Seriously, how do I get an Apple IIGS?

I haven't looked lately but I got my IIgs off eBay a few years back for under $250 including the IIgs color monitor, the Apple memory card with a full 1MB on it and keyboard and mouse.  The days of vintage 8 bit computers being free for the hauling is mostly all gone.  The exception being I've heard there are still some giveaways at KansasFest.

OK, I just looked on eBay...  things haven't gone up that much.  There are still a lot of IIgs not much above what I paid.  Considering a can of beans at the grocery store is easily twice these days what it was when I bought my IIgs, it doesn't seem that crazy.

For sure, it's all about perspective. The days of finding them for nothing ended well over a decade ago, maybe even the late 90's.

You can wait until one shows up locally (will take years and years, if ever, now) or pay the current prices.

rittwage wrote:

For sure, it's all about perspective. The days of finding them for nothing ended well over a decade ago, maybe even the late 90's.

You can wait until one shows up locally (will take years and years, if ever, now) or pay the current prices.

 

This is it.  When you consider how cheap they are compared to what they cost in the early 1990s it doesn't seem so bad, especially when you consider what inflation has done since then.  There are a bunch of fairly complete IIgs systems on eBay under $700.  When you consider that would be like getting one back in the day for a couple hundred which would have been sweet.  Sure, in the late 1990s or early 2000s you could get truckloads of school surplused computers for dollars a pound but that was a short lived thing.  Eventually they were bound to go back up.  It is kind of like vintage muscle cars.  During the mid 1970s oil crisis you could buy classics for a couple grand that regularly sell in 6 figures at auction now.  You've either got to buy when the market is right or pay what the market goes to in the future.

try craigslist.org

https://portland.craigslist.org/wsc/sys/d/beaverton-apple-iigs-woz-limited-edition/7669780540.html

or run an emulator.

Here in the UK there are very rare, BUT there are also very few buyers, so the prices are stable. I just nabbed one 'cheap' at £300 with a color screen (extraordinarily rare here) but it was only because it was sold as non-functional (and I made a cheeky offer). Turns out it was easy to fix (pots at the back of the screen!) so i did a bargain, but other than that, and one that is at £1000 for a loooong time you rarely see them come on the market!

As long as the drive has a db19 connector and not the 20pin idc flat ribbon cable, it will work no problem. Otherwise you would need an adapter. First thing when you get it is to inspect and remove/replace the clock battery. They have a tendency to leak and corrode the motherboard after all these years. The power supply will also most likely have a rifa capacitor that should also be removed and replaced.  They have a tendency to explode. It rarely damages anything, but does make a mess inside the psu. Some psus use a non-rifa brand cap for the mains filter. They are not know to blow.