES, SNES, N64, GB and GBA games people seem to hate it with a passion and I suspect it's some purist /investor mindset who thinks they should stay at an absurdly high price.

Most of the computers and parts people spend money on are gaming related, and most of those ended up in the trash or rotted into uselessness. Boxed games are another item where prices seem to be rising even when the games themselves are available cheap digitally or just easy to find pirated. Probably has something to do with today's games being just a digital download with no cool boxes, manuals, or trinkets.

There are people who actually like the original hardware, and some who just want to play a specific games and clones are just as good for that.

I don't get the hate over eBay, if a seller can't find a buyer the stuff just won't sell. Some people have more money than time and don't want to go to a dozen recycle centers or deal with a crackhead on craigslist in a bad part of town to buy something they want. When I started collecting you either stumbled onto stuff locally or traded with other collectors using forums or newsgroups. Sometimes you could find parts of web commerce sites like Computer Geeks that sold outdated hardware for cheap. I purchased a couple Pentium Pro Overdrives there new. Freecycle was great for a while, and I had a few contacts there I got cool stuff from. Ebay just opened up collecting to everyone with selection from everywhere and the stuff was super cheap at the time. I never bothered to hoard 100 Voodoo 2's hoping they would be worth something someday, but I snagged every model type I didn't have that looked interesting. Do I fault the people who did hoard, no, it would all of ended up in the trash if they didn't.

If anything, rising prices keeps stuff out of the recycler and also keeps most people from hoarding too much stuff they have no room for. People also tend to care of thing better if they are worth some money and not considered trash. I collected Amigas and Macs when nobody wanted them and I am collecting more modern stuff now that is worthless because it is fun, if the newer stuff is worth something before I kick the bucket good for me, but I don't collect for that.

Reddit was probably always like that. I remember checking some of the retro subreddits about ten years ago, when I started getting back into 90s consoles (Sega MegaDrive, SNES and PlayStation) and some people were hostile for no apparent reason.

For example, in a discussion about Chrono Trigger, someone pointed out that the PlayStation version has slightly worse sound effects than the original SNES release (a well known and documented fact) and was immediately accused of "ruining things" for collectors or something.

Someone said earlier that the high priced stuff indeed doesn’t sell, it just sits there. And that’s true: it sits there until someone who doesn’t know better and has too much money to spend buys it. That’s how it works on eBay. The snootiest sellers will wait months sometimes for someone to overpay by 1000% for an item. I’ve seen it happen.

It’s just another symptom of lots of new people entering the hobby: not only does demand rise naturally, but there’s also an influx of people who can and will pay whatever it takes to get in on the trend.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-04-28, 13:05:

Someone said earlier that the high priced stuff indeed doesn’t sell, it just sits there. And that’s true: it sits there until someone who doesn’t know better and has too much money to spend buys it. That’s how it works on eBay. The snootiest sellers will wait months sometimes for someone to overpay by 1000% for an item. I’ve seen it happen.

It’s just another symptom of lots of new people entering the hobby: not only does demand rise naturally, but there’s also an influx of people who can and will pay whatever it takes to get in on the trend.

🤣 - 100% accurate
Read my signature (not mine).
I've seen things that would make people puke, and more people have stories that would make us sick, like King's "The Stand" sick.
Items then get shipped in a lousy bag...

It has become impossible to find stuff at "adequate" prices, everybody looks at ebay and sells at that price.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-04-28, 13:05:

Someone said earlier that the high priced stuff indeed doesn’t sell, it just sits there. And that’s true: it sits there until someone who doesn’t know better and has too much money to spend buys it. That’s how it works on eBay. The snootiest sellers will wait months sometimes for someone to overpay by 1000% for an item. I’ve seen it happen.

It’s just another symptom of lots of new people entering the hobby: not only does demand rise naturally, but there’s also an influx of people who can and will pay whatever it takes to get in on the trend.

it's also evidence that the ebay seller was "right" to price high and wait, if viewed as price maximisation

Unknown_K wrote on 2025-04-28, 07:56:

If anything, rising prices keeps stuff out of the recycler and also keeps most people from hoarding too much stuff they have no room for. People also tend to care of thing better if they are worth some money and not considered trash. I collected Amigas and Macs when nobody wanted them and I am collecting more modern stuff now that is worthless because it is fun, if the newer stuff is worth something before I kick the bucket good for me, but I don't collect for that.

that's a good point!

all in all i agree its awful for most genuine enthusiasts - but there is nothing that can be done and nothing that will be done

I've mostly given up buying things, they are not worth it and the experience of playing games etc is available through cheaper means (dosbox, steam, gog etc)

I have found that prices peak around top end components though, a middling motherboard with a middling athlon xp and adequate fx5200 card will still be fine for 98/xp experience and playing games up to around 2002, as an example.

Older P1, P2 etc tend to be over priced regardless though

My experience on fbook is unless the group is based overseas it always devolves into a politically focused group with a lot of bot comments and paid political commentators. The number of real on topic posts goes to zero. Reddit oddly seems “slightly “ better though not by much, turns collecting and restoration groups into 4chan

If fbook wasn’t ruined in 2016, it is now that the valueless non-human comments aren’t just auto sandboxed by the algorithm.

rmay635703 wrote on 2025-04-28, 17:54:

My experience on fbook is unless the group is based overseas it always devolves into a politically focused group with a lot of bot comments and paid political commentators. The number of real on topic posts goes to zero. Reddit oddly seems “slightly “ better though not by much, turns collecting and restoration groups into 4chan

If fbook wasn’t ruined in 2016, it is now that the valueless non-human comments aren’t just auto sandboxed by the algorithm.

Yeah facebook in general has been pretty awful for a long time. I swear all I see anymore is short videos and promoted junk. I almost never see anything of value or things from friends.

There are a ton of for sale groups on Facebook but navigating that mess is a pain.

I think it's always been around. Remember the flame wars that used to go on in hardware forums in the day? I think it's basically the same thing just on another platform.
I could be very wrong as never really got into social media, but I consider Facebook, Reddit and the like more aimed at the casual enthusiast of any interest and not just computers.
Dedicated forum groups seem to have less hostility.

Prices were always creeping up as hardware was getting older/harder to replace. When I got into you couldn't give away S478 systems. It's now over 10 years later and that same system is about as common as a Slot 1 system was back in 2011.
I'm not sure why EVERYTHING jumped up in value post covid though.