Computer Antiques officially started on 12-12-2012 as a museum for retro gameconsoles. It expanded rapidly to import and export retro games and consoles, new old stock and used (under Paradise Stores) and software development.
From the 80’s the owner of Computer Antiques was already into collection games for MSX and IBM PC and compatibles. As a teenager he started with trading and selling the IBM PC games and computer hardware. He learned BASIC on the MSX and Commodore 64 and C programming on the IBM PC XT and later the PC AT (286). At secondary school he learned Assembler and different kinds of BASIC on Apple II, BBC Micro, VIC 20, Atari 400 etc. Computer automation and programming really stuck, so after secondary school he went for bachelor level education in computer science. While studying he was still collecting games, consoles and hardware for all kinds of home computer and PC systems.
In the early 90’s he started his first business: Universal Mailorder Computers (UMC). It focussed on supplying new computer hardware, networks and software at a discount price to businesses and consumers. For the business he developed a catalog diskette and gave these for free to old and new customers, no other company did that at that time. At that time the market grew around PC games, so he started a second business: ROM-Exchange Club (REC). The main focus was to trade in secondhand games, while the customer bought new or secondhand games, he was the first in the world to have this business model. This time the catalog was made available online (on the internet, the world wide web) at the end of 1996.
About a decade passed, in that decade next to collecting, many software development projects were delivered. At that time everybody had a budget hardware store, so time to move on: Computer Antiques (CA) was born in late 2009. It’s main focus was to supply information about game consoles old and upcoming (which are now all retro) and sell new game accessories and hardware through a webshop, while also doing software development and management for many companies. From then on, software development became the focus, having local and international business customers. The hardware and new/used old stock sales moved to Paradise Shops.