I'm not going to criticise System7's farewell thread because I think it includes a valuable piece of advice.
I see collecting as having two negative consequences. It reduces the hobby to acquisitions and maintenance. Which is fine if you like finding rare stuff and maintaining it for posterity. In my case though, it made vintage computing tedious and I eventually dropped the hobby. The second problem is that it excludes the possibility of exploring stuff in depth. Several people on these boards have well over 60 computers in their collections, which means that they could dedicate a different machine to each week of the year and still have machines left over to explore. Realistically speaking, there is very little that you can learn and do within that week so some sort of focus is a necessity.
I see collecting as having two negative consequences. It reduces the hobby to acquisitions and maintenance. Which is fine if you like finding rare stuff and maintaining it for posterity. In my case though, it made vintage computing tedious and I eventually dropped the hobby. The second problem is that it excludes the possibility of exploring stuff in depth. Several people on these boards have well over 60 computers in their collections, which means that they could dedicate a different machine to each week of the year and still have machines left over to explore. Realistically speaking, there is very little that you can learn and do within that week so some sort of focus is a necessity.