I know it’s a weird way to phrase the OP, but we have limited space in those title bars.
I was thinking recently about the way that technology prices go down over time as newer and better technologies appear, and the effect that this has on the average consumer. I’m into making electronic music and home recording, so my hobby is one area where one can easily go back and buy things that were once ridiculously expensive - old synthesizers, outdated studio equipment and so on - for a fraction of their original prices, even accounting for inflation.
I recently got my hands on an old Fairlight CMI system, the first digital sampler that offered a mindblowing 8-bits of sampling in the early eighties when it was released. It retailed for between $30,000 and $50,000, depending on options, so it was the type of thing that was only attainable by the most exclusive recording studios, universities, and professional musicians.
So something about the fact that I picked it up for $500, and that it sounds about as convincing and mindblowing as a gameboy’s sound chip just cracks me up - this was once the Rolls Royce of keyboards!
I have a friend who’s really into vintage video gaming, even to the point where he has an original “maxxed out” system for each era in computer gaming - a totally maxed out IBM 386 with a Super VGA monitor, a 486DX with an actual four speed CD-rom, and so on. These things were once the ultimate multi-thousand dollar luxury computer setups that nerds could only dream of, and he put them together and picked up their games (literally) for spare change.
Something about the concept just tickles me, so I was wondering - who else out there has a hobby or past time where stuff like this happens? Any cinephiles who put together the ultimate Beta system for a few bucks? Car guys - ever pick up what was once an unattainable luxury vehicle for spare change? Share your stories if you have them.
When I first started wearing medieval-style body armor to fight in the Society for Creative Anachronism, I imagined having a full shirt of riveted mail (in which each of the thousands of steel rings is riveted shut). I knew that was the historical method, but it sounded like a tremendous amount of work and nobody that I knew of was doing it. So I made myself a shirt using the “butted” method (in which the ends of the rings are simply butted together; you have to use thicker wire so the ring is strong enough to hold its shape). I didn’t know anybody who even knew anybody who was making riveted mail.
Well, now, some twenty years later, you can buy a new shirt of riveted mail for a few hundred dollars and up; it’s being (relatively) mass-produced cheaply in India, and better-quality stuff is being made for sale by several individuals around the country. I’ve seen a used shirt for sale, so it meets the requirements of the thread title.
This didn’t happen to me, but my Dad is an avid ham radio operator, and at a hamfest over the summer, he was able to find something (I’m afraid my memory for product names is terrible) that was the ultimate, top-of-the-line radio when he first began buying equipment in the 70s for about $100. Apparently it’s still pretty good–it’s his main HF radio, now.
I keep waiting for the entry price on a personal computer to come down to 100.
Instead, the capablility keeps rising, so it's a better deal, but with that same threshold.
I think though that soon the phones will have as much power as an old PC and for a hundred I will be able to run Word and Excel in my palm for $100
While not a hobby for many, for others computers are. The first home laser printers started at about $5,000.Then think computers themselves, hard drives, etc, etc.
Years go when I started astronomy as a hobby, any decent telescope was way out of my price range. The only way many people could afford a decent instrument was to build their own, often grinding the mirror too. Now computer operated scopes are not cheap, but a fraction of what they used to be.
Plus, with the fall of the Soviet Union, we can now get armor that’s made out of titanium. It’s still freakin’ expensive ($3,000 for a full welded shirt), but before, you could not get it for any price.
Wow - Fairlights for $500? Amazing. I remember when folks like Kate Bush were such pioneers for using one.
My drummer owns a recording studio in NYC and tells stories like that - getting old top-of-the-line gear for give-it-away prices.
As for me, it has nothing to do with prices coming down, just buying a mid-life crisis toy for myself - a hand build guitar amp that sounds like vintage, expensive gear but is far more reliable…and no, I am not telling the price, but it was pricey for an amp…
On the other end of the spectrum is the Dale Earnhardt diecast car I just had to have. When it was released in 1995, it originally sold for $75 but demand drove the secondary market to over $200. I found one at an auto dealer parts department for $120 and snatched it up. I listed it on eBay about a month ago with a starting bid of $20 and I did not get one bid.
