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+"They have turned a thousand useless luxuries into necessities!" -- Mark Twain
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+Right now there's a bidding war on ebay for an old Oldsmobile 8 track I pulled out of the bus. It's a stock item for a cutlass supreme from the late 1960s through early 1970s. I have no idea how it came to be in 1969 Dodge Travco. What I do have an idea about is why I just sold it, as-is, could-be-working, could not be working, for $86. 
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+Seriously, I sold an antiquated music player that takes a format no one has manufactured in over four decades for $86. 
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+Just for context, the stereo I'm putting in the bus plays everything from MP3 to whatever you want to plugin in the line-in and cost me $45.
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+Why? 
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+Because the $45 stereo I bought is complete piece of crap, made of cheap plastic and designed to be chucked in a rubbish bin the minute it starts to malfunction. The 8-track player on the other hand is purely mechanical and can be repaired by just about anyone with the patience to sit down, take it apart and figure out how it works. 
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+Sure, at this point you might have to fabricate some parts if they turn out the be broken, but with 3D printers that's well within the realm of possibility. Forget even 3D printers, even if you have to turn to a good old fashioned metal lathe or something, well, they're still around. The point is, just about anyone can fix purely mechanical devices. Almost no one can fix digital devices.
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+This means that the value over time of digital devices is necessarily always falling unless you maintain your device in near mint condition. Mechanical devices on the other hand are purely market driven -- if something proved over time to be a reliable, useful device there's probably a market out there for it. Even if it's an antiquated 8-track player.
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+I suspect, with the so-called Internet of Things coming, that mechanical devices are going to see a serious up tick in interest. When it's possible to hack your refrigerator and use the password gleaned from that to compromise your email account and access your entire life, you might want to re-think some things. 
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+I'm still unclear on why a refrigerator needs to be connected to a network. Actually I'm still unclear on why a refrigerator needs to be the horribly inefficient energy and money wasting design that it currently has when much smarter designs have been available for ages.
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+
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+I've been thinking about this every since I pulled the 8-track out of the bus and looked it up on Ebay[^1]. It's something I ask myself every time I contemplate an item for the bus -- will I be able to fix this in five years?  Actually the first question is do I really need this? But assuming it passes that test, the next major criteria is how hard will it be to fix it myself.
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+Sometimes I decide that even though the answer is no that's okay (as in the case of my replacement stereo) because there really isn't an alternative. 
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+ 
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+[^1]: My first thought was to just toss it, but then I thought, well, I should at least check and see if there's anyone buying and selling these things.
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+[^2]: There's always the alternative of doing without.