To wit, I watched a YT clip of some dudes who were fawning over, of all things, a run-of-the-mill work truck, painted in standard white, built in the mid ’90s (I’m not sure why I watched it, but here we are). Millions of these trucks were manufactured, put on roads, got wrung through the wringer and either survive now as rusting hulks doing their last years of work, are sitting in some back field with trees growing through it, or were long ago crushed at a scrap yard. They were ubiquitous. But why these dudes were salivating (they were all under the age of probably 30) was because the truck only had about 1,500km on it and had sat in a climate-controlled garage ever since it was delivered and driven all of once. It was clean. It still wafted that “new car smell” when the door was opened. That’s because there are few survivors in this condition, despite their tremendous commonality at inception. It’s sought-after by a particular person because of its survivor state. I mean, for a YT clip, my reaction was “Oh, neat,” but there’s nothing desirable about it to me. I wouldn’t want one. It’s probably not very sought-after by most people.
Meanwhile, there’s no shortage of folks who want to covet, say, a sports car — both rare and sought-after — in whatever condition they can find one. Because from the start those examples were known to be rare (often because of how much they cost and/or how they were assembled, such as by hand), many survivors might still exist, but so too those continue to be sought-after by a lot of folks. Like, idk, a Ferrari.
Then there are those which were never rare, but whose survivors are scarce because, like that white work truck, went through the travails of use-life until most were consigned to the scrap yard. And yet, their desire is highly sought-after due to stuff like nostalgia value.
And lastly, there are those common models which weren’t made in high quantity because there was little demand for them in their time. They were rare, and few survive today. They’re only sought-after by a very particular person because there’s something unique which appeals to them. For example, there is undoubtedly a fan out there for the convertible Nissan Murano SUV, made for, I think, one year. Few were made. They were impractical, ill-suited for the job, not very appealing aesthetically, and badly made. Few were sold. But you can be sure there’s a big fan of them somewhere and considers them highly sought-after.
All of this is to say: the Core Solo Mac mini probably exists in the same realm as that Nissan Murano convertible: compromised, awkward, underpowered, and was always rare in sheer numbers made/sold. It wasn’t, even in its time and with what was expected on the horizon, a very desirable model. But to the Core Solo Mac mini fan, original survivors are precious and, for them, quite sought-after.
I can relate here mostly because I love the key lime iBook, though these differ because they were always rare (in sheer numbers, relative to the other colours… especially the 366 key lime, wow) and still sought-after by nostalgic folks (not me), though no one has a real sense of how many actual survivors remain. (I suspect the numbers of survivors for key lime is higher than other colours, because they were always known to be rare from the outset.) Collectors who have them tend to keep quiet about them unless they decide to sell them (or if one turns up in an estate sale). We can only extrapolate who’s moving them around whenever one turns up for sale (infrequently) or when one gets destroyed (polka-dot clown man, ebay’s own mhd59michel — yah that’s right, mhd59michel, I called you out. Fite me.).
Another rarity: the 700MHz iMac SE (summer 2001): few were made (rare), relative to other iMac G3s because they were expensive (relative to the other iMacs), and few folks talk about them now (not widely sought-after). Few examples probably survive because they got used like any other iMac G3 (either until the CRT, PSU, or HDD released their blue smoke). But I treat them as a highly sought-after model for me because of what it has: the fastest PPC750CX/CXe CPU in any Mac. I want that CPU in my hot little hands, because I want to transplant that CPU into my iBook G3/466, to create the fastest key lime clamshell G3 I can. For the iMac G3/700 fan out there (I’m sure there are a few!), what I want to do with one if I find one might be an abhorrent, blasphemous idea, but not for my nefarious needs.
