I would also like to add another point: having lived in Central Europe and Southeast Asia lately, I realized that for us, collectors' of vintage computer parts the supply of stuff in a given country is closely related to the level of economic development of that country at the time when these computer parts were new/mainstream. Not just the income levels, but the sheer availability of items. It is relatively harder to get early 80s computer parts (Western anyway) in Hungary, as that country was still behind the iron curtain at the time. In most of Southeast Asia, things might have been more readily available, especially because of Singapore (Creative Labs...), but there weren't many people with deep enough pockets at that time. So I am not finding many items over here. For stuff to have survived over the last 20-25 years, they either needed to be unique items or really mass market pieces (like an SB16). I know it might be obvious to some, but what the heck.

Also, there could be cultural differences at play too: in my experience, some cultures have a tendency to absolutely go for the new and discard the old as thrash, while other are more preservation oriented. In most developing countries - but do correct me if I am wrong - the old is thrown away without a second thought. A deep wish for faster modernization I suppose.

I bought items from all over the world, but the UK, US, Germany and Australia stand out as frequent places of origin. In my experience, everything from the UK ships fastest.

IT & JP are really good for vintage MIDI.

vetz wrote:

Is it just me or is the whole USA ebay completely overpriced and undersupplied? I mean, there are over 300 million people living in the US. It should be the biggest marked by far for old computer hardware, but I find much more available, especially in Germany and the UK which considerable lower populations. Anyone else noticed this?

Also seems to be a good marked in Australia with even less citizens.

There are more collectors in the USA so the good stuff gets snapped up almost as soon as the listings go live. More collectors means more demand and more demand translates into higher prices sooner or later. That's the reason why I am such an opportunistic buyer, buying things that are undervalued whether I need them or not. Anything I don't use gets traded locally or turned for a profit. If anything really good with a BIN price goes unsold for more than an hour, there are probably issues with the listing preventing buyers from finding it right away or else the seller has it priced way above the market. Normal auctions that run their course and still finish low probably mean a temporary lull in the market for that part.I wish I could predict those, but on second thought maybe not. I'd only go from knee deep in boxes of old parts to waist deep. 🤣

sliderider wrote:

There are more collectors in the USA so the good stuff gets snapped up almost as soon as the listings go live.

What's the basis for this statement?

badmojo wrote:

sliderider wrote:

There are more collectors in the USA so the good stuff gets snapped up almost as soon as the listings go live.

What's the basis for this statement?

Personal experience. I've spent a lot of time searching the completed listings and many of the things I was looking for I was disappointed to find went early either because someone took advantage of the BIN or made an offer the seller couldn't refuse.

From personal experience people in RU and the US are more willing to buy fast and at a good price. People in the EU are less likely to buy fast and they usually are more money sensitive. 😀

Another thing that is a bit strange is that in my country you can mark items as "free for pickup" in the ads. You can change the BIN price of the item as low as 1 dollar and get no interest, but as soon as you set it to "free for pickup" you get drowned with requests. None of them have any problems driving long distances (and paying for gas and tolls) just to get it...

When people see something as free they go ballshit crazy.

This is why I hate craigslist. I have a different kind of hate for the asses that
Have to haggle at garage sales no matter how good the price.
You're already practically giving something away just to get rid of it, but
some goof will try to get it from you for $2. You will also have people
try to get in your damn house (happened to a friend, apparently the
"Customer" thought it was an estate sale).

snorg wrote:

This is why I hate craigslist. I have a different kind of hate for the asses that Have to haggle at garage sales no matter how […]
Show full quote

This is why I hate craigslist. I have a different kind of hate for the asses that
Have to haggle at garage sales no matter how good the price.
You're already practically giving something away just to get rid of it, but
some goof will try to get it from you for $2. You will also have people
try to get in your damn house (happened to a friend, apparently the
"Customer" thought it was an estate sale).

That is why I am quitting my side business because of these douchebags wanting everything for free or for the price of a chicken. Like I would just give away a MacBook Pro for chump change let alone a gaming laptop no less. A lot of the businesses in town are the exact same way and hope that the next round of pain in the market hits them hard.

I know that's why I hate selling....there's almost no point sometimes.

I would like to add that disproportions of hardware availability is in my opinion more dependent on demographics on a much smaller scale than just country to country. I have found that in North American cities, some have just ridiculous amounts of old hardware available in old stores, recycling centers (the kind where they sell stuff too, not just recycle), online classifieds, garage sales, etc. whereas some cities are bone dry deserts when it comes to retro hardware...a disparity of hardware if you may 🤣 ...but again, yes, geographic location and how far you live from that city with all the hardware would be a big determinant of what is available to you as many have mentioned here already.

Also, I believe that one must consider the availability of storage and average sizes of homes and the availability or existence of electronic recycling operations. An equation to determine a ratio of some kind for the AVAILABILITY OF RETRO HARDWARE would have to include variables of POPULATION, AREA, AVERAGE INCOME per CAPITA, NUMBER OF RECYCLING FACILITIES PER CAPITA, and STORAGE SPACE AVAILABLE per CAPITA or something to that effect 🤣

Do we have any mathematicians and/or statisticians in the house that can put together a formula for us? 🤣

FUN FACT: (Not really related to this topic but I thought some might find it interesting) For a while, the United Nations would use the "number of internet connections per capita" as an indication of Quality of Life, now I am not so sure if they still do that.

For me postage is the real killer in terms of cost. I have gotten many $1 items, but postage is usually $15 or so within Australia. I do check for other items and ask for combined shipping but then you just end up spending even more 😀

The cost of driving was mentioned and that's a fair point.

The AU market is quite good, but there aren't many "real" private auctions. Many are mass resellers with often frustratingly high prices. But apart from Roland gear and a few motherboards, I got most items from Australia. New gadgets I usually get from eBay Asia because they are so cheap over there.

I don't like selling either. Whenever I did sell I used eBay and the auctions usually work quite well. For me it's the best way to sell as you usually get rid of everything and get an ok price as well. I just don't think it's worth it, I rather keep it because you never know when you need a part.

For us to ship overseas isn't worth it. The cost has exploded and it's simply not worth it. This isn't going to improve, I see shipping costs keep going up, which is bizarre considering personal flights have become cheaper and cheaper and the amount of shipped boxes should be on the way up.

I personally believe that a lot of items in the US go for quite cheap compared to anywhere else. UK have quite good deals too. Down here in Australia, retro hardware is hard to find and so we're forced to buy from overseas.

The main problem we face is that cost of the postage is normally more than double the cost of the item itself. What I always find very strange is that when I buy items from the US and get them shipped directly to my Portland, Oregon US forwarding address, the shipping is normally free. Shipping within the US must be dirt cheap for sellers to offer free shipping. Down here Australia post charge me $15-$20 to deliver an item within the same state, let alone interstate.

What is also quite annoying is that we have to really question the seller about the item because the return cost to get the item back to the seller is anywhere between $35-$65 sometimes more depending on weight of course.

To conclude, due to the high cost of shipping, a $300 retro rig ends up costing $600 so if I was in the US I honestly wouldn't complain.

borgie83 wrote:

I personally believe that a lot of items in the US go for quite cheap compared to anywhere else. UK have quite good deals too. D […]
Show full quote

I personally believe that a lot of items in the US go for quite cheap compared to anywhere else. UK have quite good deals too. Down here in Australia, retro hardware is hard to find and so we're forced to buy from overseas.

The main problem we face is that cost of the postage is normally more than double the cost of the item itself. What I always find very strange is that when I buy items from the US and get them shipped directly to my Portland, Oregon US forwarding address, the shipping is normally free. Shipping within the US must be dirt cheap for sellers to offer free shipping. Down here Australia post charge me $15-$20 to deliver an item within the same state, let alone interstate.

What is also quite annoying is that we have to really question the seller about the item because the return cost to get the item back to the seller is anywhere between $35-$65 sometimes more depending on weight of course.

To conclude, due to the high cost of shipping, a $300 retro rig ends up costing $600 so if I was in the US I honestly wouldn't complain.

Postage can be a PITA even buying within your own country. Heavy items or items that require extra care to ship can cost so much that they aren't worth it. Local sourcing is really the only way to go for some things unless you are so desperate to have the item that you don't care how much it costs to ship.

There is also no point in selling things unless there is demand for it. I find desktops are not desirable for instance. Those are a PITA to sell. 😀

Won three auctions for S478 motherboards at min. bid, which was a dollar. But postage is $15 each. So a potential bargain becomes a non-insignificant amount 😒

Buying things in JP get expensive that way: postage and all the fees / commissions for the shopping service. 😈

There are thousands of people here in the US looking for old machine to recycle for some cash. The old 386/486/P1/Ppro chips along with the old 680x0 chips command a premium because of gold content. So you have lots of motivated people paying $3-5 a system to recycle machines by the semiload to make some decent coin. So while there were millions of machines made they are all getting turned into ipods. In Europe there isn't a major local recycling market for cash, seems like the locals have government places to deposit your old systems by law. Isn't there laws in the EU about selling old electronics because of lead content ? Ebay isn't as popular outside the US.

At least Europeans had tons of Amiga gear for cheap in the last decade and Asians had those cool PSX systems we didn't have here.

I'll add a more philosophical note here...

I am American, and I can tell you that in the tech community there is an obvious contempt and disgust for anything even slightly "old". I am the only techie I know who thinks that vintage technology is fun. They all give me funny looks when I brag about the 486 I just built... but I also try and explain to these people that old tech stays relevant far, far longer than their stupid tech magazines would want them to believe. There is a TON of industrial machinery, point of sale systems, ATM machines, etc. that still run DOS. These systems do one simple thing very well, and are often still going 25 years later. I don't think there's anything wrong with that - much unlike every techie I know who has been indoctrinated with the UPGRADE UPGRADE UPGRADE philosophy. (I always suspected this idea was put in everyone's head by advertisers to make you want to buy their latest crap.)

So I guess my main point is that Americans, above all other cultures, would be the quickest to just kick a PC to the curb because it's "old". And so I believe that here in the USA we have trashed a disturbing amount of great vintage gear that probably still worked fine when it was tossed into the trash truck. 🙁 My take on EU and most other cultures in the world is that they're far more resourceful and make the most of what they have. By the way, the system requirements for MS Office 2010 say a Pentium 3 w/ 256mb ram - another example of how "old" stuff can still be very usable!

[ROTT] IanPaulFreeley wrote:

So I guess my main point is that Americans, above all other cultures, would be the quickest to just kick a PC to the curb because it's "old"

And what's your basis for this statement? I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but when you Americans compare your culture to others, as sliderider did earlier, do you realise that there actually are other cultures?? Did you consider Japan, or South Korea?

[ROTT] IanPaulFreeley wrote:

I'll add a more philosophical note here...

I am American, and I can tell you that in the tech community there is an obvious contempt and disgust for anything even slightly "old". I am the only techie I know who thinks that vintage technology is fun. They all give me funny looks when I brag about the 486 I just built... but I also try and explain to these people that old tech stays relevant far, far longer than their stupid tech magazines would want them to believe. There is a TON of industrial machinery, point of sale systems, ATM machines, etc. that still run DOS. These systems do one simple thing very well, and are often still going 25 years later. I don't think there's anything wrong with that - much unlike every techie I know who has been indoctrinated with the UPGRADE UPGRADE UPGRADE philosophy. (I always suspected this idea was put in everyone's head by advertisers to make you want to buy their latest crap.)

So I guess my main point is that Americans, above all other cultures, would be the quickest to just kick a PC to the curb because it's "old". And so I believe that here in the USA we have trashed a disturbing amount of great vintage gear that probably still worked fine when it was tossed into the trash truck. 🙁 My take on EU and most other cultures in the world is that they're far more resourceful and make the most of what they have. By the way, the system requirements for MS Office 2010 say a Pentium 3 w/ 256mb ram - another example of how "old" stuff can still be very usable!

I've got to agree with you here, I used to be that way myself. There is no technical reason I could not have used my original Tandy 1000 (with a few strategic upgrades) through my entire highschool and college career. It would have been limited in some ways, but for term papers, online research (back in the day when most of the internet was text based anyway) and basic programming classes, it would have more than sufficed. The money I would have saved from constantly chasing the latest upgrade or new hot thing, if properly invested, would have probably gotten me on an early start to financial freedom. The lack of distraction from being able to use the system for anything other than productive work would have been a benefit also (hard to dick around when you can't multi-task). And I might have expanded my social horizons instead of sitting in playing Doom on a Friday night like a dweeb. But hey it is always easy to make these kind of comments with the benefit of hindsight.
I'm sure at the time I would have been jealous as hell of my friends with the brand new 486 or Pentium but future me would rather have $100k in the bank, especially since I ended up getting old computers thrown at me anyway. I never really anticipated the PC as becoming virtually a throw-away device. Hardware always had some value, if only to fund an upgrade to the next system.