Amibay and eBay plus lots of patience. As most are expensive, yet sometimes I come across a good offer.

Computer recyclers, electronic recyclers, recycle centers, Corporate liquidation sales, computer surplus centers and purchasers, bankruptcy sales, home estate auctions, auction houses, flea markets, thrift stores, antique shops, yard sales, garage sales, used electronics shops, electronic refurbishers, etc.

You're right retro stuff is hard to find. That means you have two choices:

1) It's a market. Throw money at it and you can get almost anything quickly. But it will cost you, probably a lot - not just for premium rarities, but also for bog-standard stuff. There are definitely stores like you describe, take a look at https://classiccomputershop.eu/ - not quite your neighbourhood, but an example of what is out there: enthousiast-run and able to supply most of the more mundane things you need. However, doing so commercially means they have to charge a significant mark-up compared to buying untested stuff in bulk yourself.
2) Patience and dilligence. Keep looking, keep waiting and pounce on things that appear, particularly on large lots being thrown away or sold cheap. You frequently don't know what you're getting, let alone when, but get enough volume and you will start to find the stuff you want, plus you can sell/swap the rest to help keep things rolling. This option costs a lot of time, which - depending on your situation - may be more valuable than the prices of option #1.

Either way, no more free lunches.

Lol thanks dionb 😉 (is that even allowed over here?..)

I think that a LOT of x86 stuff went straight to e-waste during the late 90's and early 00's. Another big piece of the pie is still stored at people's attics, garages, sheds etc. but they don't want to or can't sell it (if they even remember that they still have it..). Only a small fraction of all old computer stuff ends up on the interweb, mainly offered by enthusiasts. Not too many people owned a pc at home in the 90's (they were expensive and still a little complicated to use), but a lot of (younger) people did own a game console. Furthermore I think that console games have some sort of a nostalgic and/or emotional value for people, while old pc's are more likely to be remembered as a pain in the butt for most folks, so most people didn't hang on to them.

I think that most people over here look, ask for and talk about old pc stuff pretty much anywhere. It takes a lot of time for all of us to find what we want. So yeah, just keep on searching, maybe after some time you find what you want. I have found some great items over the years for practically nothing, while other items have cost me small fortunes.

eBay mostly. Every once in a while I will find something at a thrift store but getting very rare.

The last retro item I found being thrown out by the curb was a 19" CRT that is in very very good condition. That was probably 6 months ago now.. maybe more.

Prior to that, the last retro computer stuff I found by the curb was close to 10 years ago, which was a few desktops that had Slot-A Athlon stuff in them. 2 of them had Slot-A Thunderbird CPUs.

Every once in a while, I'll have a friend or family member give me old stuff.

Getting stuff for a good/great/excellent price definitely takes time. Some of the things I bought a year or two ago have gone up so much in price that I wouldn't even consider buying it now.

I'm still kicking myself for giving away a bunch of retro stuff around 5 years ago. Around the same time I had a small box of old CPUs that I also gave away.... grrr. And then probably a couple years before that I gave away multiple AWE32 sound cards as well as some other sound cards and some early socket 7 stuff.

I always keep some cash in my wallet because you never know when an opertunity for a rare part my present itself.

ebay is probably one of the biggest but I have been very lucky in the past to find a few systems on the street when people throw out rubbish, I always have my eyes open. Alot of the time when im driving ill spot some rubbish and instantly anything rectangular in size rings alarm as a pc case. Got tricked many times with old stereo speakers looking like a pc case

Also you could always find a way to notify people around where you live that you are interested in old computer stuff. After that I have been offered the weirdest computer stuff, but sometimes something happens when someone says that I can get a box of video cards for 20 euros and then I find a voodoo 3 card among them.

I used to get MS-DOS games from fellow collectors, thrift stores, and ebay. The thing is I collected MS-DOS games when most people did not so there wasn't that much competition.

For 486 or earlier hardware I got most of that from ebay when it was cheap, local people dumping stuff, found a complete 486 once at a thrift store, Craigslist, and Freecycle before the gold recycling craze killed that.

A local recycler that went out of business ages ago provided me with a ton (literally) of stuff over the few years I visited them weekly. Were talking complete vintage machines, CPUs I could sort and buy by the pound, same with add-on cards. One time he got a stack of old pre 1GB IDE hard drives the owner let me take home and test and then buy for $1-2 a pop and just return the dead ones. Purchased a stack of 5.25" floppy drives from him for like $20 total. I also got most of my IBM PS/2 and AT clicky keyboards from him for like $2 a pop (plastic was pretty much worthless to a scrapper at the time). I kick myself for the items I passed up but to be honest I ran out of space for it all.

An old guy I used to talk to referbed machines for people and he would always get some old junk in as a trade he could not use and dumped them on freecycle. I used to help him fix stuff once and a while and he would just give me stuff he could not sell like compact macs, hard drives that were too small for his use, misc old software and hardware add-ons etc. Heck once I purchased an Apple IIgs from him with keyboard, mouse, drives, and some original software for $20 and found it had a Transwarp IIgs in it plus a 6MB RAM card. He had a box of boxed C64 games but sadly most had mold but I did get GEOS and some other ones.

Freecycle in general scored me my C128 + 1571's and quite a few C64 setups, old 68k mac gear, a few IIgs systems, Atari 800xl and 65xe, misc game consoles (Atari 5200, some 2600 games), some old laptops. I think one guy giving away tractor feed printers (business address) I visited had a foot high stack of shrinkwrapped OEM W95/98 CDs and books heading to the trash before I snagged them. It is kind of shocking what treasure you will get handed when you show up to pick one item up and the people seem happy they are unloading their junk on you.

Craigslist is good for the occasional AT case NIB somebody grabbed from work and wants $20 for. Once I got a box of 20x 50 pin SCSI 2GB drives for $20 which really thrilled me since they were sealed 0 hour drives. Most Craigslist stuff tends to be newer and these days over priced.

Everybody has their own way of finding items, but I find it helps to get contacts who recycle or otherwise happen to get items you might want in their hands. Also keep in mind that the stuff going around these days is not the same stuff I was finding 10 years ago. With the recycling craze most of those old 486 era machines are either in collectors hands or made into razor blades by now. You can always find another local collector to trade your junk for their junk if money is an issue. If money is not an issue you can still find pretty much anything you need on ebay or over at the appropriate computer forum.

It’s awesome to hear you guys’ stories and suggestions. Thanks for the tips!

I was lucky enough I found a good 486DX2-66 in my area a couple weeks ago and enough parts to have a good working computer, but I’m definately on the hunt for backup parts and Big Box MSDOS games now 😀

Most of the time on Ebay.. sometimes from co-workers / friends. Other phone-app sales marketplaces sometimes have parts that sell for next to nothing -- like my Samsung SyncMaster 997DF that I picked up for <$20 in like new condition off Facebook Marketplace.

I usually browse Ebay by the buyer's 'other items' to see what they have listed, because a lot of times things are mislabeled. Just yesterday I found a Visiontek GeForce3 Ti500 for $10 shipped mislabeled as a GeForce 2 MX.

Ironically, as I type this, my wife is driving the baby around for a car nap (and it is trash day tomorrow), and she just messaged me about a box of computer stuff sitting by the curb around the corner from us. Gotta go check it now, 🤣.

Edit: Back.. it wasn't computer stuff.. just two small HDTV's made for a kitchen countertop or something. One was dead (24" Sceptre) and the other is an Initial 20" DTV-201.. it works. I'll throw it in the basement for now. It might be useful, since it has VGA.

Ebay, Craigslist, yard/garage/rummage/sales and thrift stores.
The last systems I got were a 33MHz 486 tower and and a 60 MHz Pentium 1 tower, IIRC, at a yard sale in a moderately affluent neighborhood. Each needs varying amounts of TLC. The 486 has no inboard IDE PATA ports, but a crapton of ISA ports, but I think it also has one of those cursed Dallas RTCs. I've got CR2032 sockets coming in the mail to deal with that mess. Thrift stores have netted me a few random random cards and drives, but I think they're normally just sending that stuff to the dumpster.

I have some 400 systems and i've only ever paid for 4 of them. So 1/100th bought, the rest free donations. I ask people to give it to me, and they give it to me. Simple as that. eBay these days are just silly, so no use at all for an enthusiast to ever use it as it stands.

You have to remember, to 99% of the population these things are trash and waste. The remaining 1% contains the collectors and the eBay scammers. If you are in the 1% sphere it will be a pain and expensive. Go into the other sphere, and as long as you are willing to drive and get stuff, you can amass huge amounts anytime for free.

Friends, coworkers, they sometimes have some treasure in their basement/attic.

Local auction sites. There are people there who don't value and/or interested what they have and throw in a bundle sometimes with some more uncommon parts. Sometimes I just see them listed as a bunch of untested graphics card and there is something interesting among them. Just now I'm eyeing with a "videocard" for 17$ which is actually an Inno3D Geforce Ti 200 and another "untested AGP graphics cards", 6 card with a Voodoo 3 and a Radeon 9800 for 25$, but there is no guarantee all or any of them works.

I never had luck with ebay. I often browse, but even if the price is acceptable, the shipping is ridiculously expensive.

Der_Richter wrote:

and as long as you are willing to drive and get stuff, you can amass huge amounts anytime for free.

I'm sure that's true, but that seems to be hoarding, not collecting. If you like anything that can be described as obsolete hardware, then it's fine, go for it. But I doubt that if you want specific hardware you'll find it so easy and for free at the same time.

Ontopic: flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores, local auction sites, etc. Look everywhere you can. If you check everything all the time you'll eventually get something, but older hardware is getting quite hard to find, because most of it was sold/recycled/thrown away long ago.

There's a recycling center in my area that often magically has lots of retro stuff. The guy there is familiar with me and usually cuts me a screaming deal on the stuff. It would just be going into the cruncher anyway...

Der_Richter wrote:

I have some 400 systems and i've only ever paid for 4 of them. So 1/100th bought, the rest free donations. I ask people to give it to me, and they give it to me. Simple as that. eBay these days are just silly, so no use at all for an enthusiast to ever use it as it stands.

You have to remember, to 99% of the population these things are trash and waste. The remaining 1% contains the collectors and the eBay scammers. If you are in the 1% sphere it will be a pain and expensive. Go into the other sphere, and as long as you are willing to drive and get stuff, you can amass huge amounts anytime for free.

How long do you collect / hoard stuff?

wow 400 systems you must have literally a room full of stuff.

I have 3 main pc and 1 amiga 500 systems plugged in usable condition, 1 or 2 more cases stored in a container and maybye ~20 assorted motherboards cables ram sticks isa pci cards in 2 or 3 boxes, this already takes a bit of room in my garage. I feel like this is the limit before it turns to hoarding from collecting. I try to chose quality from quantity, there was alot of systems I came accross p4 or later that I simply couldn't house, so stripped the parts like cpu and ram motherboard and got rid of the rest

RaverX wrote:

Der_Richter wrote:

and as long as you are willing to drive and get stuff, you can amass huge amounts anytime for free.

I'm sure that's true, but that seems to be hoarding, not collecting. If you like anything that can be described as obsolete hardware, then it's fine, go for it. But I doubt that if you want specific hardware you'll find it so easy and for free at the same time.

You'd be surprised...

As I said earlier, once you get the volume coming in, the good stuff will start to be in there too. Even if it's not exactly what you want, it gives you stuff to sell/trade with which you can get what you are looking for - and don't underestimate the chance of actually hitting the exact things too. As Der_Richter says, ~90% of vintage stuff out there is beneath the radar of us enthousiasts, sitting in attics and garages unappreciated. That means 90% of the really good stuff too.

A concrete example - a few weeks' back I emptied someone's attic, untouched since the late 1990s and mostly filled with late 1980s to early 1990s stuff. The amount was huge, I was literally limited by what I could fit in my car (a pretty decent family station wagon). That let me directly tick off my wanted list:
- a socketed 386 motherboard (which I needed to test some 386 CPUs)
- a 386/486 combo board
- a small old 50p SCSI drive for a period build
- a BTC foam&foil keyboard
- an IBM Model M (OK, I have quite a few already, but you can never have enough as I actually use these as daily drivers so I'm always on the lookout)
- a >=2MB VLB card with S3 chip (in fact 3MB - and several of the cards NOS with manuals)
- some 1980s-style black drive bay covers - and a whole 5150 clone case with them

That's just a tiny fraction of the haul. The rest consists of stuff I didn't even know I wanted, stuff I can exchange, stuff I can sell at prices that generate goodwill as well - which can be more important than hard cash when you're looking for obscure stuff, and even a few things I've been asked to donate to a local computer museum. I simply don't have the space to hoard hundreds of systems, but I still jump at this sort of ad, simply as a way to draw back stuff into the community, and have a lot of educational fun (for myself and my children, who are starting love the old stuff too) doing so.
But even putting that aside, even if you are a cold-hearted person who will immediately trash whatever you don't need, it still makes sense to get hold of big lots like this just for the parts you do want. If I'd had to buy that list on a well-known auction site, it would have cost me over EUR 200, even excluding shipping. This cost me less - and that applies to almost every large lot I've bought.