I live on Long Island, NY and there's next to nothing good in my local thrift stores. Mostly overpriced Pentium 4 PCs ($40? 🤣) and generic crappy keyboards

Jed118 wrote:

Does anyone know where such a place exists in Canada?

In Canada? You mean that place where Office Glen works?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGkX1u-pG3s

Perhaps you could be more specific about where exactly in Canada you are looking. Domestic shipping rates are ridiculous, so I don't think you want to shop online, if that's what you're thinking.

oeuvre wrote:

I live on Long Island, NY and there's next to nothing good in my local thrift stores. Mostly overpriced Pentium 4 PCs ($40? 🤣) and generic crappy keyboards

My first wife lives there - She runs an antique store now and always thrift shops. She's never seen anything from the XT to 386 era...

I've never heard of Office Glen. I do know Mike, Mike from Canmore.

Toronto or the GTA. There's some stuff occasionally on kijiji but usually it's overpriced ($100 for a yellowed out clone 386 SX? No thanks) but SOMETIMES I get lucky, like with my SCSI Syquest 88 drive and media 😉 That was only $2.

There is freegeek but they almost never keep anything from that era. I wonder where it all ends up...

Supplies for me in my state (southern US) have dried up a couple of years ago and like me your only option might be eBay but you already know those Canadian shipping prices are highway robbery.

Indeed I do - to counteract that, I've amassed quite a little pile in Poland, and my father and I are slowly bringing it here (because we travel between Canada and Poland a lot anyways). The problem there is I just have to take the seller's word for it that the stuff works - So far I'm the owner of an early but completely useless 40Mb IDE drive and an SX-40 motherboard that won't POST (otherwise I did well).

When I saw that Obsolete Geek video only made 2 years ago I nearly pooped my pants - It would be the same if I saw a video of a junkyard with a row of Ponys in them, only to learn that the junkyard was liquidated.

Toronto? Value Village (thrift store) places used to have tons of AT and early ATX PCs. Weirdly they often had the side panels off, as if people were sneaking tools in to check the innards, and then... just leaving them disassembled on the shelves without bolting them back on. That was ~10 years ago, though... now I'm lucky to find P4-based laptops with missing HDDs for ~$30 each (;_;) and no desktops.

Goodwill has dried up in the lower 48 for the most part because Goodwill got smart and started their own centralized auction website for the entire U.S. Salvation Army rarely has anything either. Craigslist is a good resource occasionally, but so many resellers have flooded that with their ads to buy. I still have luck at local garage sales once in awhile. Do you have any PC repair centers that have been open for decades around you? The local one in my area keeps many of their old systems for parts, but even they are starting to recycle much more. Nowadays you have to be willing to travel, which I do, and expand out to a larger area. Also, do you have a tourist season in your area? Most of the garage sales are better in my area when tourist season is in full swing. It's getting tough because I have met young people in their teens and 20s who are fascinated with old tech from the 70s, 80s and now 90s so they are getting into the mix as well. If you go to the largest retro gaming expo in the U.S., which is PRGE (Portland Retro Gaming Expo), you instantly see retro/old hardware collecting has gone almost mainstream now. Although retro PC gaming has lagged a bit behind the consoles because there is more investment. One other thing is to understand Ebay patterns. I find late at night is the best time to check when many are asleep and the occasional buy it now will pop up at a great price which i instantly grab. Less competition for the same resources. If you're young start collecting newer stuff that is cheaper that you have a gut feeling will be rare, collectible and/or expensive later. You have to be very versatile in these modern times. I do regret not picking up that large tub of Atari ST games all CIB at a local Goodwill back in 1998-99. If only I had known. haha

I used to work at such a store in the mid 90s and they went out of business in the early 2000s. That place was a boon for old parts. I got so much from them, but almost all of it was sold over the years. I have a fair bit left, and yes, I recall Goodwills (which no longer exist in Toronto) were great for that, and sometimes Salvation Army had some cool stuff too. Value Village and Talize routinely overprice their things, and really, nothing good is in there.

I'm actually building a retro 386 DX-40 from all the parts I have left over (and an ATX power supply) specifically for sale - This should offset the costs of m other build projects based on what I'm seeing on eBay.

Agreed, late night eBay is good too - As are eBay's in other countries (Poland has allegro.pl) but I'm more asking about a place you can walk into and touch/see old computers on a shelf. I haven't seen something like that since I worked at Brampton Computes in the 90s.

I think it'd be cool if someone started a trading forum for Canadian vintage computing buffs. Not here, though. It's the rules.

gdjacobs wrote:

I think it'd be cool if someone started a trading forum for Canadian vintage computing buffs.

Like I said: if you're not trading locally, the shipping costs are likely to be so high that you can't really compete with ordering from the US or elsewhere. Or have you found some unusually inexpensive means of shipping?

Probably the best way would be rideshare within the community. Even so, a more localized Canadian trading forum would increase the chances of buyers and sellers being closer to each other.

Jorpho wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

I think it'd be cool if someone started a trading forum for Canadian vintage computing buffs.

Like I said: if you're not trading locally, the shipping costs are likely to be so high that you can't really compete with ordering from the US or elsewhere. Or have you found some unusually inexpensive means of shipping?

If I need to have something shipped, I *could* call in a favour from Canpar, but I can't do that continuously. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for pickups.

Otherwise, I'd have an EGA monitor already!

gdjacobs wrote:

Probably the best way would be rideshare within the community. Even so, a more localized Canadian trading forum would increase the chances of buyers and sellers being closer to each other.

A Canadian trading forum, where Vancouverites can trade with Newfoundlanders. Sure, makes perfect sense.

I could point out http://cgcc.ca/forums/ , which seems to have surprisingly decent traffic in its Swap forum. And there's the ol' Redflagdeals.com .

Actually, I was thinking about Yukoners trading with Newfoundlanders.

Seriously, where did you read this kind of thing in my post? The idea is to group traders from Canada thus decreasing the average distance between them making swaps more viable. CGCC might work if they're comfortable with people trading computer hardware and games instead of console and arcade gear (which seems to be their thing).

Tell me more. My inventory might have shrunk down to a drawer full, but I'm game to participate in at least the infrastructure!