I had pretty much given up on that a few decades ago, but maybe I'll try now. A friend (long expired) recorded my daughter playing with his daughter at his house, and transferred the video to a Betamax tape (along with a Star Wars TV special of an Ewoks movie, so valuable right). My friend had questionable taste in hardware, having a Betamax recorder and Laserdisc players, both didn't last long in the hardware wars. Would be interesting to recover the video of my young daughter (now grown with her own kids).
No valuable data on my Jaz or other old media, long since copied off. I no longer use the old floppy discs unless playing with the old machines. I have an original Apple II Revision 0 computer (1977) that I converted to run off USB sticks and CompactFlash cartridges, and have many thousands of Apple II programs on USB and CF - instant use of any program and no floppy necessary. Also wrote my own EPROM with utilities and custom boot. Have done other mods to later vintage machines. I know, weird hobby but I have good memories of writing code on micros and it was fun back then.
There is a fan base for vintage stuff, and I deal with others. So yes, people do value this stuff same as with other collectibles, and values are climbing. Not enough to get rich on, but that should never be the basis for any hobby. People complain about the high cost of computers, they don't realize that it cost much more back in the 70's and 80's. For instance 8MHz PC's costing $3,000 and up (I bought one), and 20MB hard drives for $300 (my boss complained that he spent more for his 10MB hard drive the year before, this was mid-80's). People were casually buying $5G to $10G PC's. No one should complain about the costs now, much cheaper when you factor in inflation because the dollar lost most of its value since the 80's/
You should be able to rent a player or buy one. It is worth the effort as your tapes might still be good.
Actually, Betamax was supposed to be the better format. I remember the discussion when HD DVD and Bluray were competing formats. Sony and Bluray won this time so maybe it was a little redemption for Sony after Betamax.
Wow. Cool stuff. Make sure that you Will your stuff to one of the computer museums. They might be interested in it.
Our first computer was a 286 Epson Equity II+. It cost us $2000 and we had to finance it. But it was perfect since my wife, in college at the time, could work on her papers late into the night safe and warm in our apartment. It was a good investment.
Apple. I used a IIe and Word Star to write my papers in college. Like I said, my dad has always been an Apple fan. All the way back to the mid 80s.
No doubt, Apple have been innovative and technological leaders. Their devices are always well designed both software and hardware. One of the companies that I worked for designed SCSI RAID controllers and host adapters. Just can afford them.