Agreed. This particular discussion can be seen on this forum going back a number of years. I think it was mainly us ranting and then that snowballed into a full-blown discussion. The bulk of what we do (I, myself, and the company I formed) aside from the day-to-day recycling operations, is act as an intermediary/custom build shop for any and all things vintage computing, within reason. This includes pulling in things from my own collection and the collections of my friends, as well as inventory from museums. The demand has always been there for older stuff, but you're right, Covid definitely prodded folks to acquire inventory at an alarming rate. I wouldn't stop at just CPU's, I would hang onto 30/72 pin SIMMS, socket 3-8 motherboards, cabling, IDE/SCSI drives, 3.5"/5.25" drives, etc. Once this stuff goes away it isn't coming back. It also prompts the discussion on what is "vintage". If we're working on the same rules applied to cars, theres "classic" (20 years) and "vintage" (even older) and every year that passes, newer things are added to these categories. It makes me sad to now say that P4 era stuff is now classic, borderline vintage. It makes sense that the x86 stuff from this era is now sought after, scarcity aside. 18 year old kids who weren't around for the launch of XP are now paying $500 for XP rigs, calling the Gamecube "vintage" and paying even more money on dumb stuff like Pokemon. I destroy Vista machines like a fat kid destroys cake, and I cringe knowing full well that someone will ask me a year from now to produce a "vintage" Vista machine. It's sad, but we all get older. I will now go make myself some beans and toast and throw on a very thin blanket.
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