ALKHOBAR, 3 January 2006 — For the past year, everybody in the Kingdom has been paying a lot of attention to the rising and falling of the Saudi stock market. Unfortunately, this investment game is one in which expatriates have not been allowed to participate. But what if I told you that there was a new game in town, a sort of pot of gold scavenger hunt, and everybody was welcome to play? Would you be interested?
Last week Arab News received an e-mail from Lee Gallagher, a first sergeant in the US Army stationed in South Korea. Gallagher is a collector of Intel central processing units (CPUs). The CPU is the brains of the computer. On large machines, CPUs require one or more printed circuit boards. On personal computers and small workstations, the CPU is housed in a single chip called a microprocessor. In the last four years Gallagher has amassed one of the largest Intel CPU collections through trades and purchases worldwide — and he’s on the lookout for more.
“My collection is valued at over $500,000, but I have invested only $150,000 in assembling it,” Gallagher said. “I have several CPUs that are the only ones known in the world. I started collecting CPUs that I pulled out of old computers when I owned a little computer shop in Missouri, US. My business partner thought I was nuts and said that they were only worth the amount of gold you could get out of them, which was about $2. Then I showed him where a CPU, an Intel C4004, went for over $200 on Ebay and although he was amazed, he still didn’t get it.”
However, Gallagher really got bit by the collecting bug and he now owns 27 C4004s. He has seen these CPUs sell for over $1,000.
“Their value has more than doubled in four years and there are versions of the chip that will someday be priceless due to the very few that are out there,” Gallagher remarked.
According to Gallagher, Intel didn’t realize the potential for its chips when the company first began making CPUs. This means that Intel didn’t keep stocks of every chip made. Where are those chips now? All over the world, hidden in old computers and packed into dusty boxes of obsolete spare parts.
Since the CPU is a modern invention, it’s only in about the last decade that serious interest has been shown in collecting the older processors. There is already considerable evidence to support the potential and growing worth of early CPUs. The prices for collectible stamps, coins and baseball cards has in some cases passed millions of dollars for a single item and there is no reason to think that certain CPUs won’t someday be equally valuable.
“The one thing that was holding back interest in the hobby of collecting CPUs was that there was no collector’s guide to microchips,” said Gallagher. “In fact the Intel Corporation did a horrible job of keeping track of what they produced in the early 1970s and you can’t even find documentation on most of their computer chips even by contacting their museum.”
But that obstacle has now been overcome.
“About six years ago a computer programmer, George M. Phillips, Jr., who found the chip collecting hobby interesting, ran into this problem of not having any documentation to base his collection on,” explained Gallagher. “He decided to write an Intel Collector’s Guide. Five years later, after gathering up every Intel piece of literature he could find, he published this guide and what a resource it is. It is over 1,300 pages of information including specs, photos and the values of all the chips made in the 1970s. ‘The Collector’s Guide to Vintage Intel Microchips, 2nd Edition, 2006’ has just been released. For details see www.vintagemicrochips.com/. With the publication of the guide, the hobby of collecting CPUs has been given a huge boost.”
After the release of the Guide to Vintage Intel Microchips last year, increased interest began to be seen at online auction sites for older microchips. Gallagher stated that it’s not just the CPUs themselves that people collect. Some individuals are collecting decades old software, books and user guides. The bottom line is that if it’s related to computers and was produced in the 1970s, the item will probably fetch a good price.
“Ebay is the No. 1 source for most collectors but amazingly enough some of my rarest chips came from scrap bins. They were only days away from being melted down for their gold,” said Gallagher. “There are also chip brokers online such as usbid.com that are just now becoming aware of what they have and who are already starting to increase their prices.”
Gallagher pointed out that as interest in vintage microchips has grown, dozens of websites focusing on the hobby have been set up. Most of the larger collectors have sites and a few of them have forums. As of yet there are no specialized conferences devoted to computer hardware of historical interest, although in Germany some computer shows have seminars on the topics.
“My website, http://www.theintelcollection.com/, is set up to show off my collection and to encourage trading with other collectors. Most websites on this topic are extremely informative and can answer most any CPU question you could possibly have,” advised Gallagher. “One of my favorite sites/forums is http://www.cpu-world.com/index.html. The owner of this site collects every chip manufacturer known. I have met collectors on this forum who have been collecting for almost three decades!”
Still skeptical about the potential for CPU collecting? Think again. Even though Intel produced tens of thousands of early chips, most of them don’t exist anymore. Early chips were melted down to recover the gold in their component parts. The remaining ones are all dated and durable, both important aspects of any collectible.
While serious collectors in the West have been quietly gathering up vintage CPUs over the past few years, those collectors haven’t had access to the Middle East’s companies and computer dealers. Many of the machines imported into Saudi Arabia in the 1980s were stuffed into basement and roof storage areas as they were replaced by newer models in the 1990s. Even when they first appeared in the Kingdom, those early computers were often older models, no longer popular in Europe and the US. They are prime sources for 1970s microchips. And every city in Saudi Arabia has scrap and auction yards, which became dumping grounds for old computers.
“For those individuals ready to set off on a treasure hunt for rare and valuable microprocessors here’s a quick list,” said Gallagher. “C4004, C4040, 8080, C8080, MC8080, G8008, X8008, C8085 and C8086, all these go for at least $100 and some of them will go for over $1,000. Generally speaking anything from Intel with a date code from the 1970s is worth more than its gold value. Gold value for most ceramic computer chips is around $2 to $4.”
If you do find one of these little computing treasures, Gallagher would love to hear from you. Contact him through [email protected].
