Most of my things are freebies from friends and co-workers, basement salvages, stuff to be discarded at my workplace and I like to fish in troubled waters, buy mislabelled and/or untested items extremely cheaply and in the majority of the time those are either good or can be fixed. I rarely spend more than 10-15$ on an item and try to stay mostly below 25$, often shipping included. I'm generally patient enough to wait for the good deals.

I actually pay more for games than for hardware and buy them more regularly. It still should be somewhere around 40$ a month.

There are bargains out there. I bought a working XT Turbo including XT-IDE card and SD IDE adapter for the price of the XT-IDE card alone. The PO couldn't figure out how to get the cards working in the system.

You don't need to explain why you have a particular hobby or how much is spent. It's entirely up to the individual it it makes them happy.I prefer cheap or free as much as posible though.

As someone who has almost everything he could want, collected over decades when it was cheap, you notice you don't spend hardly anything anymore in the hobby, UNTIL you spot that white whale of a part that only surfaces once a decade and you literally throw your credit card at the seller.

So you end up spending as much as everyone else, it just gets "spikey".

Only been in the hobby for 5 years but pretty much have all I want. Just built a Ryzen system so don't need to blow a wad of cash
on retro gear anyways. Funny thing is, with DOSBOX and mods I can play pretty much play any of my old games on that no problem.

Now having said that NIB crt's are my weakness, everytime I see one on Ebay temptation calls at me. Until I see the shipping cost.

This use to be a poor mans hobby.
If your looking to get rich selling retro hardware forget it.

Determine what do you want. Buy what is missing - don't worry about prices +/- 20% won't get you broke - and then STOP looking at Vogons/eBay...

If I only bought what I wanted when I started with "retro" PCs... I'd spend like 500€ at most. Especially at those prices in 2012. But I didn't know what was I getting into 🤣

I'm actually pretty lucky I also didn't get into the rabbit hole with the Amiga. Had a few and kept only expended A1200 and I stopped with it right there! 😀

kixs wrote on 2021-04-23, 06:39:

Determine what do you want. Buy what is missing

the first list expands, making the second untenable ! 😀

and then STOP looking at Vogons/eBay...

ebay yes, i do follow various auctions just so i can remind myself how much they go for and how i just wouldn't spend that much, but still tempted anyway!

If I only bought what I wanted when I started with "retro" PCs...

if only i had never thrown anything away!

What I've sold in the past isn't much interesting... pretty standard generic stuff. Interesting is what I've wanted back then and these items aren't cheap even now. But I'm lucky in a way that by now I have bought almost everything I ever wanted and also what I've found out on this forum. So boxes of stuff that usually never get any use 🤣 🙁