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The audio hobby is a terrible financial decision.

mpw said:
if he has many manual e36 M3's and got them at a good price and worked on them himself then making a profit on them might be possible.
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Are you his neighbor? LOL, that is it. Every single one of his cars are manual, and he works on it himself, that is part of the hobby.
 
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CDMC said:
Hobbies are not investments, period. They can be expensive or cheap. Whether cars, bikes, guns or audio, buy the latest and greatest and “upgrade” regularly and it gets expensive. Buy new and keep a long time, or buy used and sell to fund replacement purchases, and the cost goes down considerably. But make no mistake, unless you got lucky and bought something like a Dino 206 for $10,000 in the 80s, you aren’t going to make money from it.
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Yes, agreed. Please see post #4.
 
Mart68 said:
I scrapped one of these back in 1994. Who knew?

www.carandclassic.com

1981 Ford Fiesta White Manual, 4 speed Right Hand Drive i...

1981 Ford Fiesta White Manual, 4 speed Right Hand Drive in United Kingdom - For Sale | Car & Classic, £34,995 FOR SALE JF Classic Cars pr...
www.carandclassic.com www.carandclassic.com

20 years ago suggested to a pal we buy some 1980s Fords and store then in his big empty garage, he declined. We'd have made ten times our money back.
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ours (well... my wife-to-be's) was a '77 Amurrican (i.e., imported, LHD) version. ;)
Fun to drive, but it sure liked to break/break down in interesting and colorful ways. :rolleyes:



I should've hung on to my 1974 Ford Bronco. :facepalm:



On topic: classic hardware from Altec and JBL, Mac, and marantz has generally held its value pretty well.

Generally. ;)
 
Had a lot of amplifiers, FM tuners during my long life. Also basically only one turntable. Outcome is that old semiconductor amps if not the makes like McIntosh, Mark Levinson and such had almost no value as one can see in Ebay. Even worse with the tuners. Luckily my Thorens TD124 with the SME tonearm kept the value and is today an icon. But the value did not go up like a rocket. Also most loudspeakers are not much worth after decades. So to me investment in audio equipment will not make you rich. Much better was investment in old Mercedes and Porsche sport cars which I not did. Here at least in Europe the prices climbed really high.
 
Paul7777x said:
If it was at all about anything financial you could always buy this instead.


But it’s not. For anyone here.
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I personally think for me (and I assume for many here as well), the financial loss is accepted but I think it's more about: damn, what a money pit, why can't it be like collecting art.

Of course, this is nothing more than just shooting the breeze, that is why this thread is in the member area.
 
Paul7777x said:
If it was at all about anything financial you could always buy this instead.


But it’s not. For anyone here.
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Friendly note to all posters: on those long gnarly links that one is coping and pasting, the first ? and everything afterward is just tracking you. So delete that ?+ stuff and double check with a reload and you will see that it is true, very rarely it is not.
 
Timcognito said:
Friendly note to all posters: on those long gnarly links that one is coping and pasting, the first ? and everything afterward is just tracking you. So delete that ?+ stuff and double check with a reload and you will see that it is true, very rarely it is not.
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Cheers sir :D

I did not know that.

Bastards!

Changed the post.
 
Life is short. Enjoy it while you can, folks!
 
I have other hobbies, but if someone asked me where I got as much for the money as with music/audio - there is nothing close.

Actually some Technics 12xx, a vintage Kenwood direct drive, a phono preamp, some Revox machines and just recently some 90s tapedecks turned out to be good investments.

Good equipment to just enjoy music is so cheap today. Just speakers do what they always do.
 
Neddy said:
The first ('81?), a fancy Ghia model I bought new, but turned to rust in my driveway and had to hire a tractor to haul it out.
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Pardon my using your photo as a photo-retouching exercise (I do tend to geek out over such things). No AI, aside from removal of a handful of small spots which appeared to be damage to the film.
 

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mhardy6647 said:
Here's my audio 401(k) account...


Quite literally outstanding in the field in this photograph.
:cool:
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One step below the Fisher rack systems made to look like separates.
 
Hobbies offer a return on "investment", it's just not usually monetary.

Collectable items sometimes seem like a way to combine aspects of a hobby with investment potential, but I think the market for such things can be fickle, and they've not very liquid as a whole.

As for building a legacy for one's heirs, I wonder how many of those heirs actually want our old junk?
 
PristineSound said:
Well couple of things. First, if I was looking to invest in something, I wouldn't be the audio hobby at all. Second, there are very few hobbies that can give you a return like the S&P500.

So almost every hobby is a money pit, with some holding up with inflation and few better than inflation but worse than the market.

With that being said, it wouldn't make logical sense for anyone to be in a hobby for investment as primary goal.
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I've not read intervening posts, but if 'audio' was regarded more as a tool to reproduce music and speech to a highest possible standard for the budget allocated, rather than a boys-own gear collection hobby with bragging rights, things may be deemed a bit different I suggest .

I say the above totally ignoring my stash of (mostly) cr@p. i do have a nice Quad 33/303/FM3 which is something of investment, having doubled in purchase value since 2010 when I bought them. Some of the low hours pickup cartridges I have seem to fetch good money, so quids-in there...
 
JeffS7444 said:
As for building a legacy for one's heirs, I wonder how many of those heirs actually want our old junk?
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A chosen few, touched by grace and who saw the light.
Though I don't really get how the most indoorsy generation of all times doesn't get the bug.
 
DSJR said:
I've not read intervening posts, but if 'audio' was regarded more as a tool to reproduce music and speech to a highest possible standard for the budget allocated, rather than a boys-own gear collection hobby with bragging rights, things may be deemed a bit different I suggest :)
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How do you define boys-own gear collection hobby with bragging rights? If amount spent, the D&D is quite expensive.
 
PristineSound said:
How do you define boys-own gear collection hobby with bragging rights? If amount spent, the D&D is quite expensive.
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D&D 8C? I'd put them in the former category of tools to reproduce music as properly as possible... Surely a mere 'hobbyist' wouldn't buy something like these?

Apologies folks. @Mart68 will understand I'm sure about this, as I've often railed in the past about the serial box swappers that have frequented UK audio forums and even when working within the industry, I could never understand how otherwise capable gear wouldn't last more than a few months with some - and these people lost thousands chopping and changing, but it didn't seem to matter to them.
 
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