Shponglefan wrote on 2024-04-20, 00:13:
I don't get the Voodoo-hype either.
I get it, for a very simple reason - because the Voodoo was the last of something. It's one of those rare inflection points in (especially) DOS/Windows PC history where something just... ends... without a backwards-compatible replacement. Especially at a time when it was still relevant. So you have this body of Glide software from a few years that works best on Voodoo...
I never owned a Voodoo at the time (or today for that matter) and I agree with the previous poster - by 2000-2001, everybody playing current games had moved on to the GeForce, then GeForce 2, etc. But those... didn't really hit an end point in the same way. Or at least, not an obvious one. Maybe the end of driver support for 98SE or the end of AGP is ... somewhat... of an end point, but not in the same way.
Now, interestingly, if you want to see a card that costs even more than Voodoos, go look at Apple GeForce 4 Ti4600s. Those things are now at $1000USD buy-it-now on eBay. I bought one from a dude on reddit for... quite a bit less... but still a lot. And why are they so valuable? Because, effectively, they are the Mac world's equivalent of a Voodoo - the last, and best, graphics card compatible with the classic OS. And every person who picked up a Power Mac G4 retro project during the pandemic wanted one...
I would even go as far as to call this VivienM's Law of Collectible Items: the last and greatest item to have the ability to do something will become the most collectible and therefore, over time, the highest priced.