Given our collective proclivities for portable audio, I wanted to hear what people thought about the future "collectibility" of the iPod.

While it's only been around for eight years, one can argue that the iPod has had a similar impact on technology and popular culture as the Walkman.

Just throwing it out there.

What do you think?

there are allready collectors for those things...

i got given a CREATIVE Nomad (6GB-harddrive) in shape of
a portable cd-player i was missing the driver-program,
during the search for it i met lank people collecting those things...

anyway - those iPods weren't the first, they just gave many mp3-
players the name - same as Walkman (...wasn't the first portable
stereo-cassette-player either, just the first Walkman),
Xerox (as copy-machine) etc. etc...

interesting how fast those things become rare collectibles,
evolution in music-media is fast...

gosh, i'm gettin'old

I think the main attraction to the Ipod is how it works. The simple looks and good design is nice. What people don't like is that you cannot change the battery (I'm sure some of you guys could change a battery in an Ipod). If you collect some mp3 players, the battery will probally be no good 10 years from now. 20 years from now; forget it. I would like to have a couple of the original design Ipods, but if they arn't powered up it's just a silly little piece of souless junk.

I agree, the long term storage aspect of the iPod doesn't look good. They're not easy to open, let alone replace the battery once it's dead. Things today, I'm sure, are designed to be throne away.

They probably will be collectable even so.

I saw a NIB battery for the D-88 on eBay (BP-2). You can bet your boots it won't work though. What a pity. The batteries that still seem to work after many years are the NiCd's. I've got a WM-F200 with the original battery and it still charges and works. If it didn't work I would still have the option to replace it with something that would, what a pleasure.

Hello there!

I have an ipod touch 2nd gen and pšersonally I think it is as good as it gets. Great video playback, nice layout and interface, amazing capabilities. Does it make it perfect? Nope! the sound quality of this thing is in word - horrible. Really, as an portable music device it fails completely when it comes to music. I agree that for most people it is good, just as it is for me good to have a cheap lcd tv. i don't mid that.

I use ultimate ears triple-fi, sennheiser hd485 for portable use there is no saying only the headphones ae bad. There is no excuse for this and even my old coolsources mp3 player sounded better than that. I was very disappointed but I was foolish to expect something good from an amp and dac that cost a few cents. Every one of my cassette players, except the ex192, obliterates the ipod in every way, not to mention the minidisc players.

I fear that the dark age of audio is ahead of us as more and more people download music online. The music is mixed and mastered with itunes in mind and they add loudness effect to mostly all popular music today. But that is another story...

In any case, I would never consider ipod or any mp3 player collectible. It is too sterile and developed by programmers, not mechanical engineers. Back in their day, the best walkmans were truly state-of-the-art designe utilizing technology that was developed for them, often making advancements that would not have come so early in history.

When mp3 players came, ll the technology was there. There were no revolutionary ideas, no extensive research (except for the format itself).

I have often wondered what would have happened if someone would want to make a portable music player that would be as adbanced as the sony wm-dc2 was back in it's own days. What would that player be like?

It would be a player with extremely high capacity solid state drive, best converters from wolfson or cirrus logic and so on.

But still, if you find some pictorials of mp3 players collection, i'd like to see it because in the end it allc omes down to love Collecting what you love!

i have panasonic sv-mp020. it's 2 gb and half of it's size is taken up by a single AA battery. it gets 50-75 hours depending on the battery. they come in white and blue. it a refurbrished white one and i paid 21.00 delivered. works perfect and gets about 500 songs at 128 kbs. how can you beat that for some quick oldies but goodies ?

That 2001 original iPod still looks good (classic modernism), and that scroll wheel was very influential in UI design.

I think the iPod's battery issue is somewhat analogous to the Walkman's belt issue. Overtime, any mechanical device will depreciate. Lithium batteries should be around for quite a bit more time, so replacements shouldn't be difficult to find.

On balance, there are a lot of parallels between the Walkman and iPod. I'm always fascinated by the countless models of the Walkman available, and that's why Sony was able to sell 385 million. Apple has sold more than 220 million (and counting) of all its various iPod models. So basically, on mass appeal and success alone, it is likely that there will be people collecting iPods (and there already are as noted in the post above). On top of that, you have the impact of iTunes on how we buy and listen to music, and the popular cultural implications (those white earbuds), etc.

iPod and iTunes have certainly moved the game on. There is always a temptation with Digital music to rush through the songs as it is so easy to "press next". Analogue listening for that matter is more relaxing, anyone done some listening to vinyl lately?

There is a way to get the Digital music to sound more Analogue, add a decent 192KHz up-sampling DAC and then send it through a Valve preamp. This can be done for your computer, completely impractical for your MP3 player though. What comes out is pure heaven, I record from this output with my WM-D6C and get excellent results. By the way, I encode the music in Apple Lossless.

Hello guys, I,m back after a loooooong time..... One time I think CD players aren't a collectible items, but after a couple of years, my mind was changed, because I see a lot of CD players in flea markets often offered for very ridiculous prices, one dollar or two, non-working but in very good shape. I think i-Pods will be very interesting gadgets in the future, every time with more and more capacity and smallest, but personally I don't have the idea of collect these little no-mechanical devices, because the MP3 players are only a baterry pack, a tiny printed circuit board and a plastic or aluminum case with a kind of display and some buttons, it's all.... Non-repairable for me, no serviceable parts inside, no lubrication on moving parts, no adjustments, NO HOBBYST SOUL.... definitively, NON-COLLECTABLE.

I would get mp3 players but I never see
any at the thrift stores.
I pick up CD players because used
ones are very cheap.
Only an ipod might be worth anything.

But just about anything becomes
rare and collectable at some point.
Wont be the same as a walkman.

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