What vintage has done to me

I'm a mixed bag when it comes to this stuff.

On one hand, you can pry my smartphone from my cold, dead fingers. I LOVE being able to access information wherever I am. I'm a bit of a techno geek and gadgets fascinate me.

But when it comes to things like music and photography, I'm as old school as they come. Screw the cloud, I want to put my hands on the media. Owning "digital rights" to a music file is not the same as holding the CD or record in my hands. I mean, half the fun of photography was sitting in the dark and smelling the chemicals! Those are tactile things I miss in the digital age.
 
Mixed bag in my house. My wife hates anything and all things related to technology. She won't use the computer and I have to beg her to carry her cheap cell phone (not smart phone and no texting) in the event of an emergency.

I hate cell phones and much like my wife, I carry that same sort of cheap cell that has no texting capabilities (as far as I know of).

We still have 2 plug in the wall phones. The cordless goes dead too often not to.

I need a high speed web connection for my job as I work 100% from home (for now). Without it, I don't get paid. I have a smartphone for work and 110% despise the thing. I only use a few functions on a thing that seems to have a bazillion.

We don't download mp3's and I don't use cloud storage for anything other than my Kindle - which I love as it allows me to eliminate any book or magazine that I would otherwise be tossing in a recycle bin or needing to find room for on a shelf. Less clutter.

I have one leg in each bucket I guess.
 
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I gave up my "smart" phone last year. I was paying $100/month for something I was rarely using. Granted, I live on my iPad but that just made my smart phone even more useless since I could do everything on my iPad and it had a much bigger screen. I personally hate talking on the phone, so I just couldn't justify the huge bill every month. I now have a flip phone with 200/minutes per month (that I rarely use more than 50 of) and a very small texting plan (of which I do even less). My iPad is my only computer.

Basically, Technology is great until it doesn't work and then we're all screwed. At least growing up, when the electricity went out and the tv didn't work, I had enough stuff to keep me occupied and happy. Im not sure there's a lot of kids today that can say that. When the electricity is out they're panicking becuase there's no computer or tv or video games and the phone can't be charged. I realize I'm sounding like an old geezer (which I am) but sometimes I truly believe that technology sets us back instead of forward.
 
Bo, you live in LA. I cant imagine that there is anywhere within a hundred miles of you that doesn't have pristine cell phone coverage.

.

Well, let me point out that yes, phone coverage doesn't seem to be a problem, but data coverage is spotty. Even at Disneyland there are areas that I'm not connected and can't receive emails or other internet-based communications. And since nobody I know calls anyone, then I'm disconnected ;)

And there are more than a few mountain areas around here that affect phone calls too.
 
The only problem with "vintage" is that some people use that as justification to jack up the price. Vintage car, vintage guitars, vintage wine, whatever.

But I'm one of the people that doesn't need a smartphone. If I didn't have to receive calls from time to time, I would junk mobile phones altogether, hate the damn things.
 
Second problem: when you have a power outage - then you can't use the phones because the base station runs off of power! How stupid is that?

I thought this was a third world problem. What gives?

Our entire barometer for "quality of life" hinges on electricity supply. I wonder what would happen if electromagnetic storms start battering the earth in the future.
 
My friends think I am crazy (arguable...) but we still have a gravity furnace in our 100+ year old house. Efficient? Hardly. But, it does not require ANY electricity to keep our house warm. More than a few times during the time we have lived there, ice storms will take down trees and power lines leaving the neighborhood without power for days. Just break out the Coleman lanterns and candles and we are good to go.

I like "obsolete" technology. I use equipment with vacuum tubes, film cameras that don't rely on batteries to take an image, mechanical clocks, and cars with engines in funny places.
 
The only problem with "vintage" is that some people use that as justification to jack up the price. Vintage car, vintage guitars, vintage wine, whatever.

Prices don't go up because the seller jacks the price up.

Prices go up because there are buyers who are prepared to pay higher prices.

In the case of sought after vintage items (cars, wine, guitars, whatever) it's because the vintage version has some attribute(s) that the newly made version doesn't have.
 
Prices don't go up because the seller jacks the price up.

Prices go up because there are buyers who are prepared to pay higher prices.

In the case of sought after vintage items (cars, wine, guitars, whatever) it's because the vintage version has some attribute(s) that the newly made version doesn't have.

I can't argue with that logic. But a similar logic could be applied to price gouging in a time of calamity.

I'll clarify that I don't mean the prices go up because the seller jacks up the price. Rather, I meant that the seller jacks up the price because it is "vintage". In a similar fashion to the way prices are jacked up for products because they are "boutique".

A thing can only be worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it, right? But some things are only worth so much in absolute terms. There are plenty of examples of sellers quoting ridiculous prices and as many examples of buyers quoting paying ridiculous sums.

If no one is willing to pay a high price for my goods, that does not mean the goods are only worth that much. Look at the dotcom bubble burst. People put all their money into worthless stocks. Were the stocks actually worth what people paid for them? No, even if that was the price the stock was being traded for.
 
I have two turntables at home. Recently purchased a Panasonic boom box 8-track player and a Califone record player (the models we all know from the grade school classroom) on ebay - like this one. A one dollar vinyl LP beats anything digital.
 

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I can't argue with that logic. But a similar logic could be applied to price gouging in a time of calamity.

I'll clarify that I don't mean the prices go up because the seller jacks up the price. Rather, I meant that the seller jacks up the price because it is "vintage". In a similar fashion to the way prices are jacked up for products because they are "boutique".

A thing can only be worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it, right? But some things are only worth so much in absolute terms. There are plenty of examples of sellers quoting ridiculous prices and as many examples of buyers quoting paying ridiculous sums.

If no one is willing to pay a high price for my goods, that does not mean the goods are only worth that much. Look at the dotcom bubble burst. People put all their money into worthless stocks. Were the stocks actually worth what people paid for them? No, even if that was the price the stock was being traded for.

Well this is fun, and touches on all sorts of economic and psychological ideas.

I absolutely agree that the arbiter of what something is worth is what somebody is prepared to pay. And often rationality flies out the window when people are paying silly money, from the South Sea Bubble, to the Dutch Tulip Bubble to the Dotcom Bubble and the more recent GFC, there have been cases of people losing the sight of the underlying economic value of objects being priced. In those cases what happened was that "the market" revalued the object. There isn't really any inherent "right" or "wrong" involved.

Watch in amazement as I bring a drumming-related element to my analysis... Nick Mason, the drummer for Pink Floyd, has always had a fascination with classic sports and racing cars. In the early 90's he was about to interviewed by some financial journalist because the value of his car portfolio had appreciated way faster than financial markets had managed. Sadly, just before he was about to impart his wisdom, specialist car values plummeted and the interview never took place. Subsequently, specialist cars have looked very attractive once more, especially in the light of the GFC. What is certain is that if you are lucky enough to have a special Porsche/Ferrari/Bentley/Whatever in your garage, even if it loses value, it's still a lot more fun than if you owned a dotcom stock that tanked.

If noone is willing to pay a high price for your goods, then it does indeed mean that they are worth that much to somebody other than you. You may also have sound reasons why you are not prepared to sell for the market value, in which case you are saying that the goods that you own are worth more to you than the money which you could exchange them for.
 
If Bo's posting rate drops off, I think I have the explanation...

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What is certain is that if you are lucky enough to have a special Porsche/Ferrari/Bentley/Whatever in your garage, even if it loses value, it's still a lot more fun than if you owned a dotcom stock that tanked.

I agree wholeheartedly. What's all that paper money going to come to anyway? A lot of worthless IOUs in the long run.

If noone is willing to pay a high price for your goods, then it does indeed mean that they are worth that much to somebody other than you. You may also have sound reasons why you are not prepared to sell for the market value, in which case you are saying that the goods that you own are worth more to you than the money which you could exchange them for.

Something might be priceless to me. But if it winds up in someone else's garage sale, it might be sold for a few bucks. Yet I would have paid more. So going into the economic theory behind that situation, the higher price is only realised if the right buyer is found. Now once that price has been paid, there might no longer be a buyer willing to pay the same price. So was the original price tag justified? It's a similar situation in the case of the higher price tag for vintage stuff just because it's "vintage" :p

Like the dial-up modems that are being tossed around on this thread. Are they junk? Are the owners waiting for the price to appreciate? Why on earth have those things not been disposed of yet?

The only reason I can think of is "waiting for a McGyver moment" :p
 
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