RetroComputing has become way more popular than I think anyone ever anticipated it to. It started in the early 1990's with nostalgic 20+ people looking to cheaply relive their childhoods on the kind of budget their parents would never have given them, or even just get their hands on a computer for school without needing to take out a loan, pester their parents, or change majors. Machines over 10 years old were considered obsolete and useless and garnered nicknames like "footrest" or "Dinosaur" or "doorstop", or the more insulting "boat anchor". But over the course of the 2000's-2020's, it has grown in popularity more and more as newer generations where more people were participating or wanted to than ever before. IT went from a hobby for the kind of people who collect old TV's, Radios, and Air Conditioners, to a hobby for anyone wanting to run computer software the way it was intended to run on an IBM Compatible PC. Many YouTuber's are famous for it now: LGR (Lazy Game Reviews), 8-bit Guy, Philscomputerlab, NostalgiaNerd, Adrian's Digital Basement, Beige-O-Vision, VWestLife, BBISOPPCM'S WORLD, and many others, whereas, once upon a time, I was the lone weirdo making videos of his 286 surfing the mid 2000's internet.

As popularity increases, the community of users grows, and more clickbait and other articles leading you to think your "Riverhead 386DX-20" from 1988 that you found in the closet is worth enough to get you a brand new Tesla Model S, and more people are laughing at you on online auction and sales sites because you're really not that unique, and you're in a now quite a strange place when it comes to investment, return on investment, and what things actually cost, and are actually worth.

Basically, what I've seen a lot of, is a lot of price gouging, a lot of people who don't know what they have, and a lot of people whining because other people who drank the vintage computer investment Kool Aid are willing to pay stupid amounts of money for machines worth less than half as much, justifying the cost with opportunists, and artifically drving the prices up. Basically put, $349.99 for a generic PC Clone that has no real historical or technological significance, or actual rarity, is the problem when someone is WILLING To pay that much money for one.