Have we all ever wondered what our cpc collection s worth

[buzby]

Hi to all


i was just going through all my spread sheets of my hardware and software and it got me thinking what is was all worth ?


i have done research over the years on what i have sold and  also what i have seen according to places like ebay, amnibay, and private sales to name a few


my collection consists of:


70 seperate pieces of hardware from the actual cpc down to the peripherals


26 different roms


107 amstrad action magazines


55 amstrad action tapes


110 amstrad single discs


16 amstrad compilation discs


80 amstrad compilation tapes


610 amstrad tapes


85 amsoft titles


i wont put a figure in at the minute as i am still working it out on estimate and at the minute i am shocked 


so over to you guys

[TFM]

Well, honestly I never thought about it. I have a lot of stuff, mainly to experiment and find out how to make the quickest drivers for the hardware. But I like to use it and work with it.
If one would look at crazy ebay prices, then we all would be very very rich.

[buzby]

@tfm yes i agree going on what i have sold on ebay and the prices people pay sometimes on there also i have collected some hard to get stuff my figures come out at around £3500 time to cash in....................... I DONT THINK SO lol its took me a long time to collect and im still going


also my 13yr old son wants to become computer programmer / game designer so he is starting to look at basic.


when i was at high school in 1982 i startted programming in basic but the children in the uk dont anymore, apparently the government are changing the exams back to when i was at school and they are also looking at changing kids to start programming back in basic as it is better, there might be a future generation of retro gamers etc been reborn

[ralferoo]

I'd say I've spent around £600 on Amstrad related purchases. Of that, I'd say probably half was on sunk costs like postage or petrol when collecting the machines, so it's probably only "worth" £300 if I had to sell it on.

However, I've bought things quite conservatively, so I've ended up with:
464s: 3 fully working, 1 broken keyboard, 1 broken motherboard
6128s: 1 fully working and boxed, 2 with broken drives (not the band), 1 destroyed motherboard
Monitors: 1 fully working and boxed with 12v, 1 fully working 5v only, 2 broken
464+: loose cartridge slot, dodgy monitor
GX4000: 2 or 3, but can't actually find any of them at the moment!
Games: maybe 250 tapes, 10 discs, 2 cartridges
Hardware: AMX mouse, MP2 modulator, Amstrad RS232
Books: SOFT768
Other: 2 working NC100, 1 broken NC100, 1 PPC1512

So, for instance, practically with only 1 working monitor with 5v, I can only use one 464 at a time and I tend to not use the working 6128 at all because it and its monitor are perfect condition and boxed and I don't want to just leave them out getting dusty. The picture quality from the MP2 modulator is beyond awful, so I never use it even though I also made myself a SCART lead and could use it just for power.

What I find interesting is that the best condition stuff I actually got for a complete bargain, and generally this is even more the case for pick-up only auctions. For example, with the boxed 6128+monitor I actually felt guilty giving him only a tenner so gave him a £20 note and told him firmly I didn't want change. Then again, I probably also spent £30 on petrol to collect it, so the total price was about the same as any of the other 6128s.

There are also items with highly random prices. I paid £13 for my SOFT768 (firmware manual). A week later, another one sold for £5. But I've also seen them hit £30. Similarly, when I was buying my GX4000s, demand seemed high and another guy and I were constantly outbidding each other over the ones that came up on ebay. Seemingly, we were the only 2 who wanted one, as after I got mine for about £40 each but that felt OK as that seemed to be the going rate over the previous few months. The next couple of weeks saw a few selling for about £15 including postage because presumably nobody was bidding against them now we'd bought the ones we wanted. Buying and selling on e-bay really is just pot luck sometimes!

Then again, it's not like I bought this stuff as an investment... it's a hobby!

[buzby]

i agree it is a hobby,


my stupid estimate and yes i know i wouldnt get anything that close is made up from ;


1 what i have spent on items in the past
2 what items have gone for or are going for


and with all those games on tapes and discs, adding them all up with a single price for each giving a ball park figure comes to alot of money


its like the rombo rombox i brought people pay £100 for them and then there is the roms which i payed between £6 and £20


also 464's i have 5 of them lol


and then you start buying things like a symbiface, cpcbooster, megaflash, lowerrom, and on and on


but its a hobby a expensive one

[beaker]

Then again, it's not like I bought this stuff as an investment... it's a hobby!

I was banking on Bryce's hardware funding my retirement in 30 years time!

[buzby]

good call i agree


just keep buying it when he keep producing it


just think of all that cpc stuff thats at the back of peoples attics and they have forgotten about it

[Bryce]

I was banking on Bryce's hardware funding my retirement in 30 years time!

If that was the case, I'd have given up my day job a long time ago

Bryce.

[TFM]

also my 13yr old son wants to become computer programmer / game designer so he is starting to look at basic.

Cool! CPCs BASIC (and later on MC) is the best way to get started. You can understand how things work. People starting up on a PC will never know how the little computer people inside the chips do their jobs

[Bryce]

Cool! CPCs BASIC (and later on MC) is the best way to get started. You can understand how things work. People starting up on a PC will never know how the little computer people inside the chips do their jobs

Chips don't have little people inside to make them work! They work with "Magic smoke", and I can prove it, because as soon as the smoke leaks out, the chip stops working.

Bryce.

[XFile2708]

No idea how much my collection would be worth - its the only part of my retro collection that im actually keeping so its going nowhere anyway.. 

[TFM]

Chips don't have little people inside to make them work! They work with "Magic smoke", and I can prove it, because as soon as the smoke leaks out, the chip stops working.

Bryce.

That's true! I've seen that with c64, amiga, st and so on (not 800XL though). But I never saw it with a CPC. Maybe the magic smoke is to lazy to leave?

[db6128]

Chips don't have little people inside to make them work! They work with "Magic smoke", and I can prove it, because as soon as the smoke leaks out, the chip stops working.

This is what should have happened in Lost! Well, it would have been infinitely better than the ruination that the show got in real life.

[Bryce]

This is what should have happened in Lost! Well, it would have been infinitely better than the ruination that the show got in real life.

Life is too short to watch shite like Lost, when I could be designing retro hardware instead

Bryce.

[db6128]

I agree! If only I knew I'd waste all those years only to be given that for season 6, I wish I could have been designing hardware all that time, too.

[TFM]

Well, parts of Lost have been stuffed with REAL, REAL retro hardware 

[Ciana]

my collection is currently worth £4.99... the amount I paid for a half-broken CPC464

[Gryzor]

I was just given a Sega Mega Drive for free, does this mean it's worth zero?

[Ciana]

I was just given a Sega Mega Drive for free, does this mean it's worth zero?

Yep! And to prove I'm generous, I'll buy it off you for £2. 

Point taken - however it does seem in comparison to C64, BBC, Spectrum etc, the plain old 464 is one of the cheapest vintage computers you can buy. Of course, from reading the posts above, the real fun starts with the peripherals and exotic stuff.

[TFM]

Oh yes! Some nice expansons are like the salt in the soup!   And in this case a 6128 is a good choice. Hope you get one for a nice price (or should I say from Bryce). 

[Gryzor]

I think that's the case with most mainstream vintage computers; I mean, for the fun you get from them, they're dirt cheap. Sure, you can find a SNES for a fiver or for 40 quid, but still it's a bargain (and I don't even like the SNES). Peripherals, on the other hand, are on a league of their own since it's collectors who compete for them...

[beaker]

You... don't.... like.... the..... Snes!!! 

[attach=2]

[Gryzor]

Nope. Actually I dislike almost everything Nintendo. Honorary mention to Gameboy because of Tetris.

[ralferoo]

in comparison to C64, BBC, Spectrum etc, the plain old 464 is one of the cheapest vintage computers you can buy

There is definitely both supply and demand at play here. Supply is high as 464s tend not to just die by themselves and demand is relatively low because it was a minority machine at the time and there are fewer nostalgic people looking for CPCs than the others.