Ever thrown something out that was worth a fortune later on? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 07:03:36 am
content: My father bought a Holden Monaro GTS V8 car - one of the very first ever made in 1968. He died a year later and the car was sold for almost what it was bought for... about $2200. A same model car with more miles on it sold for $680,000 fifteen years ago. If we had put it up on blocks and put it into storage, that car would be worth at least $1 million today. But little did we know.I ran a comic club in the early 70's. I had two huge stacks of comics including rare Archie Annuals. I threw them out long ago. I remember some of rare comics I owned in my collection and they would fetch at least $20,000 todayI bought a Les Paul Special edition electric guitar for $25 at a farm clearing sale about 25 years ago for my son. I had not idea about Les Paul, but I recall it was well engineered. My son gave in to a friend as payment for stacking his paddock motor bike. Soon after, that guitar found its way into a dealer's shop with a price of $2,000 on it.Am I the only loser here, oris there anything you too have thrown out that you later found out to be quite valuable?

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 07:17:18 am
content: Not quite the same, but I didn't get into Bitcoin back when it wasn't worth much. Feels just like leaving behind a winning lottery ticket because "there's no way I could win".

author: HackedFridgeMagnet
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 07:54:38 am
content: Not me, and not thrown out.When I was young my family often went to our grandparents for BBQs and dinners etc, ie more than weekly. Apparently ( I was too young to drink ) the wine of choice was Henschke Hill of Grace out of the Barossa valley.From memory plenty was drunk. And from memory the oldies seemed to enjoy it.My granddad had a mates rates deal apparently with an Army Mess Hall and bought it by the case.Anyway I have no idea how much of it was drunk over the years but it was certainly considered the family wine.Looking up the wine guide it goes for tidy sum. Apparently $749 a bottle from one of the cheapest places. One day I would like to save up and taste the family wine.I do love Shiraz so it's in the genes.https://www.danmurphys.com.au/product/DM_89371/henschke-hill-of-grace-shiraz.jsp;jsessionid=2802E6CE900D7571EA57BE2420E33B97.ncdlmorasp1301?bmUID=lLZVmso

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 07:57:27 am
content: What about the guy who had 7500 bitcoins and threw the harddrive in the trash thinking they would never worth much

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 10:14:08 am
content: Complete Apple Lisa with floppies, prototype 5GB hard disk drive and a set of manuals.*edit* What was I thinking, 5GB? 5 Megabytes when a megabyte meant a binary megabyte and not a decimal one.

author: P90
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 11:02:43 am
content: Quote from: CJay on June 12, 2017, 10:14:08 amShould have given it back to Apple to shred...

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 12:29:25 pm
content: At the time the Lisa was remaindered, Apple didn't have the kind of cash flow that they could flip the bird quite so flagrantly. The unsold machines were sold along with spare parts to Sun Remarketing which continued to sell them NOS until the 1990s.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 01:14:00 pm
content: Quote from: P90 on June 12, 2017, 11:02:43 amHah, my mistake, prototype *5GB*, no, it was 5MB with some oddball interface (I *think* SASI)

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 01:20:33 pm
content: Twice during moves, some photographs were misplaced and never seen again. Now, thirty years later I would consider them priceless.When I was young I owned a 1970 Chevelle SS 454 with the relatively rare LS-6 engine. It was sold for $800. These days they sell for over 100x that.

author: digsys
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 01:46:10 pm
content: Late 60s, living between Adelaide and Pt Augusta. Collected Jaguars - had 2x MK5s, 1x XK120 (plus a damaged one), 5x MK7s, 2x MK10s, 2x MK2s,1x V12 EType (original) plus odds and ends. Some I fully restored / converted to al capone style. Sold most for 1-2 bags of dope (full ounces), left the rest at the tip.Most I paid was ~$250 ea ..Had a 1/10 (?1/20 share) with other hippies, in a very large block of land (a few acres) in Adelaide hills (Stirling !!). We turned it into a commune, it even had a pine forestfull of magic mushrooms. No idea what happened to it. You can check current prices :-)

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 02:09:03 pm
content: 1970 Dodge Charger with 383 engine...sold about the time Dukes of Hazzard started, but before it was a cult thing. Today, they go for $20K-300K, depending on how pretty you make them.

author: German_EE
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 04:56:16 pm
content: The only thing I ever threw away was money.Back when it was a current product I purchase an Apple //e complete with a pair of disk drives. I remember writing out a cheque for over a thousand pounds (UK) and taking a deep breath before signing it. That computer lasted about 18 months before the IBM PC started to take over and I bought my first '86 machine.Now do the math. If instead of buying that computer I had invested the money in AAPL stock it would have split a significant number of times. The last time I checked my investment would now have been worth about 24 million GBP.Edit:My 1000 GBP would have purchase about 2500 shares. Since then the stock has split 2:1, 2:1, 2:1 and 7:1 meaning a x 56 multiplication or 140 000 shares held. At today's stock price of $140.63 that means 19.68 million USD or 15.56 million GBP worth of stock, I was ten million out

author: bsudbrink
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 05:16:40 pm
content: I have two stories, one good news, one bad.The bad:I had a mint condition Apple Picasso dealers sign, like this one:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1984-Apple-MACINTOSH-Picasso-Dealer-Light-Sign-Lamp-Display-WORKS-/182523928485?hash=item2a7f461fa5%3Ag%3AYEYAAOSw4A5Yxd7P&nma=true&si=3i69NpAAx9Pw1X4XHf5H8cIYYn4%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557You can see, they still bring around $1K US but back when Jobs first passed, they were making twice that easy. I don't remember throwing it out, but I'll be damned if I can find it.The good:I heard, quite by accident, that Adlib Gold 1000 audio boards were highly sought after. I knew that I had had one (I was going to use it to build a PC for my father "way back when") but I was sure I had thrown it out. A day or two later, I found it, still in the original box. Made a nice chunk of change on that.

author: ed_reardon
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 05:24:26 pm
content: Not myself, but my father managed to accidentally throw away a 1966 completed world cup sticker book he did when he was a wee nipper.Obviously worth a fair chunk of cash in England.I was given an 'as new' (never been removed from the box, still factory packaged) early 1980's vintage Betamax machine with piano buttons and the original hand-written receipt from a famous but no-longer-trading electronics shop in the UK. I sold it about five years ago for £20 thinking it'd never be worth anything.Myself I sold for a pittance a 1994 Ford Escort convertible with 25,000 miles on it about three years ago, it was so unmollested and it was a mk5 Si edition which is so vanishingly rare I've never found another, it came from Ford as a (proper) limited edition and had factory fit Cosworth style wheels and bumpers and was the only non-Cosworth released in Imperial Blue.Not a mark on it, let it go for £200, worth ten times that at least now.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 05:41:49 pm
content: Quote from: Nusa on June 12, 2017, 02:09:03 pmWhen it comes to cars from the 60's and 70's you'll have a hard time keeping the rust out unless you are in a very dry climate. But you'll also need to do maintenance to keep the engine, brakes, etc from deteriorating which will cost a pretty penny. Fortunately I don't recall throwing out anything which got worth a lot. The only thing I regret throwing out is a PCB with a 90 degree fold. It would have been so cool to post a picture of it on this forum.

author: suicidaleggroll
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 05:52:53 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on June 12, 2017, 07:17:18 amIt's not too late to get in, it's still rising VERY quickly. You're not going to turn hundreds into millions like you could have if you got in a decade ago, but you can still get a good ROI. I bought $800 worth of Ethereum a few weeks back, it's currently worth $1850 and still rising. In the last month Bitcoin has gone up 48% and Ethereum has gone up 311%.

author: senso
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 12, 2017, 06:13:22 pm
content: A friend of mine talked with me about mining ethereum 3 months ago, I checked it, and dismissed it, if I had just bought 100€ of ETH 3 months while it was in the 10-20€ each ETH and today it peaked at 380€, I said the same about bitcoin a couple years ago, I'm not a wise person -.-EDIT:Long time ago I had lots of portuguese bikes, all 50cc, almost none had docs, I was(and still am) the mechanic in our group of friends, around 15-20 guys, so we all had 50cc's to go around the woods, it got to the point that we bought bikes for 5€, and we would rip the chromed fenders, cut suspensions and swap parts around, a couple years ago the classic restaured thingy bit hard in those bikes, well, I dumped all my parts long time ago for scrap for some 300-400€, today, just a pair of mudguards/fenders are worth that, sachs engines can go for 200-500€, and I had 15 of them, still have a couple, the engines I sold them long time ago for 50€, or less or for other parts that went into the scrapyard.Still mad with myself that I/we destroyed so much in those years

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 01:02:04 am
content: Quote from: suicidaleggroll on June 12, 2017, 05:52:53 pmWhich is why when I found out my cousin got a place with electricity included in rent, I started the search for a Bitcoin mining appliance and didn't take too long to find that a friend of mine was selling an Avalon 4 for a pretty good deal because she graduated and was going to move. Long story short, she originally got the miner (from one of her friends for an undisclosed amount) because her housemate liked it pretty cold while she preferred it warm. Turns out a Bitcoin miner works nicely as a heater with a reduced or "negative" cost of operation.I also have a few hard drives mining Burstcoin and Storj, a GTX 970 merge mining Curecoin and Foldingcoin (basically earning profit for finding cures for cancer), and of course, some cheap smartphones mining various altcoins.Oh, and if that intern who got me started with mining Perk on cheap smartphones is reading this, I shall thank him for the help in converting ~$40 of cheap smartphones into ~$1000 of Amazon gift cards, even though that coin crashed a year ago.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 11:37:52 am
content: Quote from: German_EE on June 12, 2017, 04:56:16 pmAround the same time, if you have bought Microsoft shares soon after they floated, and sold them in December 1999 and then with the money bought Apple shares, your 1,000 pounds would be worth about 82 MILLION pounds today.I tried to buy $1000 worth of Microsoft stock back in 1988, but it was against my employer IBM's requirements for a loyal employee. I would have been subject to severe disciplinary action for buying stock in a competitor. (Ironically, IBM sold IBM DOS which was actually written by Microsoft, and their OS/2 was in fact written by Microsoft. IBM was even selling PS/2 machines with Windows installed.) When IBM sold us employees off to a two-bit startup in 1997, they cheated me out of $40,000 in retirement funds. Loyalty was one way with IBM. In hindsight, I should have just bought the Microsoft stock, risking termination if they found out.Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing. Any wonder why fortune tellers are not billionaires.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2017, 11:44:51 am
content: Quote from: senso on June 12, 2017, 06:13:22 pmPffff you made profit so be happy. Noone went bankrupt from making profit.Those that wait till they can get the highest price for something often fail to bail out in time.There is a thin line between investing wisely and greed, the latter often leads to losses.

author: Red Squirrel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 02:00:37 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on June 12, 2017, 07:17:18 amI feel the same way, when I heard about BTC and mining I thought it's something "I should maybe get into later". Well, later is too late, now is even way too late. I so regret not getting into it when video cards were viable. I could not justify buying ASICs for it now, because I hate the idea of buying electronics that are only going to serve a purpose for a few months and then be obsolete. That, and often they take so long to ship that they are already obsolete when you get them, so it's too much of a gamble.

author: Hensingler
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 03:41:35 am
content: Quote from: suicidaleggroll on June 12, 2017, 05:52:53 pmSure, it is never too late to get in on a bubble - until it is. Any money anyone gains from crypto currencies will or has already been someone else's loss.

author: Anks
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 01:27:52 pm
content: My brother was once cleaning out the music rehearsal rooms we had about ten years ago when we was getting ready to sell the building on and decided that my two vintage guitar amplifiers that were left under a tarp must of been rubbish and launched them down a refuse chute straight into a skip.By the time I had arrived a old rocker looking guy had spotted them and asked if he was OK to get them out of the skip.Last anyone ever saw my Selmer treble and bass 50 and my Hiwatt custom 100.Sad day

author: suicidaleggroll
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 02:15:49 pm
content: Quote from: Hensingler on June 14, 2017, 03:41:35 amYou could say the same thing about literally any currency or stock.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2017, 10:38:19 pm
content: Quote from: German_EE on June 12, 2017, 04:56:16 pmOh good, one of the first articles I read in the early morning, and you've made me feel nauseous for the rest of the day.I grew up in a family with little awareness of things like the sharemarket, and so in my early 20s it wasn't on my mind either.When I left my first job (technological dinosaurs, a dead end) and joined Computerland (just weeks after they opened as the first 'home computer' store in Australia) Apple didn't exist yet. I bought and built a Vector-1 S-100 kit machine. After the Apple-I board was released I was about to buy one, when I heard of the soon-to-be-released Apple II. For a while I couldn't decide - buy the Apple I immediately, then an Apple II later? Or be frugal and just wait for the Apple II? I wasn't making much money, but _could_ have afforded either option, especially with selling the Vector machine.So, in a decision that makes me sick to think of now, I waited, then sold the Vector and bought an Apple II. Hence do not have an Apple I, which are now worth around US$700,000+ Or the Vector.I wonder if, living in Australia, it would have been possible to buy US shares in a small startup like Apple?Oh well.Also in a move from one flat to another around that time, I threw out a big block of computer core memory. Regrets...

author: suicidaleggroll
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 12:20:23 am
content: You have to be careful looking at the current value of "worthless" items from your past. Even if you had kept it, as soon as the price got relatively high (10x purchase price?) you likely would have sold it. The chances that you would have actually sat on it until it was worth what it is now are slim to none. The only real way you'd still have it at this point is if you had forgotten about it entirely and then just stumbled across it later on.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 03:42:15 am
content: Quote from: suicidaleggroll on June 15, 2017, 12:20:23 amHa ha, you haven't seen my place. No seriously, I'd still have it. Also, I only learned what they have become worth, a couple of years ago.Nice try at making me feel better, thanks. Didn't work.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 05:39:43 am
content: University replaced their Apple 1s with IIs in 1985, i remember seeing a couple lying in the electronics dumpster. On the other hand if all 1s would have survived they would not be rare and expensive as they are now and besides the prestine pcb you need the box and signed letter from Jobs ans a buyer to make it worth those prices. People on this forum probably would have recapped it

author: lordvader88
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2017, 06:19:53 am
content: From my grandparents and parents-Commodore 64-Some 12" black and white vacuum tube TV, pretty small, maybe from the 70s?, it 1/2 worked, dam I wish I had that to play with now-at least 1 old vacuum tube radio-WOW I just remembered I think my grandfather had a tube tester-great big 70s floor model TV, probably solid-state-old stereo receiver that got fried by lightning, wish I had that to try fixing-PS2 that died, wish I had that to try fixing-cordless phones-walkie talkiespretty much all my electronic toys as a kid, many of which I took apart and broke and/or couldn't put back together

author: moby
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2017, 03:43:21 am
content: 4 tubes (approx 80 pcs) SAD1024 chips <sigh>M

author: Bendba
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2017, 03:57:07 am
content: I used to have a C64, a few desktop PC's: an IBM 286, two IBM 386, one 486 but I don't remember which brand of computer, all working and ask original parts with two monitors, keyboards, mouse, trackball,...A teacher at high school gave me the desktop pc's.I also has multiple CRT cameras, one with the original betsmax recorder, cables and tapes, two nice travel CRT tv (about 5 in screens).A massive tuner-amplifier-turntable set (Grundig I think), the tuner dial was about a foot long, I could tune in on Russian and Canadian am frequencies from Belgium.Also had a 8 line paper chart recorder. And countless bins of parts.When I left home to go to uni, 9 years ago, my mother threw the lot away, because, quoting her "You have no future in electronic and that worthless rubbish is outdated"Now that I want to find all that stuff again, it's all out of budget for me.