Who knows?...
Maybe they will suddenly turn up in afrika where many were originally send to be destroyed. Maybe many parts/full systems were "laundered" by local workers there and given to relatives or the local black market and will turn up in 5 years when newer, faster and more modern parts start flooding the local markets there?
Maybe vintage computer hunters will even go there to hunt parts for themselves, or set up organizations and contacts to find vintage equipment for big $$$?
Maybe some wacko manufacturer will start producing Socket 3 boards with old stock 486 chipsets? (hey, a man can dream, right? 😁).
At any rate, the vintage computer economy will solidify and more people will start to get the hang on what drives the prices of second hand hardware and why. It used to be obvious to a few, but more will learn, as the mechanism behind it is rather easy to understand, once you see it.
And it will become more complicated, not only due to the continuous influx of "newer" retro hardware.
When I started collecting, Pentium 4 and Athlon XP were new, second hand ATX was still new and virtually non-existant. Second hand computers were almost exclusively AT or even XT and IBM and all those proprietary systems. Pentium 3 and 2 were old, but still useful and thus very hard to find second hand and if you found it, it would still be costly, just like a second hand Core2Duo is still costly these days, even though it's already like 4 or 5 years old?
Pentium 1 was old, but still had some value. 486 and before were considered too old to be of practical use (which was mostly Internet, burning CD's, playing DVD's and the then new Windows XP).
Nowdays Pentium 4 and Athlon XP's are amongst the cheapest hardware around. It should be fairly easy to find "a" Pentium 4 or Socket A board for like €10 or even less and the CPU's are flooding the market at this time.
Pentium 3 is dirt cheap right now, as is Pentium 2, Super 7 and Socket 7 (bar a couple particular ones of course).
AT is now hard to find and ATX is all over the place!
Socket 7 and 5 are considered retro, but don't seem to be particularly popular, except for Super 7 of course.
It's 486 that's gotten the name of being considered the most useful "ultimate retro" rig, people see it as the start of the computer dark ages or something, with 386 being somewhere further back out of the light and 286 and before being kinda prehistoric or something.
486 hits a sweetspot somehow. Maybe because it's relatively easy to find parts (even though the motherboards and AT cases are usually expensive, but most other items are not) but still old enough to be a challenge to get running. It's sure a significant step-up from Pentium 1 when it comes to building a successful rig around one. 386 is a lot more simpler as it has less options, or at least lesser known options.
Dunno how things will be in 5 years time, but chances are the best AGP cards will become a bit more expensive, the first PCI-E cards will be dirt cheap and the oldest PCI-E motherboards will also become more expensive. s754 and s939 might become dirt cheap while s775 CPU's might become dirt cheap, but s775 motherboards may not go as low as s754 and s939.
I somehow doubt the best IDE drives will become expensive, by then SSD's will become more useful and adapters I guess will be available on Ebay (or it's successor) for dirt cheap.
Tualatin boards may go up in price, it seems logical to me. I don't know about Super 7, if it rises, it may go up less then Tualatin boards, but no promises there! 😜
I'd say s423 boards won't ever become dirt cheap, as few standard ATX ones were ever made.
I'd say post s775 Intel boards will remain somewhat expensive, as the quick socket hopping Intel's doing causes few boards of any particular generation to be in existence, while not switching ownership as quickly due to the relative powerful platforms they represent.
Earlier ATX PSU's may become a bit more expensive as newer PSU standards will gradually replace existing standards, but also depends on the amount of units leaving the active computing world (=how many units will still be around in functioning condition).
I'd say 5.25in floppy drives might go up a LOT in value, perhaps even make them worth repairing again. 3.5in floppies won't become expensive, too many around, except for the very early models which often come with for instance dip-switches for setting A: and B: (<--FUN! 😁). Dunno about ZIP and LS-120 though. USB ZIP might go up, but mostly because USB is the most convenient one to use and they actually look very cool 😉
Old optical drives, I don't see them doing much when it comes to their value, especially if BluRay remains backward compatible with CDROM. IDE DVD's might get a bit more wanted, but again, there'll always be adapters.
No idea about 2.88 floppy, the drives are already hard to find. Will depend on how easy it will remain to find functioning disks. Many of those disks are already 20 years old by now! (still worked last year though 😀 )
Things will also depends a bit on what Microsoft will be doing of course.
And in 10 years time? I'd say in 10 years look out for the fastest boards that support legacy interfaces like IDE and floppy, especially if they support the fastest more modern features (CPU, SATA, etc etc).
Anyway, enough of my rambling, time for me to hit the sack before I see another sunrise coming 😜
Edit:And as long as AT Pentium boards remain unpopular, ISA sound cards will remain cheap 😁
Same with ISA graphics cards, they shouldn't go up much, if at all, because people will prefer VLB and PCI.
And thinking about s754 and s939, at some point they might go up in value again as they were made while AGP was being replaced by PCI-E. Thus they are amongst the fastest AGP boards and also the oldest PCI-E boards
Well, my crystal ball indicates it's battery is running low, so I'll quit with the future telling for now, L O L!!
