Gaggia Classic

A pod machine is a subscription that happens to have a plug. The €78 box on the counter is the cheapest part of it.

The Gaggia Classic has been essentially the same machine since 1991. It uses a commercial-style portafilter, a chromed brass group and a solenoid valve, with a boiler you descale and rebuild instead of discard. The 2024 Evo Pro version costs €479 new in the Netherlands. What sits behind that number is the point. Every wear part is a stock part. Dutch spare-parts shops carry the full catalogue, from a group gasket that costs a few euro to a complete replacement boiler. A machine that stops working is a machine you open with a screwdriver on a Sunday afternoon.

Now the money. A Krups Nespresso Inissia is €78 and pours coffee from a sealed capsule. It runs a few years, the pump tires, the plastic group cracks, and it leaves for the bin worth nothing. Over fifteen years you buy that machine four or five times. The capsules do the real damage. At roughly €0,40 each, one cup a day runs close to €150 a year, and no ground coffee is dearer than a bag of beans you grind yourself.

Here is the same fifteen years, side by side.

The Gaggia takes any coffee you like. Feed it beans you grind yourself and the coffee drops to about €55 to €90 a year, well under the €150 a pod habit costs. Buy one well kept on Marktplaats for €180 to €280 and the net cost falls further, because a serviced Classic sells for close to what you paid for it.

That resale floor is the quiet part of the case. A used Gaggia Classic averages around €177 on Marktplaats today, and a like-new Evo Pro sits near €280. The machine holds its price because the whole world knows how to fix it. Chrome dulls into a warm patina, the aluminium body wears in, and none of it touches the value. This is a machine people repair and pass on. A pod machine is one people replace.

The Gaggia buys you out of a supply contract, once, and hands back most of the money on the way out.

Verdict

€479 for an espresso machine you rebuild with €5 parts and sell on for most of what you paid. The €78 pod machine is the expensive one.