 Thank you very much Welcome to my presentation on how we can spot future retro classics as you can see I'll try to hold this and talk in English just for the sake of the possibly a wider Audience So what is this talk all about? As you probably have noticed if you want to buy a retro computer nowadays you often pay Substantial prices that are partially even prohibitive There are of course litigies to mitigate this, but they are quite labor-intensive like opening a museum or Opening a popular web blog where people then tend to give you computers On the other hand With some computers having substantial value from this increased prices It seems like an opportunity to maybe make a business out of this opportunity or use this opportunity as an investment and The question that I am asking myself is are these good opportunities and which Criteria would I have to follow Model-wise in order to use these opportunities and to answer these questions we first start by Looking at how computer prices evolve over time or what my theory of how computer prices are evolving over time is So this is my principle Computer graph we will go over different phases in detail in a minute, but We can see it starts in an initial price when the product is first launched that by the manufacturer it then relatively sharply and declines with the slope of Electronic devices it then lingers at some minimal point and then maybe goes up again in one of Different slopes upwards. Let's look at this first phase The first phase of the phase of usefulness Which I called it in this initial period the price of the model is mainly determined by the manufacturer This is the the phase where the manufacturer sells the model Typically for electronic devices we have a decline whether it's that sharp or not is maybe not really of consequence and then in the next Part of this phase of usefulness The product is not sold by the manufacturer anymore But there might be third parties that sell Rest quantities of the product and the price it's still determined by its remaining usefulness So maybe it's not fresh at the market anymore, but it's still somewhat useful and depending on the usefulness the prices also Determined At the end of this useful period We tend to get rid of these devices because they are of no use for us anymore. They are just trash and We maybe sell it or give it away The next phase is what I would call the garbage phase in this phase The Device basically lost all its usefulness Basically, no one wants to buy it and as the supply outweighs the demand No one feels the urge to buy because there are so many on the market And the prices are close to a minimum and this minimum is Determined by the amount of money for the seller that outweighs the effort to sell it So it's quite low, but if it's too low There is no real point for the seller to sell it. So it's as a certain minimum point and Then something is starting which I will call the sentimental phase and the central mental phase is basically Triggered by midlife crisis, which typically also Is connected to an orientation towards one's past and also it's typically a phase Where the net income is quite high Now this orientation towards one's past then leads one to think about with nostalgia with About the things that one has in its youth which One possessed or which may be attractive and this is the imprinting period of our person The person in this phase has some sense of attractivity. It feels some things It should have or it could have but maybe it's It has some of the models But it's maybe too poor to afford others. So maybe it has C64 in this phase, but this pesky Amiga was always too expensive for him and This is then the Period where the models are first bought by this person in question with the midlife crisis it tends to Buy things that he or she once had or that he or she once wanted but couldn't afford So in this red phase this means for us and this is all the same age group and therefore We have also an age of a user access through this graph We see that an increasing number of new buyers appear and Because they buy again these prices This this devices the prices increase This again leads to more people selling it because now it's more It gives you more money to sell it and Maybe at some point the demand then outwise does outweighs the supply which again leads to prices increases again and What's also too very typical is that these prices do not necessarily depend on the initial price by the manufacturer But they depend more on an individual budget on some notion of attractivity at this point on the demand on supply of course and on the social value The the value that a device has if I can show it to my friends and if they say oh, that's great That's the social value of the device now I Have different curves here for different devices, so I'm not saying every device increases the same the same slope and I think these models are a different demanding on the attractivity but also on the demand supply ratio and If we look at the models especially in comparison to the initial price We see that the majority of the of the models and these percentages are just what I feel I don't have data to support this That most of these models are never sold for the same price as initially But we also see a small amount of models will even Go higher than initial price or be much higher than the initial price And now if we look further on at the age of our of our collecting user We see that maybe it will he will he or she will stop collecting Maybe because it doesn't find That the hobby is not interesting anymore Other things are more interesting. Maybe there's a need of money. That's a need of space people are getting too old and then the stuff gets sold or thrown away and The market is happy about a bunch of these devices Now the question of course is What happens to the prices once a generation quits collecting either because they die or because they leave the field and This question or the answer to this question depends to whether the corresponding field is Maybe something like art Where the value is mainly kept over time maybe increases Sometimes all the decreases sometimes of of art are not always increasing but go out of fashion and are valued Negatively or whether they are for example like telephone cards if you remember these there was a time that these were feverishly Collected when telephone cards were in use and there were rare ones and they had high prices But as soon as telephone cards were not used any more or so the market broke down for these things now if one wonders how our retro Computer marked market Which of these models it will follow? I think it will be more like telephone cards And this is because our generation found home computers for example very exciting interesting and we had a high sentimental value to them, but Next generations didn't had this excitement of computers in their youth They had PCs and They were workhorses. They were tools like any other tools. So They don't feel The excitement of home computers anymore and therefore I'm thinking That this market will shrink in times in number of persons and therefore also Prices will shrink it will not mean that there won't be any collectors. There are always collectors that that collect everything And but the number of collectors that collect stuff will be small. There are always people who collect beer mugs But maybe not so many there will be always people who collect old computers, but maybe not not so many So before I continue Before you ask Does this model explain everything price wise and of course not and there are more reasons to collect computers than a midlife crisis? also often it's maybe a starting point, but I And there are of course different life courses than there are one that I sketched here, but I think it's a very typical Life for the bulk of computers buying computers today in the bulk of people are not necessarily collectors like we are There may be people who have one or two computers Which they bought recently and they have on their coffee table and not more, but there are many of these It's not applicable to other products and this model is a theory and not backed up by data But at least as every theory it aims to explaining some effects Now I said we will all die and the retro computer market will collapse so Okay, so why do you look for future retro classics? So maybe it's not retro computers Maybe there are other devices Which are interesting Which you could could buy today and be happy about having in the future And my first criteria for devices that might become classics is as I said before It's something that young people were getting excited excited about We have seen we express the mechanism of price in a sentimental phase only by the sentimental value of a device because as I said, I think that's the driver that alleviates the collection area area from just being a thing for a few nerds to are somewhat mass phenomenon having also mass phenomenon prices And in order for this mechanism to work properly It needs to be of a very high positive sentiment at that time Which means it needs to be something which was considered to be cool at a time for example cars in the 70s and 80s and 90s and subsequent eras Home computers in the 80s and maybe smartphones in the 2010s But of course, it's not the only criteria. It also needs to be somehow attractive Also this and the next criteria are not telling you what will be a classic But maybe what will be a more expensive more desirable classic so If a device is something people are excited about of course, it's automatically attractive to some to these people However, some devices can be attractive even when there are people not necessarily excited about this and this could be an Example for this could be a high technological technological or historical significance of a device and This is something which is not necessarily clear at the beginning, but the historic significance for example crystallizes out only After the time that device was on the market Let's look at one example the HTC dream that I have also at the exhibition exhibition booth HTC dream also known as the T-Mobile G1 It's a smartphone developed by HTC and it was first released in September 2008 and Therefore it was the first commercially released device to use the Linux based Android operating system Also, it was a commercial success So T-Mobile alone sold over a million G1s in the US Which accounted at that time of four two-thirds of the devices on its 3g network There was no guarantee that Android would have the importance that it has today or That Google wouldn't kill Android after that model But as it stands nowadays The HTC dream has the signal historical significance being the first Android phone because Android Carried over and has so many models nowadays existing on the market also The technological significance of the HTC dream let's say compared to an Apple iPhone or the first Apple iPhone is somewhat debatable the next no Continuing on this. It's somewhat attractive Motive another aspect of attractiveness. Of course is the brand of a device as Collectors sometimes often collect the devices of a brand and Ideally all devices of the brand is of course also influences the price one example here is For example PCs and we look just at the IBM models the early IBM models versus the rest and Then we see that the early IBM PCs XTs 80s Historically significant models technologically They are not really great But if we look for example at a PC junior It's already interesting only from an IBM point of view because historically it was not really significant But if you collect early IBM computers PCs, then you won't also collect in PC junior Also as we know it is obviously more true The more true the more fanatic the loyal fans of a brand are The next criteria of course is it's something rare and You all know this acknowledged universally acknowledged aspect of collectible goods Rarity also it sounds like an objective value is often not easy to establish for electronic devices because Most of the times we don't really have access production numbers They are sometimes communicated, but only basically retroactively And For most models, I'd say it's more hearsay than actually fact and The number of surviving devices in the market today are even harder to establish There is something which you all have that is felt rarity Every collector has an impression of the rarity of a device, but this is typically Determined More by the market availability currently It doesn't mean that there are not many collectors which has already such a device But don't offer it on the market But if you don't eat on a market appearing on for example eBay, you have the impression. It's it's rare This felt rarity of course is also determined by market by location. So in Germany, for example Commodore 116 Is rare by it it's not so rare than it is on the US market where it was never released So it changes also over markets And of course also the currently achievable price determines the felt rarity because when the price is low people are Less people are willing to sell and You feel it's maybe not so Available and when prices increase suddenly there is More offers on the markets because for this price also collectors are maybe willing to sell this device and There are of course always reasons why devices are rare either. It was expensive at least for the masses so For example This device you probably cannot read it. It's a footage. So FM 8 was just basically the first home computer by Fujitsu was a quite Expensive offering about 218 kilo yen So the market say this was too expensive for me So they do what companies often do they split the model in an up market and in the down market value So the Fujitsu FM 8 was a big hit in japan With a price of only 126 k yen Whereas the up market version of this model the Fujitsu FM 11 Was about 300 something k yen because the price point one of the rise price point for the mass market Of course a major reason for being rare is that the device was unsuccessful Because it was too late to faulty did not offer any distinctive values Did not hit the competitive price point or didn't had a viable audience Another reason was that it might be that it was superseded maybe but not a model relatively Fastly usually because it wasn't successful So many of you know that the predecessor of the T 99 for a was the T 99 slash 4 not without the a And they simply improved it for example keyboard wise relatively fastly and Then had a had a better model with this one So which means that the T 99 slash 4 is a relatively rare model And of course manufacturers went out of business or dropped the product line Either because it was not successful or because there were reasons outside the product Maybe the company was bought by another company and they dropped the line. Maybe Steve Jobs came back and closed some projects Or it was limited also this happens very rarely and I can only think of the 20th anniversary Mac Which was an explicitly limited computer a little bit meant for collecting One had an impression Now the interesting thing about rarity that on its own it does not constitute a higher retro price Just because something is rare doesn't mean it's expensive necessarily There need to be another factor that leads to an attractivity of this device and I have here Three examples of my collection You probably never have even heard of which are super rare, but no one cares So the first one is a super rare export version of your soviet era Spectrum clone the pig master And the reason why because no one cares is there were many soviet spectrum clones They appeal only to a small portion of collectors and these models often have no historical or technological appeal Yeah, or the ncr safari 31 15 extremely rare Windows 31 pen tablet from 93 Mobile computers are not appealing to many people And this one is neither particularly early or technologically advanced Also, it's ugly doesn't help the model Or an epson eht 10 Which is an I'd say extremely rare handheld terminal version of the px4 it's a POS terminal a mobile computer meant for industrial use and that's uh, basically in my opinion the the dev warrant for many Rare computers Because no one is really interested often in industrial Computers, maybe we are but not the masses Um, they're not loved. So they have no sentimental value or known And they are also quite easily disposed of in industry when they're not useful anymore So these are the criteria that I have is there now A recipe a way To identify candidates of these future retro classics and this is my current recipe As I said, it all depends on the age. So first you have to determine the age group that you want to target And because we want to hit this Trash value of prices We select an age group. It is not older than 25 years And then we have to do our research and look at What was all the rage when this generation was young category wise We read articles. We watch maybe Videos we look at lists of fair technology from this time period Maybe we look at what museums exhibit from this period And then we find okay this interesting category disinteresting category Then we go in these categories. We look at the models of this time We categorize them for example in different ages like early age golden age late age We apply our criteria And we buy or acquire or get the top ranked models from each category In a as good condition as possible as original as possible as complete as possible And store them in good conditions for 20 years I want to give an example of that. So I decided okay I want to look at an age group born in the roughly 2000s late millennials early gen zc people Also, it's a little bit hard to look at things that do not end at decade borders and So we look at the imprint phase of these people And I say maybe this imprint phase is like 2005 to 2015 because they could also be born in 1995 And The categories which they are interested in maybe are mobile phones in this period mobile phones being feature phones smartphones Game consoles and category which is going on and on and on tablet computers normal computers Maybe even 3d tv's where they appeal to collect it would be that is they have a feature Which you don't have in modern tv's and that's maybe a good thing And maybe something like ebook readers also There's probably no much sentimental value about an ebook reader And then let's take the list of smartphones and I have just selected Some models here we find the early iphone we find the htc dream And we find maybe an predecessor like the lg prada Which was on a smart was on a smartphone, but already had a touch screen Also, no user interface which use this for finger usage We have early phase phones We have maybe middle phase phones And 2015 doesn't give us like any golden age or late age Because that's that's too early We could put this in a table and then we can try to tick our boxes For the criteria don't take these values too serious Just put any something in here some have brand appeal Like Apple or like nokia like palm Some are rare some are not rare Some have maybe historical Appeal some have maybe technical appeal And this might help you concentrate then on things This list was a little bit influenced by Top phones anyway, so I could only exclude for example the hpc pre one Because maybe the the brand appeal is not so high It's rare, but it's not historically or technically relevant. And as I said only rarity maybe doesn't Always or only for us establishes Reason for collecting these things So coming back to our original questions. I asked are these good opportunities Uh and of course, um, it's not easy to give good advice here One has to be very cautious so Making a business out of them is risky like of course all business opportunities But here you have to edit edit Problem that you have to follow a future market tightly You have to weigh your, um investments that you do now over a potential profit in the far future And you bet on something which might happen in the future or not So if you bet on ebooks are getting, um attractive, maybe you are betting on the wrong horse If you look maybe is it a good opportunity for using them as an investment Then I'd say it might be viable if you keep your financial investment at a relatively low level Which is not that hard being in this value of low prices If you have to space our money To store them dryly for a long time because let's not forget Also storing something can cost money um over time So to conclude my talk And yes, this is already the last slide Uh, we wanted to know how we can spot future retro classic electronic devices in order to buy them When they are still available at reasonable prices and to that end We looked at how prices of vintage computers develop over time or at least at my wild theory of it We um learned that I claim that a major driver of increasing retro prices Is nostalgia and midlife crisis And we looked at criteria of desirable classic devices Thank you very much Questions Would another factor perhaps be cultural significance? Um Perhaps this goes under historical significance, but I didn't really understand what you meant by that but for instance, uh products Which were prominently featured in very popular movies or television series or something like that I think there was um I don't remember his name, but he had an altair and uh, you know, this is the computer that was in war games You know that movie. Yeah, so I think you're completely right And I don't think you necessarily can subsume it under historical significance Yeah cultural significance might be might be also interesting or let's look let let's have a look at the delorean car It's probably desirable because there was this movie More questions Uh, you obviously some type of how long you've been collecting you're collecting stuff and do you have some like Some stuff that worked out And some stuff that didn't if as a price wise this is not this is not the way that I collected Yeah, okay So so you're not this just you're not like a collector like that you have some old stuff, but you You don't you're not a collector in that way No, I didn't collect it in that way because this is more my experience from collecting Not necessarily the way that I started to collect or collect today I am a retro computer collector like you are And I'm not necessarily intending to invest my money this way Also, I bought the two google glass Devices that I have and I bought two of them One to keep in original Box and one to play with with the hope that My 200 euro investment will maybe increase in the future So so you're collecting a kind of partially for for investment I did it maybe more in the context of creating this presentation and this talk than anything else It's more an afterthought than for you. So so you're not an investment collector I was always interested in prices of old computers And I had this theory about how the price develops and this is maybe an addition to the theory. Okay. Thank you Then if there are no more questions, thank you very much And have a nice evening