VIC-20

Commodore's color home computer reached American stores in 1981 at $299.95, and repeated price cuts, taking it below $100 by 1983, pushed home computing toward impulse-buy territory. It sold about 2.5 million units. Be clear-eyed about the memory. Only 3.5K of RAM is free for your own programs once BASIC takes its share, so typing in anything ambitious means a RAM expansion cartridge. As a collectible it is approachable, and it makes a fine warm-up before stepping up to the Commodore 64.