It’s another month and time for another mandatory monthly post. A lot has happened to me in the past month. Apart from my first days as an amateur art teacher and my long list of home improvements (which mostly involve building bookcases I bought from B&Q and moving A LOT of books), the 5th August 2017 will be remembered as the day of a significant milestone in my life … the day I first bought something on eBay.
Friends and regular readers will know that I have a thing for technology. I am fascinated by human ingenuity in all its guises. Gadgets, buildings, magic tricks, cons, works of art, special effects, music, movies, you name it. If a human made it, I’m interested.
This is why I’m kind of annoyed by some who believe the pyramids were built by aliens, and not fellow humans. Such thinking sells our species short, in the same way a lot of men claim the credit of work by women over the years. Maybe that’s why they are not many female conspiracy theorists and “flat-earthers.” Although I could be wrong about that, due to the stereotype (and a stereotype that is rarely bashed by the PC police, for some reason.).
Anyway, I find technology interesting. And not just the new stuff you find on sale
I find older technology more interesting, due to what people managed I to do with the limitations of their day. It’s not a surprise that high number of videos I watch on YouTube are of the subject of old devices and technology. I am a regular viewer of a number of channels that deal with this subject (Tech Moan, 8-bit Guy, Oddity Archive, Nostalgia Nerd, the teardown videos on the EEV Blog and Lazy Game Reviews, to name a few).
I find their videos easier to digest than dull technical text in old books, which makes researching for my computer book much easier (and fun).
For years (maybe since I discovered that book) I had always had the curious itch to take things apart to see inside them. I have always taken apart ballpoint pens because of this. Since then I have taken apart a few flashlights, two calculators, a radio cassette player, a VCR and (recently) my dad’s old PC from the mid-1990s.
For years I have developed ideas involving tinkering with such old devices, even using them in works of art. And in August 2017 the first step in those ideas becoming reality was made. On 5th August 2017, I bought my first piece of vintage technology on eBay… a typewriter.
(I actually bought an old Pentax SLR camera a while earlier through Amazon, but I call the typewriter purchase more significant because it was bought directly through eBay, starting the habit in bidding for other pieces of old technology. You be amazed at the price some people were selling stuff you might think be worth much more, especially as “job lots.”)
For a rough idea about the pricing of collectable things (and how things can change over time), watch this video from The 8-Bit Guy….
Are apple iBook laptops collector's items yet?
- 8-Bit Guy (2015)
His last point is one reason for my “madness.” This stuff my not stay that cheap for long. What may have been dirty cheap years ago could now be fetching prices of over $100… or even more.
By the time of this publication I have amassed a small collection of devices from the late-20th century. This includes….
• A few cameras
• Two 1980s VCRs (which are surprisingly big!)
• A Super 8 movie projector (as seen above)
• A Psion II pocket organiser from 1986
• And a Mini Disc player.
For now, I’m going to stop using eBay for the time being, before I bankrupt myself and fill my home with old devices that have not much resale value to most people. My collect contains enough to satisfy my curiosity for a while.
So, why do it? Seeing pictures and videos of old things is one thing, but having examples I can play with is something else. Remember asking for an amazing toy you saw in a shop or on TV and asking your parents to get it for you and they say “no,” because it’s too expensive? Same thing here. And asides, how many can say they have in their procession a Betamax video recorder?
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