I look at it this way (pre pandemic)

Few drinks after work that's easily £20 Include a meal that's around £50 for a single nights entertainment.
or
I come straight home spend £40 on a soundcard or whatever and that's a good few years worth of entertainment, hopefully anyway as it IS a risk some hardware is reaching the end of its natural life.

But I also have a internal limiter. I can see the value of spending £80 on say a 10 year old high end graphics card that still has driver support.
I can't bring myself to pay that much for really old hardware like 3dfx card even though I suppose its more sort after.
I guess because the first is old but can still be used for daily tasks while the second is completely obsolete and only useful for retro computing.

£50 would be the absolute max I'd pay for single bit of hardware pre XP era and it would have to be really special £40 is more like my max spend.
£80 for later hardware still makes me nervous and will have a think for a day or so before purchasing.

I want to get as much retro equipment now before the prices are too sky high and equipment too rare to find. I have pretty much everything I want now so I can enjoy it going forward. That way when I retire in about 10 years, I don't need to worry about having to track it down and not being able to afford it. My take is probably different than most, but that is how I approached it when I got back into retro computing a few years ago.

The reference to Alice's rabbit hole is made often here, and always bang on. There's just so much stuff that has been released, whatever time frame you limit yourself to. It's important to keep track of what you have, and what you really want.
The latter is your guideline for ebay and the ads, the former your reality check which should make you think twice. Hoarding and overspending is always lurking around a corner. Try to think what else you can or should do with the money.
And NEVER spend household budget on hobbies. You'll be losing more than you'd ever hope to get.

Not sure what the future holds for this hobby... but at this time, anything rare or sought after is usually quite expensive. Through the years I held myself back and tried not to spend too much or "crazy" amounts for particular part... but if I want something now, it's obvious I will need to spend what is necessary. And as this is international hobby, someones pocket change could be somebody else's weekly pay check.

Set your goals... and don't become a hoarder like some of us 🤣 With stacks of old stuff you rarely get to play with any of it and it doesn't matter what was the cost or how excited you were ... and this is sad 🙁

I don't think about it if I can help it - if I had an accurate figure for my spending over the years then I'd be shocked but I regret nothing. My mental health suffers if I don't have a happy place to focus my mind after real-life is done with me for the day, and retro computing is usually it - invaluable I think 😊

badmojo wrote on 2021-04-20, 21:10:

I don't think about it if I can help it - if I had an accurate figure for my spending over the years then I'd be shocked but I regret nothing. My mental health suffers if I don't have a happy place to focus my mind after real-life is done with me for the day, and retro computing is usually it - invaluable I think 😊

I like it. Money is just an enabler. Value is subjective.

I came into this trying to do it on the cheap. I can't say it quite worked out that way. On the plus side, one of these days I'll sell off my excess stock and I might be able to recoup quite a bit.

jasa1063 wrote on 2021-04-20, 16:39:

I want to get as much retro equipment now before the prices are too sky high and equipment too rare to find. I have pretty much everything I want now so I can enjoy it going forward. That way when I retire in about 10 years, I don't need to worry about having to track it down and not being able to afford it. My take is probably different than most, but that is how I approached it when I got back into retro computing a few years ago.

I'll echo this sentiment though there are a few things I am still wanting to get that I will probably never find or never be willing to pay the stupid prices that are asked for them.

I will say that I need to sell about 50-70% of what I have and I will still have everything I really want to keep.

I mostly go for good deals, even though I might have spent a little too much for an old k6-2+ the other day. But if you really want one I don't see the difference from buying a nice bottle of wine or something.

When it comes to parts will eventually break, personally I'm mostly worried about CRTs, any plastic components and old PSUs that might take a whole system with it to the silicon grave. But I don't have much experience.

these are great answers, thank you, its a topic that i think about now and then when looking at stuff online or thinking up a new project

what I can see is a few basic ideas

-comparisons with other activities, e.g. a night out and allowing yourself a similar hobby expense as substitute
-getting as much 'stock' now as reasonable, before prices get very silly / things get very rare
-not breaking into money that should be 'assigned' to necessary things like household expenses
-seeing the money as something that is 'buying' access to a much enjoyed/needed hobby

as to limiting expenditure, as mentioned its relative to ones disposable income but for me its also limited by comparison to prices I have paid in the past

If i get something cheap and it needs a new component, for instance, i can't bring myself to spend much on something i got for so little

a real example, i bought some mixed job job with a core duo pc, 2 GeForce 4 mx cards, a bunch of rams, fans and an athlon xp1600 cpu, all for the price of a typical geforce 4 mx440 on ebay. The pc started ok but very whiny psu, intermittent power out and now wont boot or even beep, one gf4 card appears to be broken, most rams are ok. So i could leave it at that but my mind immediately starts thinking "new psu for pc?", "if pc's mb broken then use cpu and get motherboard?", "spare athlon xp1600.. hmm, find motherboard + case etc?" and so on. the little voices! 😀

anyway, it's that rabbit hole - trying to find a way to make use of it all but then i remind myself that i could easily turn a cheap job lot into a vast time sink and expense if I went all in with every idea, so i tend to be reigned in by the fact that I mostly get things by chance and cheaply and that any related purchases need to be at the same level. Patience is the key too, instead of spending a lot just carry on picking up occasional cheap stuff and at some point a new project will be made possible without rushing out to buy more expensive items. always tempting though!

I consider the money I spend on retro parts to be spending money only (after mortgage, all bills, savings, etc) and don't try to rationalise it as an investment or anything. I spend spending money on items but I also increase my spending money by selling my PC parts too. I don't set an arbitrary limit on how much I should spend but I am generally quite tight and have trouble convincing myself that I can spend my spending money 😁 Because of this I'll never be buying a Voodoo 5500 or anything of that sort. My largest retro purchases are usually about £80 and that happens maybe once every 6 months.

If anything space in my office / hobby room is more of my overriding concern rather than if I can / should spend money on something, where the things I buy are usually £30 and under.

I can relate to the "getting a good deal nonetheless"-feeling when clicking buy on something you really don't need. You can make good purchases but it is not "worth it" if you are not willing to sell the parts. Then it is just a time consumer, which is ok, but I only have so much time (and space).

I could see spending quite a lot on retro parts if your personal philosophy is they give you as much enjoyment as newer PC parts, or as another hobby. However, I just don't like spending a lot on old computer stuff, some of which is really expensive but not that much better than a cheaper part. Another hobby of mine is motorcycles, and that's a very expensive hobby. I grudgingly spend the necessary money on that - I buy good parts, they just happen to cost a lot of money. I would never spend that much yearly on old PC parts.

Some stuff I've splurged a bit on, though. I got a Sound Canvas SC-55 for about 120 euros, which I guess is about the going price. It was the exact right model for my favorite games and there just isn't any software emulation that nails it. So I found it worth it to get something that doesn't really have substitute.
I guess the biggest not-quite-rational purchase was a modded Tualatin 1.4. Not needed for the games I play at all, I just wanted to see if it would work in my machine, and to be honest I did feel hyped to get my hands on the very best P3.

I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite with the Tualatin purchase but I don't get people who pay a lot of money for a Sound Blaster (which are objectively worse than later clones) or a 3DFX card (especially the later ones from the era where games supported D3D anyway). I especially don't get people who buy expensive parts and then post basic questions on them, why did you buy a GUS without figuring out why and how to use it?

My usual limit is 30 EUR per part. I broke that rule twice so far, for my SC-155 (80 EUR) and my AWE64 Gold (50 EUR). Both of those were still fairly good deals. They are also components that I really wanted for replaying my favorite games.

On the flip side, I kept most of the old hardware that I had back in the day (including my Voodoo3), so I didn't really need to buy that much.

I have a monthly budget and I stick to it. I also avoid big reseller sites like Ebay and buy 50% of my items from dumpster-divers and e-waste dealers. I rarely buy from collectors because they simply know their stuff and price the items accordingly. I buy the rest from local auction sites/Facebook groups/trusted sellers when the price is right.
It's sometimes slower this way but much cheaper especially when they are sold by repo agencies who want to offload stuff ASAP.
I learned to resist impulse-buying because it just never stops. When I reach my monthly limit I stop visiting auction sites to avoid temptation.
I'm not concerned that the supply is going to dry up in 10-20-30 years. People change and priorities change. A lot of people will get bored of the hobby and start selling their inventory and that will keep the prices on a sane level for a long time. I don't think it will ever become too expensive in our lifetime and future generations won't be this attached to 90's hardware. Don't forget that these computers were mass-produced by the millions. Things that are rare now will stay rare but not hardware that flooded the markets. Even 80's hardware are affordable if someone is willing to step out of the Ebay-reseller-collector triangle.

The way I see it, is you should have a goal in mind, and you should set aside twice what you think it would cost to buy that.

Then it will consume all you have, including your soul.

And it's all worth it.

a monthly budget or spend limit is sensible, and there sure are more expensive interests, motorbikes is a good example!

i find the 'collector premium' a bit irritating when i'm just looking for something functional and other interested parties are competing on some kind of 'investment' or pure collector basis. I've notice that other areas too, i buy hand tools now and then to clean up or restore and then use but occasionally i see people buying them to 'collect' rather than to use and i think "that's well designed and high quality steel that will never be applied to any work again!" Likewise with computer parts 'preserved' forever sealed in box, i kind of get it, but at the same time it is silly!

I'll often settle for lower end stuff instead, with an occasionally lucky find - in all the interests i buy stuff in

Miphee wrote on 2021-04-21, 09:08:

. Don't forget that these computers were mass-produced by the millions. Things that are rare now will stay rare but not hardware that flooded the markets. Even 80's hardware are affordable if someone is willing to step out of the Ebay-reseller-collector triangle.

yes its true, but sometimes i think the other way too, even based on the same rationale. Take a popular console, the super nintendo, discontinued in the late 90's and global sales of 49.1m. Seems like a huge number, but how many millions broke and got thrown away to date, how many of that 49m are still functional spread about in all the one time places the console was sold, it suddenly seems quite sparse or at least a diminishing number

gerry wrote on 2021-04-21, 10:59:

Seems like a huge number, but how many millions broke and got thrown away to date, how many of that 49m are still functional spread about in all the one time places the console was sold, it suddenly seems quite sparse or at least a diminishing number

I checked locally and sure, not that many are available right now but they all go for ~$35. This means a complete NES system with controllers and a few games. Checked on Ebay as well and they go for a similar price (~$50). That 49m sold units mirror this price. When I first entered the retro scene I thought that everything is going to be as expensive as I saw on Ebay. Then I bought my first Harris 286 board for $5. I doubt this will change anytime soon. Not unless something really bad happens to many of the retro hardware (like the battery corrosion or the failing elcos).

Miphee wrote on 2021-04-21, 14:16:

gerry wrote on 2021-04-21, 10:59:

Seems like a huge number, but how many millions broke and got thrown away to date, how many of that 49m are still functional spread about in all the one time places the console was sold, it suddenly seems quite sparse or at least a diminishing number

I checked locally and sure, not that many are available right now but they all go for ~$35. This means a complete NES system with controllers and a few games. Checked on Ebay as well and they go for a similar price (~$50). That 49m sold units mirror this price. When I first entered the retro scene I thought that everything is going to be as expensive as I saw on Ebay. Then I bought my first Harris 286 board for $5. I doubt this will change anytime soon. Not unless something really bad happens to many of the retro hardware (like the battery corrosion or the failing elcos).

yes, ebay and the like have a concentrating effect to make something appear abundant - even if only 0.1% of the original unit sales are slowly circulating on global auctions sites it would look abundant at any one time. The price however is low, and reflect that demand / supply, demand just isn't that high and supply is kept higher by that constant circulation

those are my estimates / guesses though

that's another thing about spending, there is a kind of upper limit on much older (25+ years) tech partly because it is often so well emulated

gerry wrote on 2021-04-22, 08:30:

that's another thing about spending, there is a kind of upper limit on much older (25+ years) tech partly because it is often so well emulated

People also don't want them because they are quite limited. Why spend a lot on an 80's PC when you can do the same on a cheapo 90's PC and a lot more?
Compared to some of the other hobbies the retro PC hobby is still quite inexpensive. I'm also into collecting WW2 memorabilia and boy is it expensive! But it has nothing on restoring classic cars.