Current Market - Vintage Home Computers (Pre-PC Era)

Housey

Housey

Housey

Man of Honour
Joined
21 Feb 2006
Posts
29,487
So I am contemplating selling my collection of vintage home computers and games consoles dating back to ZX80 forwards to around Amiga / Saturn / PS1 era. Most are boxed, all work and are mint and some of them I bought as the best I could find at the time, including a few from fellow OCUK member @Cavallino

Circa 35 home computers and 10 consoles. Any idea what the marketplace is like right now to save me deep diving? :)
 
naefeart said:
Can I first put dibs on the Saturn?
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edit - apologies for being rude, I’ve been looking for a mint PAL version for ages.

It does seem a good time, even the lower end of the market has picked up. Sadly a lot of people with no interest in collecting retro gear are however interested in selling it, driving the cost up for the rest of us.

edit2 - sorry to hear you are thinking of selling Housey, I know you have quite a collection, does it no longer (to badly quote Marie Kondo) spark joy?
 
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An Amiga 500 I was looking at went for £127 this evening.

Retro PCs as a whole seem low, but the components are high when marketed right.

I've got PS1s, PS2s, Wii, Dreamcast but they're not yet for sale. :p
 
ZX80's go for quite a bit. Even ZX81's are getting higher in price - though finding one in decent condition is tricky. One I was bidding for the other day went for £52, and that was just the machine - no expansions or peripherals.
If you've got a decent condition ZX81, then I'm interested!
 
I am happy to put them up here first, only fair, but ideal would be to sell them as a job lot. I paid top money for some of them, buying most around 15 years ago and bidding to I won on eBay to secure. Meant a couple got to silly money now I look back.
 
naefeart said:
Let me know when you’re ready and we can talk turkey :cool:
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Excellent! I say we start with the Dardanelles campaign and debate that had the British fleet put proper effort in might they have got to the Bosporous to properly bombard Constantinople :D



Oh....
 
Housey said:
Excellent! I say we start with the Dardanelles campaign and debate that had the British fleet put proper effort in might they have got to the Bosporous to properly bombard Constantinople :D



Oh....
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I see what you did there :D

Not much of a debate really; inept planning and non-motivated civilian mine sweepers crews :)
 
I've always regretted selling my BBC Model B back in the day, they go for crazy money these days, I'd love one for say £50 for nostalgia (I use a BBC emulator for reliving my youth) well & truly missed the boat on that and I can't justify the eBay prices....
 
I had a couple of Acorn Electrons I picked up from a church fete (seriously) many years ago. I gave them away a while later, because I didn't really have a use for them, but I regret it now as I've got back into retro 8-bit computers recently, having got a modern C64 remake and a refurbed ZX Spectrum 48k rubber key version. I even got a tape loader emulator for the Speccy which means I can experience the proper loading sequence (with the exception of R tape loading error).

I also just bought from Ebay a refurbished ZX81 which has a modern ULA, High res mode, 32k ram, composite mod, and new power regulator, as my current, battered one is faulty (needs a new keyboard, and a composite mod).

I've been trying to get a decent quality one for weeks - even a faulty one to use to refurb my old one, but the good ones are selling for more than I'd want to pay, as I'd have to get them fixed up and modded anyway so there'd be extra costs on top.

The one I bought was more expensive than I really wished to pay, but it doesn't need anything doing to it to use, plus it plays the Hires games which I never tried back in the day.

I also managed to pick up a Memopak16k RAM pack just for nostalgia's sake, as that was the one I had for my ZX81, back in 1982.
 
Great time to sell if U want to get out. People paying stupid money now. Amiga 500s used to be easy to get under £50, now min £100 and often £200..... asking price. Many dead, sorry "untested" systems on eBay making similar silly money. If you are prepared to guarantee functionality you'll get excellent money IMHo.

Except strangely for Acorn Electrons (£20 max) and Atari XE machines (£30 max)... I'm looking for them ;)
 
Simon0001 said:
Always ruined experience going back to og hardware. Like going back to an old girlfriend
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But there are things you may have learnt later in life that you may want to try on the original hardware / old girlfriend.

I like the best of both worlds.

I have an Amiga 1200 with oodles of peripherals which I'm happy to show off at the South West Amiga meet. Showing this on emulation, wouldn't cut it here.

But then again, I still buy into Amiga Forever as it's a great package and supports the community.

I still yearn for an Action Replay unit and Amiga 500 to run it on. This can be emulated in WinUAE, but it's not the same as seeing/touching the combo in the flesh.
 
Some modern remakes are good - SNES Mini, and TheC64 full size for instance. These do a great job of mimicking the form factor and feel of the originals while being modern hardware and being easy to connect to modern TVs.
 
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