In my opinion, an 800XL would be a decent choice for a casual collector. It's all around a good bet, since it's small (a good point for collectors), has good compatibility, and is pretty much a good "base" platform to run just about everything. The 130XE is also good for the same reasons, but has more built-in RAM (which few, if any, games ever used). The extra memory of the 130XE was great for word processing, but I can't think of anything else I had that took advantage of the extra memory.

The Atari 800 would be good if you're going the "hardware hacker" route, since it has two cartridge ports, 4 joystick ports, and several slots for expansion memory.

I don't think you'll go wrong if you acquire an 800xl, or 130XE. You'll get the basic Atari experience with these machines with minimal fuss or compatibility issues, in my opinion, plus they're rather easy to acquire on Ebay.

To be honest, though, if you didn't grow up with an Atari, you're probably not going to be enthused enough to go the "hardware hacker" route, and thus the original 800 would probably not be suitable for your purposes unless you come across a decked-out system for cheap. Plus, it only came with 48k RAM standard (it actually came with 16k RAM standard when I bought it!!!). It did have the best keyboard, though (the 130XE hardware was cheaper and clunkier, but still acceptable). Just my opinions... I would like to get a 130xe system myself.

P.S. I had an Atari 800, 800xl, and 130xe in my 8-bit years.

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