Come on we have all been there; we have all purchased that must-have tech item only for it to be obsolete within a few months and now it’s the butt of every punch-line!

Go through them: there were two camps when it came to video players, those who plumped for a cool VHS or those who went for the clunky Beta Max player. The unfashionable lot with their Amstrad’s while the cats with their Commodore 64’s were sitting in clover. There were those who were cool with their MiniDisc Player only to be rendered decidedly uncool with the advent of the MP3 player. 

Hang on, though! You know the maxim that fashions have a habit of coming round; what was once cast asunder has its turn in the sun. Well if you threw your uncool tech in the loft to spare your embarrassment, you may have the last laugh!

According to www.totalmoney.com, the value is because these items were not popular, and therefore, not many of them were made, and the value lies in their rarity.  So it is high time for a trip to the loft and garage or storage box and unearth some money! 

Joe Gardiner from TotalMoney.com had this to say.  

“Cutting-edge tech that stuttered and failed to deliver on its promise is now proving to be a nice little earner for those early adopters who stuck to their guns and decided to keep hold of these goods. So have a rummage around in your loft this weekend – you never know what you might find, or what it could make you – and then maybe you can invest the money in some more tech!”

These prices should whet your appetite. A Beta Max player would have set you back £1,600 when it was launched in 1975, and which only sold 2 million units (despite offering better quality images) compared to its rival VHS, which sold over 200 million, could now fetch you a reasonably decent £880. And that 32-bit Sega Saturn, which sold for £399 when it came out in 1995, but was outsold by Sony’s PlayStation One (their sales figures were 102 million compared to the Sega’s 9 million), is now worth almost double: £722. Best of all, a family who bought an Amstrad CPC 464 in 1984 for £199, is now looking at a tidy little windfall of around £3,117!

And were you one of the fewer than one million people who had a Neo Geo, from Japan? This 24-bit games console was renowned for being one of the most expensive ever made, and retailed for a fairly pricey £471, but was rapidly out-shadowed by the Mega Drive (which sold over 31 million) and the SNES (which sold over 49 million). However, now it could fetch you a respectable £704, so who’s sniggering now?

We are off to have a root around and see if we can unearth a Sega Saturn or a Game Gear!

Until next time…