[rescue] Some thoughts on our hobby..

[Ethan O'Toole]

> Have you folks been watching over the last year or two in regards to prices
> on the major sites for retro gear?  I'm absoultely shocked!  Things that
> sold for pennies on the dollar a few years ago are multiple hundreds of
> dollars now.

A hobby of mine is pinball machines, and something similar has happened. 
Now some of the better titles are $10,000+. Actually quite a few are.

It's happened to console games as well. But I talked to a few people about 
this, as I see it as sort of a speculative bubble similar to housing (but 
without the government interference and destruction of income to younger 
generations that are left house poor by high rents/house purchase prices.)

What happens is as people age, them reminisce over the old days or 
whatever, and they have some income to purchase those machines that bring 
the memories. But it's kind of a moving wave. The Atari 2600 stuff was hot 
for a while, but not it's not. That group got their fill. Same with NES. 
The wave has moved down the line, and now it's the SNES and the N64, which 
came later. In the future it will probably be the playstation 2 and 
whatever XBoxes still run (hard drives are going to die on those and if 
you don't have the key to unlock the drive which is stored on the drive, 
you can't replace them.)

Obviously emulation has some effect on this.

The flipside also happens where people accumulate too much and need to get 
rid of stuff. First world problems I suppose.


Two on topic songs for the 90s kids and the 10's kids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiOcVWQY2bc
(Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth "They Reminisce Over You"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3w1_E1V46M
(MC Frontalot - First World Problems)

Now if I could find someone to buy my Cray.