It could be that also people have stars in their eyes. They think what they have is priceless because there's been a bigger resurgence in popularity. With GOG and steam adding older games, they think that people would want to buy a "classic" system.

Welcome back 😀

Yes, retro is getting hyped a bit and yes, prices are bordering insane 😵 but it was kinda to be expected.
To me, everyone is free to give retrocomputing a chance, but I can't avoid the somewhat regularly occurring thought that at least a few of them shouldn't really be bothering messing around with (hard-to-find) retro hardware in any significant way.
And some don't really seem to care about the possibilities, merely wanting to state and to verdict without actually knowing what they are talking about.
"omg GF MX suxxz/is totally useless junk! Throw it in the trash!" instead of trying to find a way to make it work and seeing the possibilities instead of thinking only black and white. It's annoying, but sometimes (thankfully!) merely crafted by simple ignorance instead of loudmouthing stupidity which is fueled mostly by their lust for attention.

Yes, the days of tons of cheap and basically free old computers littering the streets are long gone and more people are aware there is a market for this. The shilling make this worse, but that's the way it is. Trading amongst traders is one way of averting this and one has to be creative.
Also the investments needed to keep these systems running has increased, 10 years ago there was basically no need to ever solder, now it's kinda mandatory to do so.
You'll have to, as replacement parts aren't around the corner anymore.

But the amount of knowledge has increased a lot and to me the most interesting about this hobby is the fact that it keeps on growing due to new generations of hardware being put out continuously. The amount of CPU sockets is crazy 🤣!

dosquest wrote:

It could be that also people have stars in their eyes. They think what they have is priceless because there's been a bigger resurgence in popularity. With GOG and steam adding older games, they think that people would want to buy a "classic" system.

The irony of the thing is, of course, that such old games are actually repacked to run on modern system. In fact, it takes extra effort to make those games run on classic systems.

Here's how I see it. People will try to approach this the way they approach consoles. Buy a system, then a bunch of games, and if they're lucky some, or if they are super lucky, all of their games will work. But there will be a few that will grab something, have it not work, or not run a specific game, or throw a random memory error, or just be...."old", the nostalgia will wear off and they will feel annoyed that they spent...who knows....$500 on a system? And throw it away, making the hardware now even harder to find, and making the prices higher for real collectors. Who, started before it was "hip" and are paying the price (no pun intended) of people jumping in, getting scalped, then giving up.

Tetrium wrote:

Yes, the days of tons of cheap and basically free old computers littering the streets are long gone and more people are aware there is a market for this. The shilling make this worse, but that's the way it is. Trading amongst traders is one way of averting this and one has to be creative.

Unfortunately back then I've passed up the offers of "cheap" computer hardware because I was either too young to buy stuff or we were tight on storage space, now even though I've reminded myself that such hardware would always be available easily I was shocked to discover that I was dead wrong because now it seems like I'm having tough luck finding anything older than Core 2-era hardware without having to resort to *expensive* eBay listings.

The last time I was lucky enough to find old hardware locally for a reasonable price was a year ago when I got a 1997 Toshiba Satellite laptop for $45, as for eBay I was lucky enough to have found a Compaq Presario 2100 desktop for $5 + shipping back in 2015 yet at that time I was struggling at finding a working black Dell CRT monitor for my 4300S setup to the point where I almost considered selling that system in favor of some generic beige Pentium III/4 tower if it wasn't for me finding the matching monitor at Goodwill.

These days - on Craigslist - the only pre-2007 hardware I find are usually Macs which IMO are not as interesting as PCs from that time period. I agree that the days for finding old hardware at cheap prices have come to an end, the closest I have to a local store carrying old stuff is RE-PC which has brought me some goodies in the past few years but it's still a bit of a struggle because 8 out of 10 times they usually don't have what I'm looking for and a few of their items are overpriced. there are thrift stores that still carry computer hardware and electronics but they're hit or miss, most other recyclers typically recycle older hardware which contributes to the difficulty of being able to find it. 😐

I guess this differs from one location to another, but for me its really easy to get hold of cheap early 2000's hardware.
For example, I have 2 full S462 systems, 2 spare motherboards and a handfull of CPUs for them that I obtained this year without looking and for practically nothing.
However LGA775 and newer systems are still some ways from being cheap.

I guess its down to the fact that Athlon xp systems arent usable anymore even for basic stuff like web-browsing, while a C2Q machine can still be used not only as a media PC, but as a gaming rig for ligher games like LoL, CS go or even GTA5, etc.

I'm more talking about Pentium MMX/other socket 7 boards and 486 systems.

OEM stuff is very cheap.

It's just the very specific AIB stuff (especially those that are ATX spec) that goes for insane amounts.

dexvx wrote:

OEM stuff is very cheap.

True. You can get a Celeron or Pentium III Dell or HP for free if you search carefully. I think businesses always have some old Dells tucked away somewhere. I could be wrong but I also believe this is the case for any country because that's how businesses generally work.

For simple computing and retro-ish gaming I'd choose a free 2001 Dell over a noname W10 tablet any time of day. Yes, I have both a Dell and a $100 W10 laptop 😀.

OEM stuff is cheap because everyone had them, and now no one wants them. If you were to do a poll with your friends, family, neighbors, about their modern systems, how many do you think would report that they custom build their computer? Or that they had something custom built? Probably very few. Which is why period correct, custom, or even mom and pop shop computers, beige box, or if you're lucky a cool looking case, from the 90s and 00s are becoming harder to find in original condition. If you were sophisticated enough to have built or have had one built for you, then you would be sophisticated enough to upgrade the system when needed. So finding a custom built, or non OEM in almost original condition is really hard to find. On top of the fact that most people chuck their systems when they get too old/slow. Or when they are just too out dated. You have to find the right mixture of someone who was tech savvy at the time, but also forgot they had their custom Windows 98 pc in the closet and decide to donate it to a thrift shop/curb it. So the chances of that happening now are becoming very slim.

So you're answering your own question on why custom AIB vintage prices are going up. So I'm not understanding what the point of you creating this thread was?

dosquest wrote:

If you were to do a poll with your friends, family, neighbors, about their modern systems, how many do you think would report that they custom build their computer?

Not many. Everybody use either a laptop or a tablet.

😀 Well, if you read the title and the main body of the original post then you would know.