I was carrying a broken car battery to a recycling yard and saw a Commodore 64 there on a pile of other electronics. I took it home and discovered it was still working. It was a moment that has changed my life, says Juraj Mucko, remembering how he became a collector of old computers from the 1970s and 1980s. His friend Tomislav Talan is a passionate collector of more than 1300 calculators, while Ivan Širić has filled up his cabinets with old computer books and journals, reports Večernji List on March 8, 2019.
Together with about a dozen enthusiasts in retro-electronics, they founded the Retro Info society, which services computer, monitors and other equipment, provided they were produced before 1997.
In addition to the legendary Commodore 64, their attics and garages are home to game consoles such as SNES and a 40-year-old Atari 2600, and old TV sets, VCRs and cassette recorders. Do they collect Pentiums, old cell phones and tablets? “No, that is too new for us… Almost everything we have comes from the previous millennium,” says Talan, who has the most extensive collection. The most valuable one belongs to Mucko, the society’s secretary, who has managed to acquire a 1983 Apple Lisa computer which was sold in just 100,000 copies.
“At the time, it had the most advanced graphical interface and was worth about 6,000 dollars, and today you can get a minimum of 1,000 euro for it. I wanted it so much, so I paid big money for it to be shipped from the USA”, says Mucko.
They find most of the electronics stuff on the Hrelić flea market, internet advertising websites and from people who want to empty their garages. They have a collection which occupies more space than they have available and is worth tens of thousands of euros, so they want to open an IT museum in Zagreb. Since 2006, their inventory has been exhibited at fairs several times a year, and their equipment was used in the filming of the popular “Crno-Bijeli Svijet” TV series.
They are convinced that a museum of retro-technology would be a hit. “We did not collect all of this just because we love old stuff and do not want our collection to rust in the dust. We want to share our love with others and teach the children how the technology world looked like when their parents were young,” says the society members.
Talan is a co-founder of the Peek & Poke Museum of information technology in Rijeka, which has been operating for ten years, and much of his collection came from the Zagreb society. But they have enough exhibits to fill another museum in the capital.
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Translated from Večernji List (reported by Hana Ivković).
