Prices of Amiga and Atari

[mzry]

Hey guys,

I never owned an Amiga, I was always an Atari kid growing up. But these days when checking ebay, Amiga 1200s seem to go for very reasonable amounts of money and yet its equivalent Falcon from Atari goes for 4-5 times the price. Is this just to do with how many units were sold? Probably a stupid question. Either way sometimes I get tempted to try an a1200 but the thought of learning an entire new world of retro tech scares me, and the price of inevitable upgrades My Atari hobby keeps me poor enough lol

[dhedberg]

Well, if you have the time I would recommend you to get an Amiga. They're fun machines with lots of possibilities... time is the issue for me. I've got 2 Amiga computers but I hardly ever have time to mess with them.

[paulwratt]

And if you want a new "Super AtariST GEM compatible" piece of hardware, buy Amiga and (the new) 68080 hardware and install EmuTOS ROM for Amiga

[alexh]

If you look long enough and ask enough people Atari Falcon's come along at sensible prices. Especially if you are prepared to repair them. I bought mine spares/repairs and was able to repair them cheaply.

Instead of looking on eBay try the Scandinavian equivalents?

Ask users on this forum?

[Greenious]

With a few exceptions I don't think prices are that bad really, and unlike modern computers the second hand value is pretty constant. And with the age of the equipment, as alexh points out, if you are patient and able to make repairs yourself, good deals shows up regularly.

And honestly, on a car you lose like 50% the first 3 years, on a new computer even more.

With a retro computer you get most, if not all, your money back if you have to sell. Depending on what you got, it might be a lot of money, but in a relative sense it is a cheap hobby.

[EmpireAndrew]

A lot more 1200s were made vs Falcons.
The Falcon had a shorter run and was more expensive.

And if someone on fleabay can claim VINTAGE! RARE! L@@k, L@@K! they feel justified in jacking the price up and trying their luck.

With less machines around and less on the market, it only takes 1 or 2 idiots (and there is no shortage of them in the world) to raise the price astronomically which will be seen by the next person selling theirs and pretty soon the asking price is believed to be the real value.

I bought a Falcon just a few months ago and paid 1/3rd of the asking prices on ebay.

Wehn I initially contacted the seller on Craigslist they made some excuse about being out of town for a week but what they did was re-list it under a slightly different location at double the price after seeing the ebay asking prices.
It didn't sell (no surprise there) and they emailed me in reference to the original Craigslist ad and accepted my offer.

When I picked it up they tried to claim I was getting a bargain. They were nice about it, but I think they felt short-changed as they said "they're going for way more than this on ebay" to which I pointed out, no, no they're not. They're asking a lot on ebay, but that means nothing. I could ask $1 million for a Falcon on ebay does't mean it's worth that. I told them them show to use the "sold items" function so they could see what stuff actually sold for, and warned them to then double check what they find there in case it's simply been sold to a friend or secondary shill account and re-listed.
They then understood I wasn't ripping them off.

Granted the machine I bought was very dirty, had a failed internal hdd and a few scratxches along with a dead dallas chip, but a bit of elbow grease, a new hdd and dallas chip is $50-$100 at best so the *extra* $1,500 sellers want for restored machines is just a joke.

There's a guy not far from me who is an ebay regular who buys any old computer stuff at very low prices, even stuff listed as broken, and basically goes in with a low bid and never returns if he gets outbid, then puts it up himself on ebay at 5 times the prices with some story about it having bene in his collection for years and "working when it was put away" type stories. I wouldn't buy a USB cable from him frankly...

So just be patient, and you'll eventually get one for a more reasonable sum.
They will never be as cheap as they were a few years ago, but they're not 4 figure machines either imho.

[Estrayk]

Hey guys,

I never owned an Amiga, I was always an Atari kid growing up. But these days when checking ebay, Amiga 1200s seem to go for very reasonable amounts of money and yet its equivalent Falcon from Atari goes for 4-5 times the price. Is this just to do with how many units were sold? Probably a stupid question. Either way sometimes I get tempted to try an a1200 but the thought of learning an entire new world of retro tech scares me, and the price of inevitable upgrades My Atari hobby keeps me poor enough lol

Its an interesting question but very difficult to answer. Because A1200 were sold by Commodore (until bankruptcy 1992-1994) and by Amiga Technologies. (until 1994-1996) According to my research of long ago, were produced about 200.000 Amiga A1200 in total.

And according to my research of long ago, were produced about 20.000 Atari falcon BUT just 14.000 were sold. (just in 1992-1993 "less of a year of life")
The big question that I spent a lot of time researching, where those 6.000 units were left but I could never find information about that. Sorry.
(Also I haven't information about how many C-LAB MK series were sold, sorry)

200.000 vs 20.000
That's the reason because a Falcon is 700€ and a A1200 is 250€

[mzry]

Ah guys don't get me wrong I already have a Falcon. I was just considering trying Amiga but was confused as their prices were so reasonable in comparison

Gotta say tho, workbench looks like dog. No where near as classy as tos

[EmpireAndrew]

As a teenager I was determined the ST range was better, at least as computers vs games machines.
At my age and with experience of so many different machines now I can be a bit more open.
But I have a couple of Amigas and I have to say, Workbench looks pants (what's with the giant icons and orange and blue color scheme?!) and the machines crash far more often than my Atari machines.
My original analysis stands.
For gaming there's quite a few games that are better on the Amiga, and only a few that are better on an Atari.
As a machine for doing work, the Atari range is better in my experience.

That said, pulling an Amiga apart is a far simpler and thus more pleasurable experience.
I hate opening up my ST...

[mikro]

(what's with the giant icons and orange and blue color scheme?!)

This is one of those "this is not a bug but a feature" situations. The colours had been intentionally chosen for crappy TVs from the 70s/80s with lousy contrast.

[jayminer]

When you say blue and orange color scheme, that means you're talking about Workbench 1.x and not 2.x or newer. The color scheme was changed to a gray and blue one. I personally think Workbench 1.x is quite bad, even if it has it's own charm but 2.x really added a lot of features and 3.1 (which was the last OS from Commodore) added even more neat stuff and is faster than 2.x.

[EmpireAndrew]

Yeah but Amiga owners like to moan about the horrible "green" ST desktop which you can change the color of to whatever you like, so I feel the need to point out it's better than the orange and blue monstrosity from Commodore. As for the TV's, I'm aware of the why's, but the monochrome scheme of ST Windows on old TV's was perfectly readable to me (I only ever had a TV back in the day, no monitor).
My A500 has Workbench 2. something iirc, some aftermarket upgrade. It does look a lot better, but I still think those big rectangular button style icons are ugly.
I'm just not a fan...
I've tried to see what all the fuss is about, but I feel the Amiga is massively over-rated. I don't dislike it, far from it, if I had one back n the day I'd have been thrilled with it, but the whole "the future was here" stuff is way out of all reality. As a home computer which meant a strong games leaning, it was great for sure. As a serious work tool, not so much. Give me a Mac any day, or even an Atari frankly. Yes I know it had the Video Toaster, but the thing cost more than the computer and was a niche product in the grand scheme of things.

For retro computing, which for most people is gaming, I'd recommend they buy an Amiga over an ST. They're cheaper and some games look a bit better and certainly sound better. So there's not much reason not to recommend it.

As for the higher end mods that have been done, more so than the ST, it's a bit academic really as the fastest Amiga is still as slow as molasses vs even a Power PC Mac, much less anything modern so it's a moot point really.

[jayminer]

The default Commodore icons was not exactly an artistic achievement but I personally think Workbench with MagicWB installed looks very nice, even to this day - and it was almost the default look back in the 90:s since everyone I knew back then used it!

And I agree that it's silly too complain about user changable color-schemes, however on the Amiga atleast you always got defaulted back to the default colorscheme when booting from a floppy which didn't have a "system-configuration" file, so even if I used a different color scheme for my Workbench back in the day I still got to see the default blue one (and later the gray one) often enough.

Nowadays I find it kind of charming though, I like the colorscheme of the default TOS desktop aswell. Adds to the charm!