Clunky old computers hip again

By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post

The year was 1986 and Bud Ballos was an eighth-grader, a proud owner of a brand-new computer with what was to him "a weird thing" called a mouse.

Collectors are taking a second look at obsolete computers such as Thomas Ballos' Apple IIc as a red-hot collectors' market turns yesterday's junk into much-desired historic pieces. Len Spoden • Washington Post

"This was the start of the new computer, and at the time, I didn't really know what it was," Ballos says of his very first desktop, its screen no bigger than 7 inches by 5 inches, its color off-white, the kind of plastic that starts to yellow after a while. Not too many families actually had a computer at home then.

Ballos, now 33 and called Thomas rather than Bud, is a novice collector and a random one at that: coins from the United States and Canada, belt plates from the Civil War, Native American spearheads and arrowheads. They're all in the garage of his suburban Washington home, where the showpiece — "I did my homework on it; I played Donkey Kong on it; I brought it with me to college," he explains — is his Apple IIc.

These days people are holding on to their old desktops and laptops — for nostalgia's sake, for the kitsch value — turning 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, the collectibles menu covers a broadening taste.

Pepe Tozzo, author of the upcoming book "Retro Electro: Collecting Technology From Atari to Walkman," puts the price of the Altair, depending on its condition, between $930 and $2,785.

On a recent day, with four days, seven hours left on a listing, the top bid for an IMSAI 8080 microcomputer circa 1977 — Matthew Broderick, in the 1983 film "War Games," almost started global thermonuclear war with one — is $1,025.

Tony Romando, editor in chief of Sync, the men's magazine for the gadget-obsessed, says there's a one-word reason why people collect old hard- and software: cool.

"Who keeps an Apple II laying around? The hipster who owns a Treo cell and a PowerBook G4 and an iPod but last month went out and bought a rotary phone for his living room and sometimes walks around with a Walkman for street cred," says Romando. He keeps his circa-1999 iBook — the one that looks like a toilet seat — in the basement, next to one of those tiki lamps that repel mosquitoes.

Apart from the hipness factor, Michael Nadeau, author of "Collectible Microcomputers," a field guide of sorts, says holding on to a vintage computer is about taking a stroll down memory chip lane.

"If you grew up in the late '70s, for example, and you used this computer, the computer meant something to you," says Nadeau, who has a soft spot for Radio Shack TRS-80s, affectionately known as Trash 80s. "I think cars make for a good analogy: If you grew up in the '70s, the Corvettes, the Mustangs, the Camaros meant something to you. Maybe you didn't own one of those cars, but you wish you had."

The Holy Grail of any serious collector is the first in the Apple line, the Apple I, designed by the Steves — Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak — and sold in 1976 for the superstitious price tag of $666.66.

"There were 200 made in total," says collector Sellam Ismail. "I've tracked down 35 so far."

In the past five years, during the festival in Mountain View, Apple I's have been up for bidding three times. One sold for $16,000 in 2003, Ismail says.