QL items rarity scale project?
Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2020 2:41 pm
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!
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!