Are We Hoarders?

[Ral-Clan]

Well, as I look at it, there are more Commodore & Amiga computers out there than people who actually want to own one.  The reason they seem so rare is that not all those computers have been matched up with people desirous of them yet.  There are probably several thousand Amiga users out there, but probably tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of surviving Amigas still stashed in closets, garages and warehouses (like Petro's recent find of 500 A1200's new in box).  Commodore 64s are even worse!

So, even if you try not to be a hoarder, you can end up with multiple machines unintentionally.

Somehow I ended up with seven VIC-20s, seven Intellivisions, two A500s, two A2000s, five Atari 2600s, several ColecoVisions, etc. etc. etc.  not because I was actively collecting, but because people knew I liked the stuff and just wanted to get rid of it themselves.

Also, in the early days (like the mid 1990s) people really wanted to get rid of this "junk" as it was seen as totally obsolete and hadn't developed any retro "chic" yet.  How could I resist going into my local thrift store and seeing several nice clean Intellivision consoles for $2.99 each.  I just had to pick up one.

Being in my late 20s and early 30s in the 1990s and early 2000s, I finally had the income to buy all the consoles and retro computers I could never have owned in my childhood, and all for dirt cheap as nobody wanted them....I could buy handfuls of cartridges for only ten bucks....so I might have been a little enthusiastic.

Now that a few years have gone by, I'm mellowing out on the retro stuff and starting to pare down.  I've sold some nice Amigas to other interested parties, sold off a few Vectrexes, etc. etc. and plan to sell off more of the stuff I never use.  I'll only really focus on the main systems I enjoy, like VIC-20 and Amiga, and not even actively collect more for them....sure if I stumble across something unintentionally I might buy it, but I won't actively hunt for stuff.

Emulation has also gotten a LOT better - they even emulate the television blur, floppy drive sounds, etc, etc. Sure it's not the same as a real, physical device, but for those systems not in my main field of interest - like the C64 - it's great to fire up an emulator and play a quick game once in a while than have a whole system set up all the time.

I'll probably keep one of each system I really like...and maybe a few backup parts.  But it's time to pare down to a useable level (but still not throw out the baby with the bathwater).

[Ral-Clan]

I think that more people would want to use them if they weren't so difficult to come by, or so obscenely over-priced in markets like ebay.

Well, that's the issue, isn't?  There are probably still several million C64s out there, not yet matched up with the remaining people who could actually use them.  Same with Amigas - although the number is probably more like tens of thousands of unused Amigas.  They are sitting in lofts, garages, closets all over the world.  Every year some get matched up with people who like this stuff, but it is probably easier for people to just put them out with the trash instead.  There are a lot of people out there who still can't imagine that anyone would actually WANT to use an old computer.

If there was an easy way to magically match all these Amigas with the remaining Amiga users, then probably every person who wanted a real hardware Amiga could have several - and the value wouldn't be so inflated.

With the advent of electronics recycling laws, etc. many people probably think they are doing a good thing by bringing their ancient Amiga out of the garage to be stripped down and recycled.