I know Vogons doesn't allow a buy/sell/trade... There's always crappy ebay with inflated prices and money hungry sellers trying to sell old trident video cards for 150 bucks.
Truth be told, I dont know of any good US based hardware buying/selling/trading sites. There's Amibay, but that's mostly for Europe.. Is there any places I should be looking that I am not?
Where do you look to buy hardware?
You also have Vintage Computer Federation that is mostly USA based.
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?7-Marketplace
Not so good as Amibay though.
Requests are also possible... /msg kixs
wrote:I get 90% off eBay. Plenty of good prices to be had, just don't buy from those recyclers. Especially for common stuff like a Trident or S3 card.
Hey, can I get your discount? 90% off is a great deal. 😲
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
eBay items are overpriced because of the high eBay/Paypal fees. They definitely need some competition. Low cost/high volume sales on eBay just aren't economical anymore. High value/low volume is the only way to make money there.
Is this too much voodoo?
wrote:I get 90% off eBay. Plenty of good prices to be had, just don't buy from those recyclers. Especially for common stuff like a Trident or S3 card.
How about MIDI equipment? I've been looking for a good deal on MT-32 for a while now, but most offers are from US (so shipping to Russia is very expensive or not an option at all).
I think Japan's still the best bet for this stuff.
All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder
wrote:wrote:I get 90% off eBay. Plenty of good prices to be had, just don't buy from those recyclers. Especially for common stuff like a Trident or S3 card.
How about MIDI equipment? I've been looking for a good deal on MT-32 for a while now, but most offers are from US (so shipping to Russia is very expensive or not an option at all).
Some things are best found in certain regions. I think Russia is a fountain for Voodoo cards, at least it was a while ago.
im thinking about starting a buy/sell/trade forum for vintage PC/Computer hardware, just so we have a reliable and reasonably priced source of hardware. Ebay is okay but i get sick of having to wade through the ridiculously priced stuff for hours to get to the good stuff..
the focus would be on buying/sell/trade, not discussion. Vogons is the place for that, of course!
wrote:wrote:I get 90% off eBay. Plenty of good prices to be had, just don't buy from those recyclers. Especially for common stuff like a Trident or S3 card.
How about MIDI equipment? I've been looking for a good deal on MT-32 for a while now, but most offers are from US (so shipping to Russia is very expensive or not an option at all).
Directly from Japan using a middleman service. The Japanese sellers on Ebay price things at 2-4x the going value including fees, although it depends on the MIDI equipment. Some more recent stuff is also pretty expensive in Japan (e.g. late 1990s-early 2000s), while popular but obsolete gear can be incredibly cheap in Japan (just make sure it works). Yahoo Auctions Japan is basically like Ebay before it was screwed over by greedy executives: a giant fleamarket.
wrote:wrote:Some things are best found in certain regions. I think Russia is a fountain for Voodoo cards, at least it was a while ago.
I second this....I got 2 Voodoo 2's and a Voodoo 3 from Russia and all were practically new and work great....
As for the rest of Ebay...good stuff is out there and at decent prices...you just gotta be willing to hunt and search for it, using different search topics and looking through page after page..If I find something I like video card or sound card wise, I will send the seller a question about the product if the sale doesnt have much description. If they answer with a quick "Its what you see" or "The card works.." I tend to bail on it, but if they answer with some sort of detail either about the card or where they got it (if they dont know much about it), I am more likely to stay interested, look into buying...
wrote:im thinking about starting a buy/sell/trade forum for vintage PC/Computer hardware, just so we have a reliable and reasonably priced source of hardware. Ebay is okay but i get sick of having to wade through the ridiculously priced stuff for hours to get to the good stuff..
the focus would be on buying/sell/trade, not discussion. Vogons is the place for that, of course!
I think that's a great idea. These days I'm getting rather irked by the lack of availibility of oldschool x86 stuff (486 and older).
I mostly find my stuff with random luck, of course, I have the hardest path now b/c I only look for stuff that's 486 and older.
Near us we do have some PC recycling places (RE-PC, PC Recycle, Computer Surplus), but those places tend to not have very much of the stuff of the age that I prefer. I DID however recently find some 80486 and slightly older era stuff at Vetco (a local Electronics component store) - Cyrix 486 DX2-66 passive heatsinks, unused, for a $1.49 each, and fans I could screw onto the top to make my own thermal units out of them.
I do have a charity thrift near me, that's where I found the Gateway 2000 P5-100 earlier last year, it was originally $40.00, I waited till it was marked down to $10.00 before I'd buy it.
The prices I"m seeing for some stuff (cases and power supplies in particular) are insane. I'm trying to find an XT power supply for my XT chassis to put my 486 back in that, but it looks like I"ll be spending upward of $80 to get that thing a more modern enclosure I"m happy with - I'm also picky because I want lay-flat desktop enclosures and those are hard to come by, even ATX.
Man, I never thought I'd say I'd take all the criticism of when I started this hobby in 2001 just to be able to waltz into a thrift again and go buy a pile of old 386/486 for $5.00. Those were the days!
~The Creeping Network~
My Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/creepingnet
Creepingnet's World - https://creepingnet.neocities.org/
The Creeping Network Repo - https://www.geocities.ws/creepingnet2019/
wrote:I know Vogons doesn't allow a buy/sell/trade... There's always crappy ebay with inflated prices and money hungry sellers trying to sell old trident video cards for 150 bucks.
Truth be told, I dont know of any good US based hardware buying/selling/trading sites. There's Amibay, but that's mostly for Europe.. Is there any places I should be looking that I am not?
Where do you look to buy hardware?
I'm AU based, but have been collecting stuff from around the world via a few of the resources below.
eBay - it's not all bad for a buyer, there are discount promos, untested lots, occasional sellers wanting to move things quickly - have your watch lists set up with alerts, get the app if you have a smartphone (latest version app is OK to use) and be vigilant and the bargains are there! where I find interesting stuff, in order of decreasing volume:
ebay.com
ebay.ca
ebay.de
ebay.com.au
ebay.co.uk
Use freight forwarders in US and UK to combine post.
CONUS
Vintage Computer Federation - vcfed.org
craigslist - this seems to be an OK source for US guys, but seemingly everything is 600 miles from the person who wants it? 😜
thrift stores
EU/UK
gumtree - UK
Amibay - amibay.com
http://www.marktplaats.nl/ - gets a mention here
JP
yahoo auctions - buy via Jauce or buyee.jp (translate to English options available) - shipping and fees aren't cheap, but items are
AU
overclockers.com.au - nearly 140k members and active retro & non-retro trading forums
gumtree
http://www.trademe.co.nz/ - for our NZ cousins
thrift/Salvos stores? - don't know if there's any retro tech to find in our stores
Mac-specific
applefritter.org
68klma.org
thinkclassic.org
And of course, friends, family, recycling centres, kerbside cleanup, dumpster diving ...
wrote:im thinking about starting a buy/sell/trade forum for vintage PC/Computer hardware, just so we have a reliable and reasonably priced source of hardware. Ebay is okay but i get sick of having to wade through the ridiculously priced stuff for hours to get to the good stuff..
the focus would be on buying/sell/trade, not discussion. Vogons is the place for that, of course!
Isn't that what Amibay is for?
