Unfortunately that's the normal ebay price now, but the ebay prices are extremely inflated and not a ton actually sell at those prices. Rarely you can find decent deals on ebay still, but you have to look pretty hard and the good deals are usually auctions. I've had much better luck locally, eyeing up a PII Prosignia for $60 on craiglist right now and got a working P4P800 SE for $10 (with CPU/memory) recently, which beats the hell out of $100+ ebay prices for the same motherboard. Almost all of my peripherals and media come from thrift stores, but you've gotta go to the smaller stores and not chains like Goodwill, who think they have gold every time something beige passes their doorstep and send it all to online auctions. I'd imagine swap meets/VCF are a lot better too, but I can't say for sure since I haven't been to an event yet.

Ebay prices have been very stupid for the last few years. Where I live I can't find any old electronics except the occasional clock radio and I even live in the area Gateways we're built and there's nothing. Even the local recycle place here tries to sell old beat up beige cases for $120+.

It's a combination of the pandemic and nostalgia cycle has driven up prices on late 90s/early 2000s stuff. I've also noticed that PC games from that same era are going for monstrously inflated prices, even compared to titles a decade earlier.

I've had better success getting systems locally at prices that are half or less compared to Ebay.

not really, sometimes i find a good price on ebay for specifich item. example: 3x 15k scsi drive (two are 68pin!) at 36€ shippied in my country (coming also from my country)

The average everyday "Buy Now" prices are almost always ridiculously inflated.
You can sometimes get a decent deal with regular old auction listing, the problem is that those are few and far between.
Normally they will either be crazy Buy Now, or just insane starting bid prices.
What usually gets me is the shipping prices.

Already mentioned but try local alternatives like facebook market place.
People will post "any old crap" hoping just to make a few dollars.

ebay tends to attract people who think what they are selling is actually worth something.

Agree chinny22 ! Look local ! Check all the local thrift stores and craigslist, you might be amazed what you find though are getting more rare.....
added: it is not so much the price of the case but the ass-hat seller and ebay restrictions on shipping that cause most to be rediculas priced....
added 2: and you have clowns like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/124539088967 Missing side cover and $93 for shipping ? Wow

Are you looking at full working systems or just cases?

It does seem like slot 1-type stuff on eBay is priced quite high, but I think the big issue is that slot 1 is increasingly rare. Most slot 1 stuff got thrown out 15+ years ago...

Also worth noting - the slot 1 era happens to be a time when the big direct OEMs (Dell, Gateway, etc) were selling very modular systems. So you can make an enthusiast retro system out of a Dell Dimension R or T or the Gateway equivalent in a way that... you couldn't... with some integrated graphics/onboard sound/mATX POS from 2002-3 or an "IBM" (nee Acer) Aptiva from 1998. And with enthusiast motherboards for that era being rare too, a full ATX Dell/Gateway/etc system is not a bad alternative option.

It's always more expensive if you look for something very specific fast.

"Are retro towers really now $150-300?"

only if someone actually buys them i guess, how does it look in the sold listings?

if you look at sold prices vs completed but not sold you can get a rough idea about how likely a price will be paid

also a number of listings are on multiple sites now, that's why sometimes they just 'disappear' before the listing end date and you wont know if someone bought it at full price

In the past years, I've found quite some interesting stuff in the analogue world (flea markets, news paper advertisements)..
If a ham fair or garage sale is around, it might be worth visiting, too.
Unlike eBay stuff, some of that stuff might be just considered junk by their owners.
So there's a chance of getting things for a reasonable price tag.

Ebay prices are actually dragging local sales now, I see more and more local ads "selling this pc for 200, similar items on ebay cost 300, so no bargains I'm even selling it cheap"

konc wrote on 2024-02-06, 11:45:

Ebay prices are actually dragging local sales now, I see more and more local ads "selling this pc for 200, similar items on ebay cost 300, so no bargains I'm even selling it cheap"

yup they see the listed price on eBay but ignore the sold for price on completed sales, no one is paying 300 USD for a 20 year old Tower PC untested. (Well some here might be just crazy enough to buy towers untested but you could count them on one hand)

A fully tested and working Tower PC though if its nicely kitted out might actually be worth 300 USD to the right person, there are a few sellers here in Australia that do specialise in such builds but sell through rates are very low.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-02-06, 11:51:

konc wrote on 2024-02-06, 11:45:

Ebay prices are actually dragging local sales now, I see more and more local ads "selling this pc for 200, similar items on ebay cost 300, so no bargains I'm even selling it cheap"

yup they see the listed price on eBay but ignore the sold for price on completed sales, no one is paying 300 USD for a 20 year old Tower PC untested.

Exactly, I forgot that. These ads usually include free dead things inside and no cleaning effort whatsoever, hey it's cheap I'm not gonna clean it too. In fact I'll just wrap it in a bag to make sure you'll get all the pieces and post it because I already told you, it's so cheap that you shouldn't expect much.

To be fair there are also those that don't follow the scene and are tricked by the other kind of builds you mentioned. They see a carefully made retro-pc with expensive components and a certain high price and automatically assume that that's the price for any old case.

konc wrote on 2024-02-06, 12:44:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-02-06, 11:51:

konc wrote on 2024-02-06, 11:45:

Ebay prices are actually dragging local sales now, I see more and more local ads "selling this pc for 200, similar items on ebay cost 300, so no bargains I'm even selling it cheap"

yup they see the listed price on eBay but ignore the sold for price on completed sales, no one is paying 300 USD for a 20 year old Tower PC untested.

Exactly, I forgot that. These ads usually include free dead things inside and no cleaning effort whatsoever, hey it's cheap I'm not gonna clean it too. In fact I'll just wrap it in a bag to make sure you'll get all the pieces and post it because I already told you, it's so cheap that you shouldn't expect much.

To be fair there are also those that don't follow the scene and are tricked by the other kind of builds you mentioned. They see a carefully made retro-pc with expensive components and a certain high price and automatically assume that that's the price for any old case.

You expect to get a bag ...HA, you'll get a flimsy box with holes in it, NO PADDING or packing tape and you'll like it !

I fucking hate eBay at times, people use it as the standard when it should be the exception, its literally the wild west full of crooks, scammers and charlatans trying to sell snake oil for stupid prices and the unknowing buyers just lap that shit up and think its normal.

VivienM wrote on 2024-02-06, 03:18:

Are you looking at full working systems or just cases?

It does seem like slot 1-type stuff on eBay is priced quite high, but I think the big issue is that slot 1 is increasingly rare. Most slot 1 stuff got thrown out 15+ years ago...

Also worth noting - the slot 1 era happens to be a time when the big direct OEMs (Dell, Gateway, etc) were selling very modular systems. So you can make an enthusiast retro system out of a Dell Dimension R or T or the Gateway equivalent in a way that... you couldn't... with some integrated graphics/onboard sound/mATX POS from 2002-3 or an "IBM" (nee Acer) Aptiva from 1998. And with enthusiast motherboards for that era being rare too, a full ATX Dell/Gateway/etc system is not a bad alternative option.

I wouldn’t mind either but funny enough even empty cases are selling not for much less.

It doesn’t help that there is no one make these beige retro cases. If someone out of china started producing them I think that would go a long way but I’m guessing the tooling for it would be too expensive.

Cases are also hard to find in good condition. Even with retro brighting, deep scratches or cracked plastics are hard to repair.

Zukovsky wrote on 2024-02-06, 14:33:

Cases are also hard to find in good condition. Even with retro brighting, deep scratches or cracked plastics are hard to repair.

Yup... seems like those beige cases just don't age well. If you want to see an extreme example, wander over to vintage Macland. Many, many beige Macs are missing drive bay covers, for example, which seems really weird given internal expansion was always rare on Macs, but my guess is that those drive bay covers just broke. Apparently 30 year old Apple beige plastic is very, very, very brittle...

Yeah pretty much.
People have got wise to the retro computing craze that the like of Philscomputerlab has made popular on yourtube.

I think beige cases will age better then black ones with polycarbonate side panels.

You are better of buying broken clunkers for the case with any working parts being a bonus.