One that is 99.99% ITB as well.
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So it could be linked to culture
Music is culture at various levels: a shared activity; the skeleton of parts of a culture (dance, business, industry, socialising, bars, history); folklore; story-teller; journalist; daydream; social currencyā¦
By which I mean āyes, absolutely itās linked to cultureā.
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I mean the reason for the price increase.
The interest is certainly far more expansive, has occurred for decades, and is infinitely larger in scope and influence than a simulcrum of a culture (as synthwave pines for and mimics something that never quite existed.)
You can make synthwave with free tools, the default ableton or floops synths, it references analog synthesizers and tape quirks but works best crisp and tight in DAW sync, without actually using hardware.
Its an interesting thing to think about, but I would encourage people to not treat gear as stocks. DOD pedals have skyrocketed in price, but I got a bunch from way back when because they were cheap, vicious, and could be replaced easily. I still abuse the hell out of these pedals and think the price hike is insane and nonsensical.
Another one that is not gear related but has a similar feeling to me is old Toyota Pickups. I drove these for years and they just work. Iāve gone through a few, have sold them for cheap and just assumed they would always be a thing that ebbed in and out of my lifestyle. I cant afford to buy them at the going rates, so it seems those days are done and they have moved into a collectors market. You can get a lot more truck for the money nowadays, but that doesnāt include nostalgia and lifestyle brand points.
I used these because I could afford them and afford to replace/maintain them and its just wild to me that they have become such niche and desirable novelties to people. Iām glad I still have a truck I love and a few DOD pedals, but donāt think I can see myself buying more in the future, at least if these trends continue.
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Ah, come on guysā¦we all know itās gonna be the mighty AK
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Pocket Operator PO-12
Boss DR-660, after Roger Linn passes away
(In the category of cultāish discontinued drum machines like the MFB Tanzbar, and/or the Nord Drum 2)
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[rambling] Old gear was so good because a bunch of military research was being funded for big wars, and then that tech got used in gear, and these military researchers started making gear with all their special big money military research knowledge. And then subsequently everyone still had that recent memory of this high quality gear to compare all the new digital stuff, so the early digital was still interesting and sounded great and incidentally characterful due to cost constraints.
Then i think a lot of 90s and early aughts digital gear set the bar low, capitalism continued to take its course and make everything lower quality, and subsequently we got an analogue revival that didnāt really match the quality of the early analogs. Then the analogue revival started to get more serious and closer match the early models.
Sorry i donāt know where im going with this. If someone famous uses something and then dies then its going to become expensive. The only way to predict this is to know that someone famous will die, or what cheap item a famous person will use, and none of us can do that. We can only decide what sounds best to us and then bank on that, if weāre coming from an investment angle
I mean, west coast synthesis was the result of EEs not wanting to use this developed technology for the purposes of war 
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Love D buchlaās RBMA lecture where he discusses this a little
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Any instrument that is good and with a limited supply. The more limited the better. NFTs might help too.
Why is that though? Iāve owned one, it was cool! But the tr8s blows it away. I know some people like the simplicity of the tr8, but is that really it?
Iāve got the 8s too, and I love it. But I do still find the setup / menu side to be a pain sometimes. More options are great, but machines that you can just turn on and play are more appealing to some people. The TR-8 is more limited, but maybe itās closer to the original workflow of its predecessors. Iāve been working with only one kit on the 8s lately, and Iām actually enjoying it more than ever. I wouldnāt want to trade down, but I understand the appeal for some people.
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Borrowed one of these in my teens. It was the first drum machine I got hands on with, and I didnāt know much about mixing then. I was so frustrated I couldnāt get it to kick like the 909-driven records I had been buying.
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āBorrowed one of these in my teens. It was the first drum machine I got hands on with, and I didnāt know much about mixing then. I was so frustrated I couldnāt get it to kick like the 909-driven records I had been buying.ā
Itās limited, as is the Teenage Engineering PO-12. It is not the Tempest. And I am not saying go stock up on pocket operatorās or the DR-660. But I could see in 10 years, these drum machines will be sought after, for the niche of low end, but capable capability. One could argue the Volcaās could be in that category as well 
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Stealing from uneducated rubes with a JSON link to a JPEG and connecting them with a system of fossil fuel burning tokens āhelpsā nobody good, setting the world ablaze so a very small percentage of the population can grow rich.
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Iād be looking at really compelling, deep, indispensable (if even just for a niche group in the know) gear that is being made by 1 person or a very small team who might, for all we know, end up burning out and stopping production or moving to rare small runs at best. This is often in Eurorack more than other places. Off the top of my head:
M8 Tracker (1 person)
ER-301 (1 person)
Mannequins Just Friends, Three Sisters (1 person)
Monome Teletype (2 people)
I feel like any one of the above could easily move into breathless, legendary territory with changes in circumstances, availability, changing trends and interests of the market, and/or whims of the developer. It could also be the case that this sort of gear - appreciated mostly by wonky egghead types in their bedroom laboratories right now - could really blow up into widespread interest in the next decade as things like modular and trackers trend and grow exponentially from their previous underground cozy scenes.
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Abstrakt Avalon is doing a good turn in high second hand prices and is now discontinued.
Wasnāt cheap to begin with though, so percentage wise not so much as others maybe.
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I was going to mention this as well. It is a bit of a one-trick pony in some ways, but it does some things nothing else does, and it does them in a way that is entirely unique. It is a beast for sure, but it kind of has to be for what it does and how it does it.