I will now have nightmares tonight. Thanks

Faced with a room like that, I'd personally only be looking for computers. The printers would be in the way.

Never really heard of anyone collecting printers... aside from really old iconic models like the Apple Laserwriters.

yeah, I tend to collect printers. I've a couple old CBM 1520 plotters, and an Okimate20 thermal transfer... an old canon BJC80 bubblejet portable (still need a battery for it...) and my pride and joy, my Panasonix KXP2135 nee 2130 (I installed the color kit).

I've been wanting to get a Tandy or Gorilla Banana printer, the equivalent of my old Vic 1525... 9 pin, no lower case descenders. I love the way that thing printed.

I'd like to get the Tandy equivalent of those 1520 plotters, but they're hard to come by and therefore expensive.
So, yes, I kind of collect old printers...

Knowing that not everything (particularly older systems) will work with the two "modern" printers that I have, I would be a printer collector, but the problems are I don't have enough space for such a hobby (computer collecting is hard enough as it is 🤣 ) and not to mention the potential difficulty of finding compatible toner/ink (or even drivers) for a vintage printer.

For my situation, network printing would be an efficient way to gain printer support for older OSes with just one modern printer. I just haven't gotten around to testing it. Then again my secondary/family printer (which is an HP Envy 5240) has built-in Wi-Fi printing capabilities, but IDK if it's available for modern (i.e. Windows 7+) systems only.

The generic version of the VIC152, Tandy DMP100 and many others was the seikosha gp100. The Alps plotter mechanism used in the 1520, Tandy CGP115 and many others unfortunately has a fatal weak point the gears split. If you do find a working one (any variant) use it very sparingly. Most of the ones I found back in the 90s already had a split gear and the couple of working ones I did find split while I had them. Someone was supplying replacment metal gears for them, but I don't remember the details.

I don't really collect printers in the "gotta have multiple" sense. That said, I AM hoping to find the specific model of Epson dot-matrix printer my family had when I was a kid (don't recall it off the top of my head, it's in my notes at home).

BTW, just a caveat...I imagine those OKI C6100 printers were set aside because they no longer work. We used to have one of those at the RadioShack where I worked, and it failed hard. According to the tech that came to replace ours, the C6100 is notorious for controller board failures. I imagine they don't interest you since they're not vintage, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up in case you were thinking of taking one. 🤣

Those old HP laserjet printers are built like tanks.

Most of the old ones we had had over 500,000 prints on them before we finally got rid of them.. and they still worked although they were needing the fuser and possibly rollers to be replaced by that time.

I spot a few HP LaserJet 5000 looking printers there. I actually saved one of those from my job for when I have room to place it for just printing on B/W. 30ppm and they last forever. I even bought a used network card for it since the one that was originally in the printer died about 5 years or so ago.

As for the old laser printers there that still look like they work due to the test pages laying on top of them.. if you don't already have a color laser, definitely grab one or more. Toners and toner refill kits are cheap as chips on eBay. The only ones I would stay away from in regards to 3rd party toner is Xerox. They absolutely will not work properly without genuine Xerox toner.

If there are any working dot-matrix printers, those generally fetch a nice price on eBay last time I looked.

If all you do is game on your vintage systems then printers are a waste. If you like to program or run old apps then a printer is kind of a must.

I have some old printers for my C64, Atari 800, a 24 pin dot matrix for my early PCs and Apple IIgs, and every laser I ever purchased new (I tend to need newer drivers or faster/higher resolution before the printer itself dies so I keep them as spares). I don't keep inkjets around.

Yeh can imagine the dot matrix printers would sell. Some companies were still using them for invoicing with carbon paper right up till recently.

I like the idea of an old HP Laserjet 4 series as these were part of the "built like a tank" era and just about every company I supported had at least 1 and even then it was the slow printing speed and maintenance kit cost that killed them, not a hardware fault. But we dont even use our actual printer that often so cant really justify the extra clutter.