It has always been like the classic car market for nerds. One guy paid me $500 to create a re-creation of the the VAXStation he used in grad school to do his thesis work on. I explained he could do everything he wanted to do with simh on a PC but it was the "feel" and the "sound" he really wanted to create. I was happy I could help him out.

It reinforced though that the money was being spent to recapture a time in their lives they felt things that they wanted to feel again. Classic nostalgia.