Today I came across a very interesting piece of information on Apple Matters and I thought of sharing it with all you Mac-owners out there. James R. Stoup made time to analyze the resale prices on old Macs and came up with a quite interesting result: if you decide to sell your old Mac on eBay, you get back much of your initial investment. He found out that you'll be able to get about $400 on a six-year-old PowerBook, while the resale value of a six-year-old PC is close to nothing.

James R. Stoup analyzed prices on eBay for MacBook Pro and the older PowerBook and he has put together a graph showing the evolution of prices in time. Unlike in PCs, the price drop gets smaller with time. The drop curve levels off and while you can buy a brand new MacBook Pro with $2000, a one-year-old machine sells for $1500 and you can sell your 6-year old PowerBook for close to 500 dollars. If you want to, you can buy a Dell or Toshiba laptop with this money.

The editor thinks this is explainable considering the fact that "Apple's hardware stays relevant longer than the equivalent in the PC world". James R. Stoup then gives the example of Vista, that requires substantial upgrades to run, if not even a new machine. He says he was able to run Tiger on his six-year-old 667 MHz laptop.

So, dear Mac owner, if you've got an old Mac that you no longer need lying around, don't throw it away, someone may still want it. And they'll pay you good money for it.