exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

I've got a few early Macs and pricing is very selective. You would be very lucky now to get a working complete 800 for £84. Certain models are very cheap, but the better models in the same series are pricey. So with the 68040 models you can go from a bargain Performa LC640 to a Quadra 650 (which I have). Then it starts getting expensive with the Quadra 700 (as in Jurassic Park), the Quadra 800, and the two AV models, the 660AV and the 800AV. Same with the Macintosh II models, the G3, or the G4, or the classic Macintosh's. The base models are dirt cheap, £50 or so, but the higher end ones are expensive, often ridiculously so.
It is rather illogical as a base model of one type, e.g. a Mac Mini G3 (which I bought for £50) will outperform a top spec in another category. Very often the real life performance differences are pretty insignificant. It is about rarity and bragging rights I suppose.
Given that you can run all of the software on PC emulators more conveniently I don't suppose these machines do much more than being sat on a shelf.
Like all vintage PC's the cheapest stuff comes with dodgy provenance, possibly failed components, leaking batteries that have destroyed the mainboard and so on. The plastics on some of the Macs literally shatters when touched - my Quadra arrived in pieces and had to be reassembled by gluing the bits back together again. Again some macs are less prone to this than others.
I did a msata upgrade to my Mac Mini G3 too as well as bumping up the RAM. I got it because it will run MacOS 9.2 - linking to the pre-OSX 68K machines I also have.

@machapman 100% agree on the brittle plastics.

I had to buy a less expensive 610 Quadra to use as a casing parts donor for my ruined 660AV.

Even the chassis was pretty badly rusted.

Hang on a minute, werent these Apple machines 2-3x the price of the equivalent Commodore/Ataris?

Well, we now know the extra money didnt pay for better cases, eh? :lol:

machapman wrote: 04 Feb 2025 15:57 You would be very lucky now to get a working complete 800 for £84.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/316046191506
This is not an isolated example there are others. I am aware that there are listings on eBay for 2x-4x this price but after watching for some time I came to the conclusion that is probably all they are, listings.

I sold my PowerMacs of this era, working (e.g. boot to desktop) for ~£100-200 each. (6100, 7200, 8600 lots of others) which IMO was the UK going rate at the time.

Going back on Topic the Mac Mini G4 is cool. When I got mine it was a re-introduction to MacOS (having never experienced MacOS X before). When I was playing with it, it did feel a little slow (it would have been approx 2010 and would have had 5400 RPM 2.5" HDD). I don't know if they were ever "fast" for a Mac of the era? I got an intel Mac Mini at the same time (T7200 Core2Duo) and that felt very nippy.