The shape of things to come....

[Vlad The Impaler]

I have been thinking about CPU collecting and how it is changing. The emergence of fakes is a very disturbing development, although one I have been expecting for a while.

Like a lot of you, I have been collecting for a long time. I think you would all agree that in the last 18 months or so, a lot of new people have been getting involved in what was, until recently rather an esoteric hobby. Whilst I have no problem with new people, as with all collecting type hobbies, the more popular it is the higher the prices go and then you start getting fakes and idiots involved trying to make a shilling. The exact same scenario (albeit on a somewhat larger scale) was played out in classic Rolex collecting in the 90s. By the turn of that decade, there was so much fake stuff about that even experts were getting caught out. A military Rolex worth perhaps £300 at auction in the early 80s in now worth £30,000. If it becomes really mainstream trendy to collect CPUs like it did with Rolexs, and classic Tamiya R/C cars, we are all screwed.

This is going to start happening to us whether we like it or not. The question is what, if anything can we do about it?

[CPUShack]

I understand what you are saying.

We face 2 problems in our hobby:
Perversion: the introduction of fakes onto not just the commercal market now but the museum market (us)
Popularity: Our hobby like you said is going mainstream.

This is nothing new in the field of collecting.
It is usually combatted by creating an overseeing group,
an association of sorts that can help educate collectors
and gennerally keep things in line.

I am not all too sure Processor collecting is that far...yet, it will be.

short of nuking the places where fakes come from we can't
combat them easily.

However we could set up a testing center for CPUs to verify there
condition. SOme dont even need tested, such as the idots making
MediaGX 433s (no such thing could even exist)

[CPUShack]

Second Note:
We face one other problem that is also
faced by coin collectors today, namely China
and the price of Gold and precious metals
that has been driven up by their roaring economy.

This is frightening, many of our precious CPUs are being melted down.
The only way to combat this (short of nuking china again)
is EDUCATION. People need to KNOW that there is more to CPUs then their gold value.

[gaidensensei]

hmm, this is interesting.

I had never known that old cpus (except unopened) could be of some value.

But I do agree that when stuff turns vintage/antique, there's always likely the possibility that fakes become produced, as the sellers are obviously after the money.

Speaking of some old cpu's, I've got to start taking pictures of a bunch of old Cyrix's M2's sitting away in some old warehouse.

[chipcollector]

[skold]

im all for recovering gold from cpus, if theyre very badly damaged. severely bent pins, cracked/chipped packages, worn/scratched lettering. i dont know about the rest of you but those are worthless to me, and people pay usually over $100-150usd or more for an auction that has 50-100 of those badly damaged chips.

i have nothing else to do with the ones that are dead and/or badly damaged, but if i can sell them and make some money to buy GOOD chips, so much the better! its nice when i pick up a lot auction for one really nice chip and 10-15 pentiums or k6's which are in bad condition, since i can save them up and auction them off (which i havent done yet but plan to in the next few months)

it does bother me though when sellers list auctions full of perfectly good chips which are in good to excellent condition and probably WORKING condition, as scrap, like those dozen or so auctions for mIIs..

maybe we could start setting up a wikipedia type resource (ie, community maintained) listing information on known fakes, how to spot fakes, etc.. stuff like worn or polished tops where the original lettering was buffed off, or the mediagx 466's

[xi11west]

Collectible CPUs may be less than 1% of the total CPUs made, there're tons of old CPUs like 486s and Pentiums. Recycle them for gold or other metal is quite reasonable, and I believe it's worldwide

[CPUShack]

[Guest]

Oops, that is a funny jest.

Golden tigers do look good, and they seem to have more gold on it. lol

[xi11west]

[Minuteman]

On my side I always ask other people when I have a doubt about a chip. Even after 3 years of CPU collecting it's hard to know what really existed/didn't exist or so. The other thing I try to do is not to buy chips coming from China...yes this IS discrimination but it's reasonable to think that this is a safe way to avoid a source of fakes.

[xi11west]

I see your concern. I'm not fighting for fakes, I don't like them either. This is a serious issue in collection. But sometimes it's been extended to something else. I don't see what's wrong with recycling old CPUs. Of course you have your choice of CPU source, but if you just want to express discrimination, I'll be definetely against it.