These examples really emphasize how much it depends on the person and the hobbies/interests involved. In recent months, I've become very interested in arcade and pinball history. Those hobbyists are really wrestling with collecting individual cabinets at $200 to $1000 a pop versus just setting up a single MAME cabinet. Many fans are going MAME (storing 3,000 games in a single cabinet), but the hardcore hobbyists are often outright hostile to the idea and denigrate those who post pictures of their custom cabinets to the forums. For myself, the difference between a genuine cabinet and a PC running the same ROM is negligible.

Now, with virtual pinball, people are starting to encounter the same issue. I bought a real pinball machine recently and plan on squeezing another into my home eventually because the virtual machines simply don't feel the same. At the same time, I setup a virtual machine with 50-plus tables on it that I perpetually tinker with and try to improve with custom controls, larger screens, and eventually digital back-glass.

We have to take it on a case-by-case basis. I remember when Marvel started reprinting and digitizing all their old comics in early 2000. Issues in my collection went from $100-$200 to $10-$20 in value very quikly. I hang those old issues on my walls as art, but when I want to read them, I go to my tablet.