Wow...

Yeah, I want some of the crack that the seller is smoking, 🤣.

I've seen much worse on ebay. 😀
There was one bloke who had an IBM 5150 for $42,000

and this Apple 1 for a cool $175,000 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-1-Computer-1976 … 8#ht_500wt_1413

to say nothing of the clowns who sell 486 motherboards for $100 or more...

Out of interest why are they clowns for selling (or trying at least) to sell a 486 MB for 100 bucks? I've seen that sentiment a few times on this board.

I know you can get them far more cheaply - or even free - if you're patient, but is the seller doing the wrong thing for putting big prices on retro computer stuff? Isn't it the buyer who is a clown?

apart from the greed and price gouging, and the fact that it artificially inflates the prices for everyone else?

yes anyone who pays that much for a 486 board is pretty silly. A fool and their money is soon parted as they say. But a quick look at completed listings on ebay shows that very few boards in this price range are actually selling.

There are a couple of $150 boards in Canada that sold recently. Perhaps its for a SCADA system that can't be upgraded past a 486 or something, or the buyer just doesn't know any better. Either way, at $150 it looks like blatant profiteering to me, I think anyone would be hard pressed to say that's a fair price at all.

Yes it's the same as all the retards who sell older equipment on web pages for insane prices... like Plextor CD/DVD drives for $350+ ... or SDRAM for $150/stick...

I don't see the Windows ME sample photo

badmofo wrote:

Out of interest why are they clowns for selling (or trying at least) to sell a 486 MB for 100 bucks? I've seen that sentiment a few times on this board.

I know you can get them far more cheaply - or even free - if you're patient, but is the seller doing the wrong thing for putting big prices on retro computer stuff? Isn't it the buyer who is a clown?

For industrial users who rely on older equipment that can only be repaired with a 486 motherboard. It's cheaper to pay $100-$200 for a used 486 motherboard if you need one than to replace a piece of equipment that may costs tens of thousands of dollars. They may also be using a piece of proprietary equipment that would otherwise be irreplaceable at any price.

DonutKing wrote:

I've seen much worse on ebay. :) There was one bloke who had an IBM 5150 for $42,000 […]
Show full quote

I've seen much worse on ebay. 😀
There was one bloke who had an IBM 5150 for $42,000

and this Apple 1 for a cool $175,000 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-1-Computer-1976 … 8#ht_500wt_1413

to say nothing of the clowns who sell 486 motherboards for $100 or more...

Try finding an original Apple I motherboard and try prying it from the fingers of the owner for some ridiculously low price. There was only ever a couple hundred of them ever made and only 40-50 are believed to have survived. There's probably even less in operational condition. $175k is not an unheard of price for them.

That's just it though: 40 or 50 items only, for the entire world is rare. Combine that with it is a piece of computing history, of course it would command a high price. I don't think anyone has a problem with that.

What I think annoys people is that there must have been literally tens of millions of systems made in the 486 class alone. Enough for everyone on the planet to have one? Of couse not, but there can't be more than several thousand retro geeks world-wide, hence the confusion at the current prices. I'm just pulling these numbers out of thin air, but if 10 million 486 class systems were made, and 90 percent are damaged beyond repair or have been recycled, that is still 1 million systems.
Even if you peg that number at 99 percent that is still a large number of spare boards floating around.

I'm not sure what the lesson here is, other than don't throw out your gear.

The unit is in nice shape, is apparently working and comes with a rare memory board to allow it to be upgraded to 640K and DMA. I don't see a keyboard though. Still, I wouldn't pay more than 1/10 of the asking price for it.

Great Hierophant wrote:

The unit is in nice shape, is apparently working and comes with a rare memory board to allow it to be upgraded to 640K and DMA. I don't see a keyboard though. Still, I wouldn't pay more than 1/10 of the asking price for it.

You had to provide your own keyboard with those. There is no standard one that you could buy with it. You got the motherboard and that was it. Everything else you needed to make a complete system was up to you to find.

I asked one of those sellers if the 486 board was working or tested, answer? No, be damned if im going to pay $50+ for an untested board, does it cost much money to keep relisting those boards and not sell them for years?

sliderider wrote:

Great Hierophant wrote:

The unit is in nice shape, is apparently working and comes with a rare memory board to allow it to be upgraded to 640K and DMA. I don't see a keyboard though. Still, I wouldn't pay more than 1/10 of the asking price for it.

You had to provide your own keyboard with those. There is no standard one that you could buy with it. You got the motherboard and that was it. Everything else you needed to make a complete system was up to you to find.

Are you are talking about an Apple I? Every Tandy 1000 came with a case, floppy, PSU and a keyboard. Even an IBM PC 5150 came with that (although there were models that lacked a floppy.)

Great Hierophant wrote:

sliderider wrote:

Great Hierophant wrote:

The unit is in nice shape, is apparently working and comes with a rare memory board to allow it to be upgraded to 640K and DMA. I don't see a keyboard though. Still, I wouldn't pay more than 1/10 of the asking price for it.

You had to provide your own keyboard with those. There is no standard one that you could buy with it. You got the motherboard and that was it. Everything else you needed to make a complete system was up to you to find.

Are you are talking about an Apple I? Every Tandy 1000 came with a case, floppy, PSU and a keyboard. Even an IBM PC 5150 came with that (although there were models that lacked a floppy.)

Oh, I was talking about the Apple I. I thought we were still on that subject.

sliderider wrote:

Try finding an original Apple I motherboard and try prying it from the fingers of the owner for some ridiculously low price. There was only ever a couple hundred of them ever made and only 40-50 are believed to have survived. There's probably even less in operational condition. $175k is not an unheard of price for them.

I am well aware of the history of the Apple 1. I still think this vastly overpriced.

Weren't the Apple Is ship as just a mainboard with which you had to build your own case and keyboard? I don't see how a fair resell value can be determined outside of how good a job the original owner did putting it together.

GXL750 wrote:

Weren't the Apple Is ship as just a mainboard with which you had to build your own case and keyboard? I don't see how a fair resell value can be determined outside of how good a job the original owner did putting it together.

It is only a bare board that is being sold, aside from that with only 40-50 known to exist it really doesn't matter how good or bad the owner managed to house it, it is the board that determines the value. Nobody who really wants it is going to care if the seller put it in crappy case.

DonutKing wrote:

and this Apple 1 for a cool $175,000 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-1-Computer-1976 … 8#ht_500wt_1413

That Apple 1 is kinda cool. I've heard of them selling for those prices before. It's still more than I'd want to pay for it. I'm hoping that some day someone builds replicas of the Apple 1 using original components (rather than the single chip versions out there).

That board has a pretty cool story though, which is what I like about it. Previously owned by the Atari/Apple Programmer who wrote Star Raiders, although I wasn't able to find anything about him on Atari Age like the auction said. If the story's true, I wonder if he was one of Apple's original employees, seeing that Jobs and Woz worked at Atari prior to launching Apple.

Really though, if I had 175k to waste like that, I'd buy a house. Or an Altair. Or both.