[citation][nom]jacekring[/nom]I agree, I never understood what the collecting craze is all about. Such as baseball cards. Why are old baseball cards of famous players so expensive? It's useless except to look at. I can understand original paintings being expensive, it's art, but baseball cards are NOT art....Just like mass produced 'paintings' from Walmart are worthless.I can understand collecting old things that are useful, such as guns, knives....wait...that's about ALL the old things that ARE useful. Old cars? Not useful, burn too much gas. Old TV's, I'll watch on my 58" LCD thank you very much. Old computers, right.....give me 1,000,000,000 Apple I's to equal my overclocked i7 and SLI'd GTX460 cards.I can see old gaming systems being collectible, sometimes I like to play old games...like FF1 or the original Mario games.[/citation]
The thing your forgetting is that the value of an object such as baseball cards or old cars is dependent on the person buying it. It may not have any value or use to you but to someone else it does. No as to old baseball cards not being art I would agree with you on modern cards, but those produced 100 years ago they were not pictures they were paintings of the player that were printed and sold on Tobacco products (yes I know bad idea but it was perfectly acceptable at the time). Most people simply threw them away, so there's very few of those left. One players card in particular there is only 1 full card and one that has been ripped in half. And have you ever heard the saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or one mans trash is another mans treasure? There are people who still use vacuum tubes in their audio devices because there is a quality to the sound that just can't be duplicated digitally even with the best software, even some musicians use these devices because of the sound quality. And vacuum tubes went out of style with the modern transistor based equipment in the 70's.
For some people these old devices and objects bring back a sense of nostalgia, it reminds them of their youth, when to them times were simpler. Some cars even have a sexiness to them that modern cars just can't duplicate, they had graceful curves, clean lines. Take the original Corvette, the Shelby Cobra, Astin Martins, Jaguars, these cars have an appeal to them that just makes you want to go for a drive in them with the top down and the wind blowing through your hair. Sure they suck down gas like a fat man at an all you can eat buffet but they just look damn sexy. The original Willies CJ2A may be old but this vehicle can go places most modern vehicles can't, this was the Jeep from WWII. It's easy to work on, the flat head 4 in it was one tough engine, it was rugged and reliable, why do you think it's still used in some countries?
As for buying a 5yr old iPhone you have to be nuts to pay 10K for one, let alone 300k for an original Apple I. The Apple I and II belong in a museum along with the ENIAC, and other computers that lead to the modern computer.