Many people don't understand this passion, although curiously they do seem to accept other collecting vices, coins for example. They suggest that the computers must do something for them to be valuable, like coins or stamps ever do anything? Ah! But the value! Coins and stamps are worth money and computers are not! Not true at all. Hit eBay, they have value. Rarer computers are worth quite a lot to collectors, as are "special" computers. They're not just utilitarian, tools of society. They're a history that have helped bring us to where we are. I put to you that computers are like cars. A tool, initially, with a purpose that soon became something more - collectable. How much does a Model T go for these days? How much do you think a PDP 11 will go for in sixty years time?

Possibly even more important is the need to preserve the past. Computers, as tools, are considered expendible... Once you're done with it, you just throw it away. Even computer equipment that cost companies many hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase and install - even millions - after their use, which may last multiple decades, are taken to the scrap metal dealer. Obsolesence. But often these machines are an integral part of the computing revolution's history, and if some aren't saved - all will go into a scrap heap to be never seen again.