They're not vintage Apples, Spectrums or even calculators though. You can't do anything with them other than look at them. They might have some historical and curiosity value but it would essentially be a lump of inert machinery.
I could get excited about an old computer or console. There are lots of memories tied up with it and you can still interact with it. I wouldn't get a boner about an Atari's power adapter.
There are people who collect CPUs for their historical value as well as those who collect wafers, computer stickers, and all sorts of other stuff. Historically significant coins and stamps don't really do anything other than looking pretty either.
Example:
David Pienknagura recently paid $350 for an Intel microprocessor, and he's not even sure if it works. Whether he got a bargain depends on your perspective.
He bought the computer chip -- the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor the company debuted in 1971 -- on eBay from another collector. Pienknagura, a Palo Alto programmer, could have used that money to buy Intel's current chip, a Pentium 4 microprocessor that runs at 3.2 gigahertz vs. the older chip's 108 kilohertz. If he did, he would have gotten approximately 1 million times more processing power. For that matter, he could have bought a complete personal computer with a display, for roughly the same amount. But Pienknagura is that rare breed of collector who buys these chips for the love of technology and its history. And apparently he's not alone. He finds these particular chips for sale on eBay every couple of weeks or so, and on Web sites dedicated to collectors. Prices on some recent 4004 chip auctions have ranged from $212 to $520. Each 4004 chip for sale on eBay generates about 15 bids, including some from Japan, South Korea, Germany, Australia and Britain. ``It's a worldwide phenomenon,'' he said.
Most wafers aren't worth much, but some finds can pay off. Those with aesthetic appeal are often listed on eBay for $10 to $20 each. Historically significant chips can fetch thousands of dollars. Mr. Tinter, who says he sells wafers sometimes to "feed the addiction" to buying and selling recently placed a $1,000 price on eBay for a wafer featuring Motorola 68000 chips--a variety used in computers like Apple Inc.'s Lisa, from the early 1980s.
Mr. Emery says he can quickly flick through such online listings and identify chips and when wafers were fabricated and judge whether a purchase of $15 to $20 might be worth hundreds. "There's definitely a high when you hit it," he says.
Source for both:
http://www.chipsetc.com/computer-memorabilia-collectors.htmlAnd you could still operate and interact with a Bitcoin miner. Instead of playing a game or running a word program, you would be connecting it to a network, setting up the mining program, and joining a pool. You wouldn't get any coins but you would still get the experience of mining.
I'm far from convinced, but stranger things have happened. Perhaps there'll be nostalgiacoin so they can keep running in the same way there's historic car racing series.
Even today, many smaller SHA-256 altcoins try to advertise the fact that you can mine them using old Bitcoin mining equipment. This is true, but only because there isn't enough interest yet for those with greater hashpower to switch to it. If Nostalgiacoin were to become popular, there would need to be some way to limit the hashpower of miners to prevent the latest ASIC miners from forcing obsolete mining equipment out of the competition.
I'm surprised some of the old game consoles do so well. But if you think of it Atari and C64, etc were pretty expensive and one per house mainly that bought them. So makes it a lot more limited supply.
If you think of some of the miners they are limited ish. But others fro example we had ALOT of. For example the Asic Miner usb stick miner was pretty life changing in mining world. But alot of us ran alot of them. For example I ran 50, and sold some others on ebay. There is just alot of those out there.
True, however the segment of society that is involved in video gaming is probably much larger than the segment involved in Bitcoin mining. If Bitcoin replaces fiat, then the demand for such museum pieces would be greater than the demand for retro video game consoles today since they would be perceived as being more historically significant.
you could start to look at today old asic, are those considered expensive antique, and thus collectible? i don't think so, no one care about them anymore, they are like old MB, that are not necessarily anymore
Bitcoin ASICs are barely two years old. It's probably still way too early to make an extrapolation like that. I'm talking decades, not a couple of years. Although notlist3d raises a good point that you might get more money by selling the miners today and investing it in BTC.
instead of wasting time with those ancient miner,s they should re-use their part to build new one with better efficiency
Has this ever been done? I suppose it would be possible to build the components in a modular fashion and have the chips plugged into sockets. When newer chips are developed, users could simply swap out the old chips for new ones.
I don't see why not, can imagine seeing all sorts of mining hardware in a museum one day. Going to be a few years til they're considered antiques though, I've got a small collection of unused usb miners that might be worth a bit in a few decades (collectors always pay a premium for mint goods).
But firstly collectors for items like miners would have to exist.
Just like you don't have collectors that pay 1000s of dollars flor floppy disk, this will be probably the same.
Thrown away to trash..
3.5" floppy disks were far too cheap and common to be considered antiques. Just like the way blank CDs will never be antiques unless we're talking literally centuries into the future. As I already mentioned, some of the earliest microprocessors are quite collectible and computers like the Altair 8800 can fetch $2,500 on eBay despite not being very useful today.
on a side note, I made a cool 1000$ for my old 160 GB iPod classic last december. I didn't expect that to happen. Apparently DJs covet them for their large storage capacity. makes sense to me, but it wont be long before apple exploits this market and re-releases them. the price has already dropped back to ~300 bucks
I've heard that Apple is working on a 128 GB iPod. They already have a 128 GB iPhone which can do everything the iPod can do. I'd be surprised if Apple decides to re-release an iPod with a hard drive since solid state storage capacities are catching up and the technology is inherently more suitable for these types of applications.
