Should I sell my vintage computer collection?

> Partly I hold back from selling them because firstly if I regret it then I'll never be able to build such a collection again.

This is probably the place to start.

Pick out one or two computers or accessories -- ones that you have duplicates of, ones that maybe you are least attached to, and sell them. Don't spend too long on this -- try to pick something out in a couple days or a week at most, even if you can't go through your entire collection to find the most disposable item in that time. Try to sell the item briskly; don't spend months trying to find the perfect collector, just get it done.

Then see how you feel.

If you got rid of your entire collection at once, it would be an insurmountable challenge to put it back together. But if you sold a half a dozen and then couldn't bear it, reacquiring them becomes an achievable goal.

My brother in law died last year and left over a hundred vintage computers and game consoles - mostly in boxes (stacks of Amigas) - it was hard for us to work out what was rare/valuable from what wasn't. He was also saving them for some mythical time in the future where he would sort them out and play with them.

At least find the time to open the boxes and document what you've got and whether it works. Ideally you'd find somewhere to put the cream of your collection - a cheap display/book case with glass doors doesn't take up too much room and an area nearby with a monitor/tv would mean it would be easier to play with them.

If you have a working Amiga 1000 or Apple 2 do you need another? Selling duplicates might fund purchases of different machines.

How about picking the 10 that you feel a personal relation with, give them a proper display in your new home and sell the rest? I had a glimpse of that when i needed to clear the stuff from family members after they died. As soon as it feels like a burden, try to lessen that burden. I feel better thinking that somebody may have fun with it now, than grieving that I "currently" can't be the one.

Pick a wall in your new house, design a display shelf to cover that wall and populate it with your favorite vintage computers.

What doesn't fit in there should belong to someone else's collection.

> I'm pretty sure I've developed this habit because as a child in the last 1970's and early 80's we could never afford a computer for many years, when it was something I wanted more than anything in the world.

I'm in the exact same boat except with retro gaming instead of retro computing. Personally I recommend giving away whatever you can to somebody who you think will really care for them. If somebody donated retro gaming stuff to me I'd cherish it for life. Some people would take stuff and just flip it to somebody who probably just wants it because it's trendy right now and will throw it away when they get bored. Part of my emotional attachment is to physically owning the stuff, but part of the attachment is to the thing itself and wanting it to be cherished the way I cherish it.

One thing that would definitely help is pulling back on future acquisitions. Now that we have jobs and our own money, unlike when we were children, it's easy to keep accumulating. But if you can find a way to re-evaluate what really brings you value now, vs what brought you value as a kid, that might tackle your problem from a different angle (preventing future stuff vs dealing with current stuff). As an example, now I'm really into data hoarding and console modding, which allows me to play games on most consoles from HDD/SD card/USB/etc. As a result, physical games are not quite as impactful to me as physical hardware like controllers or consoles, so I still go for hardware if I see it but I'm much more picky about what games I acquire now.

As someone already stated in this thread. Its just stuff. I also had a collection with a friend when I was 25. I started programming with 12, so I had tk85, tk90x, appleII, MSX, amiga500, amiga1200, amiga2000, amiga4000, phillips CDI, videolaser, nintendos, playstation1, dreamcast, peripherals and etc...

I decided to have a change in my career, so I closed this office I had with my friend, and we had to decide what to do with it. We donated all to a local computer museum. Now I have this mantra, If I have some hobby stuff I have not used for three years, I donate it. Donated my Xbox360 and my playstation3 recently.

Sometimes I get caught by nostalgia, like last week when I was looking at a appleII clear case mod, and I get a small urge to buy another one. Then I just remember how good was that time, and that good memories are never the same when you live them again.

Now I use the money and time I would spend with a collection in many ephemeral hobbies. The current are electronic projects, laser cutting and Kitesurf.

Or find a museum with nice people who know what they are doing and are looking for this. Gift or sell to them or borrow it to them (I don’t know the english word) like collectors do with paintings to museums. I have 1000s of vintage computers myself and different places are showing and keeping them. Right temperature etc and fixing them when broken and having many people who can see and try (some of) them. I kept 20 of them to play with which I had many doubles of anyway; MSX, c64, 2600, zx spectrum, Amiga and Atari st.

If you decide to sell; I am interested.

> In favor of selling them I would probably get maybe a number of thousand dollars which would help buy a house

Prepping them for sale will be real work; which you sound like you have enough of already. If you believe their value to be high and it turns out no one will bid anything like that much on them, you may become discouraged and more attached to them.

It may be worth turning of the stack of "to be disposed of" to someone else for selling or etc and ignoring the details as they can only lead to distress.

In my experience there's this weird unspoken "rule" regarding collecting something like Lego, computers, keyboards, cars, etc, that you're never allowed to shrink your collection, just grow it forever.

Maybe think of it as curating or collating your collection?

There may be museums that would take your items, and you can be sure that they'll be cared for correctly by experts.

I seriously suggest finding a therapist. The fact that there are so many boxes that you haven't opened makes this hoarding. Don't make it unnecessarily hard on yourself. A therapist will help you through this.

Keep, sell, or donate the collection. But please, don't throw all that stuff away. Although I lived the personal computer revolution, I'm just getting started with retrocomputing and I realize more than ever how valuable that stuff is.

Wow, this is almost an exact description of the situation I was in about 10 years ago. I didn't have anything particularly collectible though (like autographed units)

Cutting to the chase, I ended up giving away a few systems and recycled the rest. It was very difficult for me to do since I had an emotional attachment to a couple of the systems, as well as the idea of some day getting around to playing with them. In the end (after regretting the decision in the short term) I can say that I don't really think about it anymore, and the burden of storing all that stuff is no longer an issue.

Keep what you have a personal connection to, you'll never be able to get it back. Not because you'll never be able to afford it, but because it won't exist.

I had a C-64 at one point with a disk drive and a bunch of disks. I could buy a C-64 and a drive for it and games for it, but it wouldn't be the same. It wouldn't be the disk drive that broke over and over and that I somehow took apart and fixed without knowing anything about how to fix a disk drive. And it wouldn't be the collection of games that I played in 1982, some of which I remember and some of which I've forgotten, and it wouldn't have some of the first software I ever tried to write, or the games I typed in line by line from magazines. And it wouldn't have the games that I would crack so that my name came up as the author on the startup screen.

Same thing with the Apple ][ my step-dad had that I used to use. He has no idea where it went, he thought I had it. I could buy an Apple ][ but I can't buy my old Apple ][.

I regret losing all of that stuff, computers, books, music, collectibles, any of it that I had a personal connection to. I have no idea what happened to Rosebud.

If it's just stuff you bought as part of a collection and you don't really have a connection to it, then don't worry about it. Sell it for what you can get, take half of the proceeds to spend now, throw the other half in the stock market and if you want to build a collection again 20 years from now you'll have some cash.

Ask yourself how much physical space you're okay with "investing" into your collection. Both for storage and for display. If a room full of boxed computers and a 5m wide shelf sound sane to you, so be it. Just stick to that limit. And if you're out of space but really want that shiny thing, get rid of something you value less (and remember: You're selling it off to some other person, not trashing it. And that person will probably feel as happy now as you felt when you first got that second Amiga 1000).

Add to that, you should check the condition of the equipment regularly. If you have zero days per year for that, you'll be very sad if you try to turn on that Apple 2 in a decade or two. But you already know that. OTOH if you have half a Saturday per month, you can probably open up and visually inspect at least 20 machines per year; if you have the know-how, maybe pick one to repair. Doesn't matter if you do it over a weekend or over two years. If you have a room for storage, outfit it with a desk for your current repair project - good lightning, scopes, soldering station, good note taking (important when rarely working on it), decent part bins.

A significant problem I noticed after moving my collection out of storage after about three years is that there is quite a bit of damage to the systems - leaking batteries, failed capacitors etc. Selling will only make sense if the systems are working, so you should expect having to invest quite a lot of time and some money to repair the damaged machines (or sell them for parts, but then the prices will probably be significantly lower).

Last year I was contacted by a woman whose late husband had amassed a collection similar to yours.

She had decided to donate the machines to those who would find a use for them, that being old co-workers and student organizations at nearby universities, the latter including me. Who would keep them running and in use instead of just collecting dust.

We actually have a guy who still uses an Amiga at his current job spitting out code and whatnot which is quite cool. :-)

Honestly, to me, it sounds like you already know the answer - get rid of most of them. Keep a handful that bring you particular joy.

I moved country a few years ago and in doing so got rid of the majority of my possessions - at roughly the same time as clearing my late parents' house and getting rid of most of their posessions. It was all much more hurried than I would have liked, but even so, it's somewhat freeing to not have the responsibility for so much ... stuff ... anymore.

Amongst the things I got rid of were all the 'projects' that I had never started. Getting rid of those and accepting that they weren't going to happen was the most freeing of all.

I still have plenty of stuff and unstarted projects, but the overall burden is so much less.

Finally, I'll note that I think most of the 70s, 80s, and 90s microcomputers that are not especially esoteric now are going to remain available at somewhat reasonable prices during our lifetimes.

Just my 2 cents from a fellow pack-rat.

Sell the Apple II computers. You don't want anything that valuable in your house. https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/20/steve-jobs-signed-manua...

As with all material goods, keep what you actually use and care about. If something is just sitting in a box unused, then get rid of it. If it's just taking up space in your house collecting dust, why do you have it? Get it in the hands of someone who will make use of it, care for it, and for whom it will bring joy.

So I don't think this particular suggestion applies to you, but because it is one of the common endgames for collecting, I'll share it.

Many collectors end up shopkeeps as a retirement hobby.

There's a million caveats here -- you need to live somewhere that has enough people to visit your shop, you need to be financially secure enough to sink some money into renting a storefront, you need to be able to spend time in your shop on a regular basis, and you shouldn't expect your shop to actually make money.

But if you like collecting more than having a shop gives you a space and an excuse to putter around with your collection, repairing, maintaining, and displaying it while selling and occasionally buying new pieces. There are any number of antique shops or used bookstores that started from someone who retired with a large collection.

I'm pretty sure I've developed this habit because as a child in the last 1970's and early 80's we could never afford a computer for many years, when it was something I wanted more than anything in the world.

I don't really have an answer for you, but I can at least commiserate with you on this point. I also never had the money for a computer in the late 1970's and 1980's, and I've likewise been going back and trying to acquire some of the things I always wanted. I bought an Atari 800 on Ebay about a year ago... and have not even bothered unboxing it. So yeah, I kinda feel your pain. And yet, despite having no practical need for any of this stuff, I fully expect I will also add an Atari 1040stf to the collection at some point.

When moving the best/least expensive motto in time and money is... How many do you "need"? Or Will I ever "use" this again.

With a collection or emotional attachment this is a bit more of a grey area. Ultimately, you should look for a way to reduce the stress of a move and spread it out over time. i.e. sell the things you don't "need" or can easily replace once you have moved or move them ahead of the move with some form of moveable storage.

Once you have decided to part with something it might also be worth it to know if it could be donated to someone that will use it. It is worth pondering but not stressing over. The benefits of giving something meaningful should never be overlooked. If you don't know what I mean then try it.

The signed Apple II's are a good place to start thinking about your thinking about collecting.

What I mean is that do you want to be the kind of collector that has two singed Apple II's?

Or the kind of collector that has a signed Apple II?

Or the kind of collector that once had a signed Apple II, but moved it on because it no longer fits within the collection?

There's nothing wrong with any of those.

Except perhaps in so far as choosing one path that makes you unhappy.

Because your hobby should not make you unhappy (I won't go as far as saying it should make you happy).

Now is the perfect time to think about this because moving house is a bit of a reboot on how we identify ourselves...if for no other reason than "now I live in Omaha."

Good luck

You can treat them as an investment. With this stance, I don’t think you will regret when you sell your investment. Just like your other investment. And I can see you have a good reason to sell some or all of your collections, to buy a house.

Well I'd be happy to take some of those off your hands ;)

> I don't have anywhere nice to display them

That seems like a good goal, then: find somewhere nice to display them.

My grandpa got into an O-scale train collecting kick in his retirement, and inadvertently stumbled upon someone in a very similar predicament to you, except with trains and train paraphernalia instead of computers. This guy had (and still has!) multiple model train layouts in multiple scales, countless other toy trains from throughout the last century or so, a bunch of actual railroad equipment and signals and such, random collectibles from when he worked for Western Pacific, you name it. Well, he needed money so he started selling some of his stuff, but he and my grandpa got to talking and realized that it was a sufficiently-large collection of museum-quality pieces to, well, start a museum.

Said man happens to live in the same town as my uncle (my grandpa's brother), and said town (technically a "city", but it's your stereotypical American small town) had a museum in an old church that was (IIRC) at this point condemned as structurally unsound. The "city", meanwhile, also needed a new town hall, and the local senior center wanted to move its thrift store to a new location.

This train collector's newfound desire to "loan" a large chunk of his collection to the museum was the last push needed for the city council to go ahead and bite the bullet on a new "city center": they bought the town's old middle school, and my grandparents, my uncle, the train collector, the museum curator, myself, and a couple other locals all pitched in to clean out and renovate the building, and we ended up with a pretty nice (by middle-of-nowhere standards) "City Center", a solid quarter of which consists almost entirely of just this train collector's stuff (including an O-scale approximate portrayal of the town). Place is still proudly up and running (I still maintain the website and head out every couple months to run "sudo zypper ref && sudo zypper dup" on the museum's desktop), and it's still expanding, with a G-scale outdoor layout under construction.

I guess that story's a roundabout suggestion that you should start a museum (or find an existing one) in your own town. That way, a lot more people than just yourself will get to enjoy what you've collected, and there will be ample local motivation to keep your collection both intact and in working order even when you're no longer either of those things ;)

Just the clarity of mind it can bring to declutter physically might be beneficial to you.

I recently sold my collection of video games and video game consoles I collected since a kid. Many of those things were worth a pretty penny and also gave someone else the enjoyment that I already had experienced.

While I could save them for my kids or play them on a rainy day, I decided to make peace with getting rid of them and I haven't looked back since. I used to consider myself a low-key hoarder and this was one of the tendencies of keeping stuff I never would use.

> pretty sure I've developed this habit because as a child in the last 1970's and early 80's we could never afford a computer for many years, when it was something I wanted more than anything in the world.

I’m sure many of us understand this. I grew up always on the last gen console because we couldn’t afford the latest 8-bit or 16-bit machines.

As an adult, I started buying boxed versions of those consoles in large part to collect but also to get that experience I missed out on as a kid.

If it's not organized, it's not a collection, just a pile.

I collected classic video games for a while. After a while, I realized I'd be happier if I focused on one area (Atari). Eventually, I wasn't playing or displaying the consoles or games, so I got rid of all of it except for one nice 2800 console and a couple of the funnest games which I wanted to show my kids.

Somebody else got to enjoy the stuff that was just sitting in my boxes. No regrets.

I say this as a certified Pack Rat!

Don't keep crap you don't need or don't expect to ever use, especially if you don't have space for it. Find a computer museum/tech center/someone who appreciates old computers and donate them. If you can't find that, well, it's time to call your garbage disposal company to schedule an extra pickup.

>I dunno - what do you think HN, sell the collection or keep them?

Take a full inventory of what you have. Then move into making a decision.

Been there done that. I had a huge collection of Acorn and Sun computers. The burden of looking after and storing them was less than the joy that I had from using them. Eventually I sold them all and my life was actually better.

There will be regrets about selling some things. But it’s possibly better to have those regrets to focus you on what you really wanted.

I'm an anti-stuff guy so just reading this is giving me anxiety! Why people need to collect anything? It's just stuff!

I was in a similar position with Apple ][, PET, Atari, AT&T, and DEC hardware.

I decided to keep and focus only on vintage computers that (nearly) fit in a shoebox, so now I have a much smaller collection by volume but about the same number of systems, like Atari Lynx, Tandy Model 100, Sinclair ZX 81, Poqet PC… Much easier to display and move!

Consider sell/donating them to a museum. They will be appreciated by many and there are several around. One in particular that is starting up is Vintage Geek on Youtube.

Also, I'm a collector, so let me know if you want to sell any of them. In particular, don't have an Amiga and always wanted one.

Get rid of all of it, and as quick as humanly possible. Whatever price you get for it will be less than lifting the burden of having boxes of junk lying around. It's just a type of nostalgic hoarding. Get rid of it

Your own home is a good idea, and that is something I'd do myself.

But if money is not super-important, there is always https://www.homecomputermuseum.nl/

I didn't have anything like a collection myself, but I did own an Amiga 500 and breadbin C64. I sold them, for lack of time to actually use them.

I sometimes regret selling the 500.

I would say pick your top 5 or 10 favorites, display them in a nice way somewhere, then slowly sell/get rid of the other ones.

Why don't you donate some to a museum? I'm sure they will find a space for them.

Keep. With how the inflation is going I'd even keep your old refrigerators around.

Oooh, it'd be a hell of a nostalgia trip to get a ZX Spectrum+!

If I were you, I would keep a few. The ones you really feel something for and that you may want to do things with in the future.

Many of us have let gear go only to really regret it later. And we've also let gear go that needed to go and feel good about it being used by someone too. I found myself getting out of SGI, for example. That was hard, but in the end, the right thing for me to do. I will probably never get rid of my Apple //e. I did let my Color Computer 3 go, because someone else was super into it. YMMV

So, it's very likely to be a mix for you.

Split the baby!

Keep a few things, and maybe a spare or two if you have that, and unload the rest.

One thing to keep in mind is we are moving through what may be the last wave of access to original hardware at reasonable prices. It's gonna start getting really rare from here. May take another decade, but it's really going to happen.

When it does, people will have what they have and getting more, or replacing it with originals is going to be out of reach, or just not possible, depending.

Now, the good news?

We are also moving through a great time!! New stuff is being made with FPGA devices. These will look and feel like the originals and in most cases will work with original peripherals and all that too. Chances are that thing you really wanted to work with may be available in some form that is satisfying to do the work on.

A note on emulation: It's getting really good.

I have moved to developing on emulation and then running on real hardware and or gaming / having select experiences on real hardware where it counts.

An example of the former: Any kind of programming is great in an emulator. It's fast, we can use modern tools and the whole nine. You won't need new hardware for most things. People have decided they don't need real hardware too. Others have not gotten there yet. May never.

Say you want to play a game or see your creation "as it were", say on a cool CRT, or at a known clock speed, or that pushes the original in some new, or right on the edge way. You are gonna want the real deal.

And on hardware development: Now is a great time to be developing add on hardware. Some of these machines are active on that front today. It's cool, and something I want to do personally. Other machines are kind of dead, or there just aren't that many interested, whatever. Point is if you are into hardware dev, you may want an original.

Hope this helps. My comment is a combination of my own experiences along with others who enjoy old gear in various ways.

Sell. It sounds like many are just sitting around.

I’m interested in the signed Apple 2.

Donate to a tech history museum.

You can sell some and keep some.