These days people are holding on to their first (and second, and third) desktops and laptops. Some keep them for nostalgia’s sake, others for the kitsch value. Whatever the motivation, the urge to hang on has turned yesteryear’s outmoded computers into today’s historic artifacts — giving them a growing value in the ever-so-hungry collectibles market. From an early 1975 Altair 8800, named after a planet in a “Star Trek” episode, to a 1981 IBM Personal Computer that a young Bill Gates helped develop, what’s on the collectibles menu covers a broadening taste. Some of these computers are rare. Some are actually quite common and may be sitting in people’s basements right now. Dang, I wished I had kept my Atari 800 and 1024ST!
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