back to article Fancy a piece of sordid tech history? Fleabayer is flogging the first production Spectrum Vega+ console for £1,500

In the long history of crowdfunding disasters, few stories spring quite as quickly to mind as Retro Computers Limited's ZX Spectrum Vega+. The premise was simple: bring the joy of 1980s 8-bit gaming to a pocketable form factor. Around 4,500 people collectively stumped up £513,000 to bring it to life. In reality, only a few …

  1. msknight
    Trollface

    A cautionary tale.

    Understatement of the year prize goes to... El Reg!!!

    Cautionary tale my foot. It was a disaster. I think I was one of the lucky ones who got a refund right in the early days before it got messy.

  2. wolfetone Silver badge
    Facepalm

    A Fool Born Every Minute

    This birth will cost you £1,500.

  3. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Optimistic.

    That seller is optimistic if he thinks that anyone will pay £1500 for it. But hey, EBay right?

    I would have thought the best end for it would be to dismantle it piece by piece, give the components to an electrical waster or recycling firm, and then just walk away and get on with your life.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Call it an NFT

    .. and a Bitcoin gazillionaire will snap it up at 1000x the price.

  5. ibmalone
    Holmes

    'The machine, described as "never used"'

    "Gaming performance rating is close to 0,"

    I guess they bought two then?

  6. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

    It probably will be worth something in the future

    I doubt it'll ever reach close to a grand though.

    It's not achieving anything that hasn't been done before, and there are no unique games for it. The Vega+ has already been covered by various retro Youtube channels and websites.

    Not to mention there's at least three other Vega auctions currently at around thirty quid, being supposedly serial 1 won't help things much.

    1. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: It probably will be worth something in the future

      The other Vega auctions around £30 are for original Vega, not plus. And this is a Buy it Now price, not an auction - although the seller is a guitarist and is open to trades.

      It's always worth a try for the seller, might get a bite. There are plenty enough people around with money to burn and Ebay casts a wide net.

      I quite like the original working ZX80 on there for £600.

  7. DrXym

    How many actual Spectrums could you buy for that?

    Probably quite a few in good nick. And use an emulator for the mobile if someone has any reason too.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How many actual Spectrums could you buy for that?

      If it were an order of magnitude cheaper, I'd suggest starting a campaign encouraging readers here to raise money to buy it and donate it to the national museum of computing. But at £1500, I think not.

      1. ItsMeDammit

        Re: How many actual Spectrums could you buy for that?

        I had a date planned with the Museum of Computing in Swindon to pay them a visit and donate my Vega+ to them just after the pandemic intervened and forced them to close. OK, mine doesn't have such a low serial number as that (mine is 207) but I still don't feel the urge to try selling it on eBay. The museum's website says that they are still closed due to the corona-virus so I hope they are doing alright. I must drop them a line sometime.

        https://www.museumofcomputing.org.uk/

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seller based in Nottingham, suspiciously close to the factory where it was made. Maybe an employee grab of the first one off the line or even the OEM trying to get some of their lost money back......... Reminds me a bit of the old days where one could get a original Speccy in Dundee in the pubs around the Timex factory for a rather good price ;-) :-)

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge

      Maybe it's RCL's very own David Levy selling these surplus machines one at a time.

    2. sam 12

      In a similar vein, the pubs of Greenock back in the 1990s were a goldmine for computers and their components

      I was offered a case of 12 Thinkpads for £100 each -all in their original packaging etc, with no damage incurred falling off the back of the lorry after it left the IBM factory there, a few days later I was informed that as they had arabic keyboards, they were being put back into the lorry

  9. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
    Facepalm

    And what if they'll try again with a newer Vestal Virgin version?

    Err... oops.

  10. Blackjack Silver badge

    The only way to get any use of that piece of manure would be to hack it, but at that price you can buy a decent desktop PC and run Mame and emulators on it instead.

  11. Dan 55 Silver badge

    I wonder what grift the owners moved on to

    Presumably nothing to do with computers because too many people there have heard of them.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can't say the same for...

    The people who set it up?

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