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Floppy drive prices on eBay...

TH2002

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 6, 2020
Messages
363
Location
California, United States
So BOTH of my external Toshiba floppy drives died recently and my Tecra 500CDT also has a dead CD-ROM drive. So I essentially have no way to get data onto the computer except serial (which unfortunately my Tecra doesn't have a copy of LapLink installed) and I don't feel like removing the HDD just to install a copy. The floppy drives just make a buzzing noise and refuse to read any disks.

So I figured it was time to get a new FDD. Looked on eBay and the prices are insane! The cheapest drive I can find is over 30 bucks and it's not even tested! There are cheaper listings but those don't include the FDD, only the external case. Searching for listings for the FDD alone have been futile as well as the drive itself has no markings of any kind.

A few years back I picked up one of these external drives (on eBay) for under 20 bucks. What happened between then and now to make floppy drives on eBay so friggin expensive? That being said, maybe all of this is my fault and I'm just cheap but I don't see paying 30+ bucks for an external floppy drive as reasonable.

I can pick up a CD-ROM drive for much cheaper than a floppy drive. Is it something about floppy drives that just makes eBay sellers think they're worth a lot more than they are?

Mods: NO THIS IS NOT A RANT. I am not trying to smear eBay, you guys or any other entity here. I'm merely asking a question.
 
I suspect floppy drives are in demand from people using them to archive disks with USB based controllers. But somehow I don't think that explains it all.

I've also noticed the prices going up, and I'd also like to know what is going on, besides eBaydiots just asking too much as usual. Recently was looking for a particular model (crappy belt driven) and wound up buying a pair of overpriced untested drives listed with a bad item picture that nobody else seemed to want to touch. Fortunately they did work after cleaning.

And then just to ship a feather it seems to cost a bazilonty dollars or more if it happens to be located in California.
 
I don't think I've ever heard the term a "carton" of drives. How many is that? 10? 12? 20?
 
I don't consider 30 "bucks" for an external drive for the Toshiba Tecra series expensive.

And for the record: LapLink can transfer itself onto the target computer. There's no need to have it there already.
 
I must be rich--I've still got most of a carton of FD505s (combo 1.2+1.44) and 235HF (1.44). :D

Well now, I've been looking for a few of those. Would you consider liberating a few from the carton for a worthy cause?

As far as floppy drive prices on eBay. Yes, they are insane. I believe it's the way eBay works to keep prices going up. When someone lists a drive, say for $125, with a buy-it-now option and someone makes an offer and it's accepted, the accepted price is not shown. Instead, when sellers look up "sold" items on eBay they see the inflated price thinking that is what it sold for. To make matter worse, out of frustration (or desperation), some people pay those insane prices helping to reinforce the idea that these are actually worth that amount.

I've been selling and buying on eBay for over three years now to build and refurbish vintage computers. In those three years I have seen vintage parts and systems increase three fold in price, especially for Tandy computer related items.

As for the $30 for the drive you're looking at that actually sounds reasonable to me but only if the shipping reflects the actual shipping cost. Many times sellers tack on inflated shipping costs to make money there as well. There's also tax to be taken into consideration now. If that $30 drive + shipping + tax becomes a $70 drive then no, I would move on.

The drives that Chuck mentioned above are many times listed on eBay for over $125 (hence, he thinks he's rich :) ) We sold these drives in the computer stores I worked at back in the day for around $75 new and they weren't great sellers because of the high price. If you purchase a used combo drive be prepared to tear it down and at the very least perform basic maintenance on it to get it working, such as removing old grease and cleaning heads (this should be done on NOS drives as well). My time is worth something to me so that $125+ for a drive is just insane in my opinion and I move on.

Oh and "tested" 99.9% of the time is BS.
 
Does anyone remember what 5.25" drives sold for when they were just introduced? (e.g. Shugart SA-400) They weren't cheap then, and the same prices adjusted for inflation would seem really insane today. Bottom line is that nobody's making floppy drives of any stripe today and there are still plenty of old floppy disks around, so of course prices will increase as the supply of drives diminishes.

Personally, if I wasn't fussy about it, I'd contact the local electronics recycler to see if they have any drives. I'll wager that those still get tossed into the waste pile today.
 
Does anyone remember what 5.25" drives sold for when they were just introduced? (e.g. Shugart SA-400) They weren't cheap then, and the same prices adjusted for inflation would seem really insane today.


In 1983, Heath Company sold a single-sided, 40 track drive for $345, and a double-sided, 80 track for $550.
 
In pre-double-digit inflation 1978 the OEM price for a 100 tpi Micropolis floppy drive was about $600--this was still less expensive than an 8" drive.
 
I don't consider 30 "bucks" for an external drive for the Toshiba Tecra series expensive.

And for the record: LapLink can transfer itself onto the target computer. There's no need to have it there already.

Call me cheap or whatever, but 30$ is a lot more than what I used to be able to pay for the drives. Don't even get me started on the prices of Backpack parallel port CD-ROM drives.

And yes I realized that. I have LapLink installed on the Tecra now.
 
Proprietary vintage laptop floppy/optical drives are not that common anymore. To be honest I think 5.25" drives that work are going to be harder to source down the road and I remember buying a stack of them for $20 at a recycler a long time ago. Times change and things gets recycled.
 
Don't even get me started on the prices of Backpack parallel port CD-ROM drives.

I actually get those fairly inexpensive. The secret is to buy in pieces. Just two weeks ago I purchased a 164550 (4x) for $15, a 3ft backpack cable for $6, and an 18VAC backpack wall wart adapter for $12. $33 plus shipping and tax came to about $50. If you want NOS then yeah, I've seen those on eBay for $195 and more, definitely not worth that. Heck, $50 is a little high as well, but piecing the thing together was definitely cheaper than someone who had all the parts, or the NOS ones you see.

I have 2 backpack CDROMs, and 2 backpack 1.44MB floppy drives now by doing this.
 
Proprietary vintage laptop floppy/optical drives are not that common anymore. To be honest I think 5.25" drives that work are going to be harder to source down the road and I remember buying a stack of them for $20 at a recycler a long time ago. Times change and things gets recycled.

If 5.25" floppy drives are getting tossed, the recycler hasn't been paying attention to the market in the past 10+ years. 360K drives dried up here surplus at least that long ago.
About all you see now hitting the store floors are 1.44 drives. SCSI CDROM drive prices are doing the same thing now, which is why I've been busy the past month archiving pictures and dumping the firmware from them before they get in the 100$ price range
 
It's a bathtub curve sort of thing. In the beginning, you pay through the teeth for the new devices. Then they become common and the price drops precipitously. Finally, they're not made any more and the prices increase as the supply dries up.
 
Aren't most parallel port CD ROMs just IDE units connected to a port replicator?

In the case of the 4X backpack drives I have yes. Other manufacturers/models I'm not sure.

I have a CR-563-B Creative drive in external enclosure that uses a dedicated Sound Blaster card with a honkin' 62pin external cable. I believe that uses the panasonic interface.
 
It's a bathtub curve sort of thing. In the beginning, you pay through the teeth for the new devices. Then they become common and the price drops precipitously. Finally, they're not made any more and the prices increase as the supply dries up.

Yup, and the majority of what hits the recyclers is the bottom of that curve. I think these days the supply dries up before there is any demand for items because they start out cheaper and get recycled faster.
 
I actually get those fairly inexpensive. The secret is to buy in pieces. Just two weeks ago I purchased a 164550 (4x) for $15, a 3ft backpack cable for $6, and an 18VAC backpack wall wart adapter for $12. $33 plus shipping and tax came to about $50. If you want NOS then yeah, I've seen those on eBay for $195 and more, definitely not worth that. Heck, $50 is a little high as well, but piecing the thing together was definitely cheaper than someone who had all the parts, or the NOS ones you see.

I have 2 backpack CDROMs, and 2 backpack 1.44MB floppy drives now by doing this.

That's a good tactic. I do have a Zip CD 650 (a USB model) so would I have any hope of using a USB-parallel cable or would I have better luck with one of those PCMCIA USB cards?
 
I must be rich--I've still got most of a carton of FD505s (combo 1.2+1.44) and 235HF (1.44). :D

Chuck,

Funny, I was thinking the same thing. I have dozens NOS laptop floppy drives, some in a carton and some in NOS floppy modules and perhaps even more NOS laptop CDROM drives in modules from when I bought out most of the inventory of the Chicony/Alphatop/ECS repair center's old inventory of parts. Anyone want a bare bones NOS Pentium laptop still sealed in the OEM box? I've got a couple of dozen of them too.
 
I remember that I had a Chicony "clicky" keyboard back in the day. It wasn't bad--this would be before the F11-F12 keyboard days.

Aren't most laptops ultimately e-waste? :) I don't see folks upgrading the motherboards in those things--or recycling cases and power supplies.
 
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