Perhaps their should be a section of the forum devoted to collectors issues. How does the use of non-original parts affect the value? What parts can be replaced without affecting the visual appearance of the machine? Etc.
I guess that there will be collectors who want a pristine computer as a thing to have, just like other antique professional tools like doctor's kits have value to specialist collectors. I hear an Apple I or one of the other rare models is worth some coin. I doubt it's ever switched on. And it's not really what Amiga.org is about IMHO.
To me that's a very different market than the people who use them. The more modded/upgraded, the better, was how we usually saw them. A1000? OK. Starboard 2MB? Rockin'. Added a SCSI interface to it? Way out there. Clock chip inserted into the keyboard cable? Now we're talking! Now, you'd get the same street cred from a towered 1200 / PPC / PCI video. Or go stealth, like my last A1200: 68060 with 64MB on the belly card, flicker-fixing output, external SCSI CDROM, was working on PC Card Ethernet to a community WiFi when I finally gave up.
As far as visual appearance, AmiWest 5 years ago had an A1000, but it was gutted, with a miniature PC board, running Amithlon. They even had a small keyboard that fit in the "garage" IIRC. THAT was cool. But not quite as cool as an A1200 in a Commodore SX64 case, using the original video display, which was there the year before. Hack for hack's sake!
I loved the Amiga because the environment you worked in was so customizable, long before any other handy microcomputer would let you do the same. My 1.4 GHz macmini and 3 GHz multithreaded notebook, neither one seems as responsive and friendly as my Amigas. :-?
