• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Where do you find your vintage gear from?

S

sev

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2014
Messages
132
Location
Los Angeles
So I have a few boxes of stuff Ive been hoarding for 15+ years but theres quite a few items im still looking for. Besides ebay and here, how do you find your vintage gear? Are there any local resources you use?

Im thinking about contacting some local computer recyclers and seeing if they have anything interesting?
 
craigslist.
i troll it searching for vintage, antique, ancient, 8088, and 198* in the computers section. Living in a large metro area helps.
goodwill/savers/etc never seem to have anything other than junk printers and crusty old dell keyboards, so i no longer bother there.

you should post your want list here, and also update your location area in your profile. I'm at the point where I don't want any more stuff and I have a bunch of stuff that I should now eliminate.
 
hargle said:
craigslist.
Click to expand...

Same here, or the local equivalents of Craigslist. Never ebay.

Seems to me that Vintage Computers have two prices.

There is the low price (I think, the value) you pay on craigslist-type sites where someone actually is happy to get rid of his stuff without involving his trashcan. But you need time to wait for things to come up.

Then, there is the high price (ie, not to be confused with the value) when you want to get something right now off ebay. Then you have to hit the asking price of someone trying his luck. Most of the times, high asking price means unsold but sellers can always try and do get lucky once in a while.

The mildly annoying thing (to me, no offense, but that's what triggered my response) is that when people see the occasional weird-high prices on eBay they start to believe that must be the value of the old computers in their collection. You can buy some vintage machine XYZ for $1000 anytime. But you'd need a lot of patience selling it for even 25% of that.

Cheers,

Oscar.
 
It depends how bored you are and how refined you make your searches. Just like ebay, craigslist searches are up to the poster on how well it will find us.

NJ search for "vintage" under computers. The other part is pricing being not that good (although it's open for negotiation) and what you want/already have. There may be nice things out there but if you already have them it doesn't do much for ya.

As others said, it's sort of based on how much you troll. I've actually had pretty good luck also doing google searches for specific machines on craigslist and having the folks willing to ship.
 
Not much good on Craigslist around here, some stuff is more expensive then ebay. Freecycle used to be good but that went to hell as well. I get my stuff from ebay and computer forums and not in the quantity I used to get (which is good my basement is full anyway).
It seems to me other then raiding a collection being dumped most of the vintage gear has been recycled or squirreled away into somebodies collection by now. Even recyclers are not finding 486 or earlier gear like they used to.
 
NJ might not be as big as TEXAS but the results your search turned up are *all* in North Jersey which is 100 miles from me. And that's out of my range. :) We have our own Craigslist in South Jersey. Try your luck there. :) :) BTW, I don't use the search feature for my local Craigslist. I read through *all* the computer listings, one by one.
 
Mainly it was through word of mouth or intake from a previous employer who recycled computers.
I rarely go through ebay due to prices and almost use craigslist anymore because the local pages are oddly slow and there's simply nothing there worth wasting three minutes loading a page.
 
One person here took the initiative to put an advert in the paper. It's a good way to reach a different audience.

The only way I aquire things besides donations/online auctions is that I regularly go down to our local tip which has a recycling place. Unfortunately there seems to be a lot less than there was these days - but I get games, floppy disk holders, accessories (like Zip drives, network cards etc, got over 100 1.2MB DSHD disks for a few dollars too) and one one occasion a fully working VIC20! LGR has started a new YouTube series called Thrifts - he got a 5160 recently - good find. So I keep going back even after multiple visits of nothing, because you never know what'll turn up.
 
Stone said:
NJ might not be as big as TEXAS but the results your search turned up are *all* in North Jersey which is 100 miles from me. And that's out of my range. :) We have our own Craigslist in South Jersey. Try your luck there. :) :) BTW, I don't use the search feature for my local Craigslist. I read through *all* the computer listings, one by one.
Click to expand...

Hm.. I do see the problem there ;-) Yeah southjersey doing the vintage search just shows a $30 Imac and lots of stuff elsewhere. But the vintage search is also quite generic. If you actually want something unless they put vintage in the description ya end up having to sift through a bunch of new "IBM" results or I used to find LOTS of Commodore cars for sale and the occasional ad for a female friend in the spanish speaking craigslist.
 
eBay. And, patience. With patience, you can get good deals on eBay. Especially if you find something listed incorrectly.
 
KC9UDX said:
eBay. And, patience. With patience, you can get good deals on eBay. Especially if you find something listed incorrectly.
Click to expand...
I can see finding something listed incorrectly if you don't have a life! But if you don't happen to be a complete loser and it's listed incorrectly you'll not be likely to ever see it. :)
 
Stone said:
I can see finding something listed incorrectly if you don't have a life! But if you don't happen to be a complete loser and it's listed incorrectly you'll not be likely to ever see it. :)
Click to expand...
Got it. Searching hard finding opportunity on eBay = no life.
Watching threads here all day & posting often = much life ;)
 
Stone said:
I can see finding something listed incorrectly if you don't have a life! But if you don't happen to be a complete loser and it's listed incorrectly you'll not be likely to ever see it. :)
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. There are common ways people will mis-list things. Also, just reading the list of items in a category, rather than doing a search, can reveal such items.

Patience is the key. If one gets impulsive, it's easy to get a bad deal.
 
Krille said:
quote_icon.png
Originally Posted by Stone
BTW, I don't use the search feature for my local Craigslist. I read through *all* the computer listings, one by one.

quote_icon.png
Originally Posted by Stone
I can see finding something listed incorrectly if you don't have a life! But if you don't happen to be a complete loser and it's listed incorrectly you'll not be likely to ever see it. :smile:
:rolleyes: :D
Click to expand...

1) Ebay has ten of thousands of listings added daily which would take hours or days to parse.

2) Craigslist SJ gets about 50 - 100 per day which takes me all of 10 minutes to digest.

I don't want to assume that you can see a slight difference but I hope you can. :)
 
I have heard of people camping out on the freecycle lists all day waiting for something to snag. I have to admit being a night owl has snagged some cool forum items nobody noticed because of the time it was posted.

There was a time you had to reply to a LEMswap post within a few minutes of posting or the item was gone. If anything ebay is a lot more fair to the casual collector.
 
I get some things from ebay, others from Atariage's marketplace, and even a few items from Goodwill's auction site. Very little is found locally around here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top