QL items rarity scale project?

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Chr$
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QL items rarity scale project?

Post by Chr$ »

Inspired a little by vanpeebles comments the other week on FTC where he said he'd never seen that game package for sale in 10 years...

My day job, so to speak, involves collectables and people that collect stuff generally like to have a rough idea about how scarce (or not) certain things are. For some items (like coins and stamps for example) the number made was accurately recorded at the time and there are definitive figures to go on*. Certain QL items are generally always available to find and buy instantly or within a few days or a week max if you know where to look (e.g. the packs of Psion software are very easy to find). Others hardly ever seem to appear and years of looking can prove fruitless*.

I think it would be interesting to create some kind of rarity scale for original QL software and hardware, based partly on numbers QL traders sold when they were new and also the amount of times said item has appeared for sale over x years on eBay/SMR and other places where old hard/software can be found. This forum, with all the very experienced QLers and QL traders/ex traders is probably the ideal place for something along those lines.

I bet we could create a list of say 100 QL related items from various companies and give them a rarity scale of 1 (for the Psion software pack) to 10 (for Fleet Tactical Command). Of those 100 representative items perhaps 70 could be games/software and 30 could be hardware as there was clearly more software than hardware.

I don't mind doing my best to correlate the data and work out the averages of each item from the opinions of members here. It's just a bit of fun, nothing to take too seriously.

What say thee? First we'd need to knock up a list of 100 items (or more)..... here are a few random things off the top of my head:

Hardware

Original UK QL with PSU
Original other country QL's - German, French, Italian, Spanish etc etc some of which are practically impossible to find.
Original UK QL boxed complete
QL PSU (they can be troublesome to find on their own!)
Trump Card
Gold Card
Super Gold Card
Qimi Mouse attachment
(Various HDD attachments)
(Various RAM packs - quite a few of those)
(Various ROM dongles)
(Various floppy disk attachments)
(Various Modems - they seem to come up quite a lot)
Schoen Keyboard (and others)
Newer non BBQL bits e.g....
Q40
Q60
Aurora
QXL Card
QXLII Card
THOR Systems

Software (even more to chose from)

The Psion 4
Scrabble
Chess (couple of versions)
QL Utilities cart
QL Games cart
Fleet Tactical Command
Cartridge Doctor
West
Lost Kingdom of Skul (plus some of the 30+ other Talent titles)
Citadel
Zapper with Eagle
Spook
BJ Returns
BJ in 3D land
Karate (plus a lot of other potential Eidersoft titles)
Digital C
Lightning
Computer One Pascal
QPAC
QPAC II
Supercharge
Taskmaster
Text87
Cavern
Hyperdrive
Matchpoint
M-Metropolis (and the others)
QBert
Monopoly

And there are a lot more for both categories, those are just ones that I've randomly selected because I am either familiar with them of have seen them on the QL wiki etc.


*I know that the number made does not always reflect the true number still in existence and that increased rarity does not always mean increased value, after all QL is a niche and something I tell people a lot in my day job is that anything is only worth whatever the potential new owner is willing to pay for it!


https://QXL.WIN
Collector of QL related computers, accessories and QL games/software.
Ask me about felt pads - I can cut them to size and they have proved excellent for mdv data recovery.
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Pr0f
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Re: QL items rarity scale project?

Post by Pr0f »

you may want to add keyboard interfaces to the list, unless they come under your keyboards section?


Also - backplanes might be added?


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NormanDunbar
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Re: QL items rarity scale project?

Post by NormanDunbar »

This might be better on the QL Wiki (https://qlwiki.qlforum.co.uk/doku.php) as the page can be updated "in-situ" rather than a potentially long thread?

Just a thought.


Cheers,
Norm.


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Chr$
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Re: QL items rarity scale project?

Post by Chr$ »

Pr0f wrote:you may want to add keyboard interfaces to the list, unless they come under your keyboards section?

Also - backplanes might be added?
Yes, good ideas.
NormanDunbar wrote:This might be better on the QL Wiki (https://qlwiki.qlforum.co.uk/doku.php) as the page can be updated "in-situ" rather than a potentially long thread?

Just a thought.
Yes, that's a good idea too, that way the info could appear on the appropriate pages for the items. It could all get a bit too much as a forum thread.


https://QXL.WIN
Collector of QL related computers, accessories and QL games/software.
Ask me about felt pads - I can cut them to size and they have proved excellent for mdv data recovery.
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tofro
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Re: QL items rarity scale project?

Post by tofro »

There was stuff that was sort of popular, but really expensive when it was available - FTC is one example, everyone was enthusiastic about it, reviews were good, but, due to it being a bit on the expensive side and coming pretty late to the QL scene, I don't think many were sold.

Then there was stuff that was popular and relatively wide-spread, but hidden in some PCs it just got thrown away together with "yet another old PC" with no one realizing that something special stuck in the case - Aurora and QXL boards, also backplanes and hard disk and keyboard interfaces are rare today for this reason.
I also don't want to know how many Q40/Q60s went to the dump for the same reason as "looking too similar to a PC". Also, probably most Atari ST emulators went te same way for looking like "yet another ST". I do, from time to time, severely regret having sold my Mega ST4 and SQ44 with the Norwegian Emulator as "ST" decades ago.

Tobias


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Chr$
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Re: QL items rarity scale project?

Post by Chr$ »

tofro wrote:There was stuff that was sort of popular, but really expensive when it was available - FTC is one example, everyone was enthusiastic about it, reviews were good, but, due to it being a bit on the expensive side and coming pretty late to the QL scene, I don't think many were sold.

Tobias
Yes, funny how some things (not just QL related) seem to have been quite common once and then 30 years later or less, they seem impossibly hard to find. Some factors for this phenomenon may be that a) most people that have one simply want to keep it, thus few are offered for sale, b) people that have one have it stored away somewhere and have forgotten about it or c) they've been destroyed or disposed of.

The fact that the original QL was so short lived and quickly rendered obsolete (to many) may well have led to people eventually disposing of many items that were taking up space and were at the time of low value, but I very much hope it's mainly a and b!


https://QXL.WIN
Collector of QL related computers, accessories and QL games/software.
Ask me about felt pads - I can cut them to size and they have proved excellent for mdv data recovery.
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