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Collectors Snap Up Early MP3 Players
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like vintage MP3 portables are the hot new collectible for old radio connoisseurs.
On the cover of this month's edition of Antique Radio Magazine is Sony's first DAP, the Vaio Music Clip. The cover article is the second part of a series showcasing the first players by Sony, RCA, I2Go, and Intel (remember the Pocket Concert?). Part one, which was published in the December 2004 edition, covers the first flash unit the Eiger Labs MPMan F10 (the Rio PMP300 was second), and the first hard drive player the Personal Jukebox PJB-100. CNET also wrote about these first players last January, offering more details on the MPMan and the PJB-100"
These nostalgia cycles are getting shorter and shorter. How much nostalgia can you really have for an outdated piece of hardware that appeared and disappeared 2 years ago?
This is about digital music file players, not just MP3 players. The article even mentions that the first item, the Sony, would not play MP3's.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
>>> (remember the Pocket Concert?).
Sure. I have one. Anyone wanna buy it?
We'll see when we get the first article about collectors of the antique first iPod appear by the end of the year.
"Yeah, sonny, when I was young, the iPod only held 5,000 songs. Nothing like the 50 gigasong models we have now, young whippersnapper!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I laughed when I saw the Intel Pocket Concert was on that list - I still use mine.
Outdated? Maybe, but still jsut as useful as ever.
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
"Aah, I remember my first Mac Mini. It was beautiful! All glowy and colorful and nice for the emailing and typing and things. Good times, good times."
"When did you get your Mini, Grandpa?"
"Should be here next Tuesday..."
Who has ever heard of an original SONY Walkman going for collectors prices?
There are some on ebay, for the princely sum of $11, meaning they are just hovering above junk now.
The same thing will probably happen to these 1st gen digital players.
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N Sync and Faith Hill on a five year old MP3 player....they deserve each other.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
Remember this?
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
"Hell! I remember when I listened to Mp3's in 64kb!! They don't encode things like they used to."
*ahem* that one is broken, and it says so in the item description.
i bid on a broken ipod the other day (description clearly stated the unit did not work) in hopes of getting the accessories (esp the charger) for a decent price. i maxed out at 50$, bidding finally ended at 275$.
i wonder how much a _working_ walkman would go for.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Did anyone see the second episode of the new Dr Who series? It was called The End of The World, and the Dr. and his assistant went to the future. WHile there, some future people bring out a jukebox and say "An ancient source of historic music...an IPod!" (or something like that). Kinda funny.
"It is not necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paper work, and the other is nostalgia."
--Frank Zappa
I feel obliged to take this space before a reply with a "freepsps.com" referral code comes and grabs it ;)
Business Voyeur
I think it still works and it's a cool piece of nostalgia. But what struck me was - it has a digital screen across the top and a large, circular interface across the bottom. So did the iPod draw inspiration from this? Or did Rio just nearly get it right the first time?
Schnapple
But an iPod shuffle is a sexy white *and* plays MP3s, what more could you require?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
It's pointless to reminisce about the good old days of MP3 players, when you consider that old player all held less and had lower quality audio than modern players.
Now, old digital cameras, there's something to be nostalgic about! True, they also hold less and take worse pictures, but taking worse pictures is a feature as well as a bug, if you're into artsy-fartsy stuff. Recently, you hear a lot about people using "Lomo" cameras (old Russian camera that produce awesome looking but unrealistic photos) and abusing Polaroids. I myself have gotten some fun out of the Game Boy Camera. What I really wish I still had though is my first digital camera. Now that thing took some awesomely ugly pictures! I really enjoyed how it left funky streaks on all the 640x480 pictures. Plus the color was all clumped up and everything had compression artifacts. It's a shame that it just broke one day.
Anyhow, old MP3 player -> lame.
Old cameras -> awesome.
That's my two cents.
The interesting thing is that my first Walkman, a Sony F5, was build like a bloody tank. That is to say, it lasted me a good 10 years before it finally broke down. No [tape-playing] walkman I've owned since has held up as well. It seems that, after a certain point of maturity, many industries settles on a disposable approach to product design and construction.
(Also, I'd like you damn kids to get off my lawn.)
I find your ideas intriguing and wish to buy your comment.
Registering accounts later than some other chrisb since 1997
Can you run Linux on it?
Is the source available? Is the code under the GPL? (see question above)
Is the firmware open?
Potential Follow-on questions include:
Does it play FLAC?
Does it use DRM? (Note: this is a *negative* question)
Did MS have *anything* to do with its creation? (Negative question, see above)
According to http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=15053&item=5765975874&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW (another broken one), $350, if it's in new condition with accessories.
That's a lot.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
I might have missed it skimming through the comments, but it seems odd that no-one's come to the rather obvious conclusion that this isn't about nostalgia- at least, not for most of the people buying them at present.
Put simply, it's about investment. These people have seen the boom in interest in "retro" computing and electronics, reckon that they'll be worth something in the future, so they're snapping them up now, and driving the prices up.
Of course, whether the resultant increase in prices, and people keeping/selling their old players instead of binning them means it is now worth it is debatable. Personally, I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed.
At one stage a few years ago (96-97) I was convinced that 8-bit computers would grow in value as a result of a "retro" nostalgia boom. Well, that was half true, but the simple fact is that, except for the rarer machines (e.g. Sinclair ZX80 in good condition can easily fetch UKP 200.00), most old computers were so widely-produced that they'll never be worth that much. I've seen Sinclair ZX Spectrums in a games-shop window for UKP 100.00, but that's with high-street chain retail mark-up (for lazy nostalgics who can't be arsed getting them on eBay for 30.00). Unless you have one of the rarer models (e.g. short-lived Timex-Sinclair bastardised Spectrum), you're not going to make tons of money without some effort. Ditto the C64.
Back to the subject; is anyone *seriously* getting nostalgic for those silly little 32MB devices that were the first widely-available MP3 players 5 or 6 years back?
Even then, I thought they were rubbish. You'd have been lucky if you could get a whole album at 128Mbps on them, which you had to transfer manually via the (typically?) parallel connection. I was still listening to cassettes back then, and all things considered, they (or portable CD players) were a better bet at the time. The MP3 players were for geeks and "boys toys" gadget freaks.
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I bought my first MP3 player almost 10 years ago, and still have it. What it lacks in features it makes up in durability and battery life (20+ hours on a pair of cheap nimh AAs, 40 on lithiums).
Be careful. iPod investors (anybody who has sunk all that money into one with it's fixed) get pretty upset when you tell them you can get 7 gigs (ten CDR disks) of removable MP3 storage on YOUR player for a couple bucks. They start rambling about size, etc.
It's a tradeoff, for certain, but there's no clear 'advantage' to flash, hard drive, or CD-based players that means the other formats aren't good too. But don't tell that to people who've bought into a fashion trend.
I was thinking of making certain alleys, wooded areas, and houses into Foley Prank zones.
Say someone is walking along at night thru a certain area and a shriek or a moan comes from a dark corner. Even with a flashlight nothing is visible. Simple really, just use a battery, a old mp3 player, and a speaker. Put on a bunch of dead air tracks and a single creepy sound, set to random and once you've hidden it your done.
I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids!
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Check the prices on Ebay. Collectors may be snapping them up, but prices aren't that high. Basically they are talking about $20 in your pocket for that old player. It's only going to make a scratch in the price of a new iPod, so you'd better hawk a lot more stuff if you want a shiny new player.
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