babtras wrote on 2020-06-17, 02:47:

Seems like it would be a significant overhaul of their system to accommodate a small number of people like yourself who have residences in multiple countries.

it really doesn't though, instead of just taking one data point of comparision for country just add up all the adresses in an account.
and don't lock down the shipping options once checkout has been sent but just keep the original shipping options intact.

I've been scammed 3 times on the local classifieds recently... not having paypal and a bigger rating system behind it really seems to tempt some people.

Miphee wrote on 2020-06-17, 11:11:

That's because people are too damn impatient and want everything at once. They want huge collections but barely use them. Sellers know this and set the price accordingly. They know that impatient people will drive the price up because there is always a guy who is willing to pay way too much. No price is ridiculous if someone is willing to pay it.

I feel attacked x3

my reasoning is pretty easy, I'd rather get what I can now than not be able to get it ever again, or not be able to afford it in the future.
also yes, my collection is not purely for using, but also just preserving and archiving stuff, though I plan to eventually use a big chunk of it.

though the ones paying ridiculous prices and the ones collecting just everything like me are definitely two different groups x3 unless you're just rich and don't care.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-06-17, 09:02:

This use to be a poor mans hobby.

It still is (at least for me). Five years ago I was collecting old game consoles, but I quit after the prices got so high I couldn't get anything interesting even by being patient.

Since then I've managed to build quite a large PC collection I'm very happy with and only recently I've started to invest more because I grew up and so I have more money, and also because the things I'm looking for now are less easy to find, but I still remain in a sane area of price, at least for me (I never invested over 60€ for a complete system, I never invested more than 50€ in a single card, except maybe the snark barker but that doesn't really count since that's a totally new card and you can't really make it cheaper anyways, etc).

This hobby becomes a lot more affordable if you decide to become a seller yourself. This becomes a necessity if you're limited by space. Although the days of buying Voodoo 3 cards for $20 are gone (but not truly long gone), you can still buy up lots of cards on eBay for reasonable amounts. Keep the one you want and sell the rest. A lot of the time, you can recoup your investment or even profit.

But being a good seller is work too. Not hard work, but it can be time-consuming if you want to be as honest as you can about the condition of your items. I like testing stuff more than playing games anyway, so it works out for me. All I can say is that I'm in the black over years of collecting and selling, making the hobby affordable. I think it can still be so.

boxpressed wrote on 2020-06-17, 15:22:

This hobby becomes a lot more affordable if you decide to become a seller yourself. This becomes a necessity if you're limited by space. Although the days of buying Voodoo 3 cards for $20 are gone (but not truly long gone), you can still buy up lots of cards on eBay for reasonable amounts. Keep the one you want and sell the rest. A lot of the time, you can recoup your investment or even profit.

But being a good seller is work too. Not hard work, but it can be time-consuming if you want to be as honest as you can about the condition of your items. I like testing stuff more than playing games anyway, so it works out for me. All I can say is that I'm in the black over years of collecting and selling, making the hobby affordable. I think it can still be so.

I have been coming to this conclusion too, now that my wishlist and home office is getting filled. Finding it, inspecting, testing is 90% of the fun. Storing it in a closet is not so much fun. So I'm starting to inventory and retest things and box them up for resale. I have some duplication of stuff so I can sell it and offset the cost of buying stuff that I still want for my collection or trade it straight across if I happen to find anyone locally that has a retro-computing hobby. I don't want to gouge, but eBay is pretty high risk for sellers due to their 'always side with the buyer' policy so a higher price is warranted if you choose so sell it there (though I think in retro computing buyer fraud is less rampant because much of it is AS-IS).

babtras wrote on 2020-06-17, 15:46:

I have been coming to this conclusion too, now that my wishlist and home office is getting filled. Finding it, inspecting, testing is 90% of the fun. Storing it in a closet is not so much fun. So I'm starting to inventory and retest things and box them up for resale. I have some duplication of stuff so I can sell it and offset the cost of buying stuff that I still want for my collection or trade it straight across if I happen to find anyone locally that has a retro-computing hobby. I don't want to gouge, but eBay is pretty high risk for sellers due to their 'always side with the buyer' policy so a higher price is warranted if you choose so sell it there (though I think in retro computing buyer fraud is less rampant because much of it is AS-IS).

Good point. About 99% of my video and sound cards are in anti-static bags in individual boxes in a storage room, out of sight. Some I haven't touched in five years. I've been putting together a spreadsheet of cards just so that I don't buy any more duplicates (to me, forgetting what you have is a sign that the hobby has changed in a bad way for a collector) and so that I might sell off some of the excess.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I sold an uncommon video or sound card, and the selling price was exactly the cost of a NOS 15" MAG CRT monitor. That was a great example of getting rid of something I'd never use for something that would get a lot of use and would stay out of the storage room.

You guys do really have some great points there. I won't deny that I ended up hoarding way more than I originally intended (I just wanted to rebuild the old 486 I had before, the P90 system and the Duron 750 system) because from there on I had kept my old hardware. But I ended up getting interested in various items and ended up with a huge stockpile of various cards, mainboards, cpus, etc...
My wife was not really amused so I'll probably have to sell some things, too.

Because if I'm honest to myself, I don't even have a look at most of the hardware anymore because you can only use so many systems at the same time.

imi wrote on 2020-06-17, 14:35:

my reasoning is pretty easy, I'd rather get what I can now than not be able to get it ever again, or not be able to afford it in the future.

It was merely an analysis, I often feel the same way.
I like to follow biddings and people are crazy unpredictable. Sometimes they don't want to bid on a complete IBM 300GL with a monitor + printer at $15 but go crazy and start a bidding war for a generic untested 386 clone for $120. It's scary. I stopped using auction sites for this very reason, you just can't win when people with money are around. It doesn't mean that it's a rich man's hobby, it means that auction sites are filled with people who can afford to spend a $1000 on hardware / month, typically resellers. My budget is about $100 at max when I really want something. Ebay is out of the question because wage differences are huge. The average annual wage is $6000 here so Ebay is more of a platform for wealthier countries.
Solution? I visit smaller sites where resellers are non-existent and find sellers who want to make an honest bargain and don't overprice everything whenever the word "retro" gets thrown around. There are millions of people who stored their old computers in the attic and it's waiting for retro enthusiasts to find them without having to break the bank.
The original statement was: "it used to be a poor man's hobby" and it's true and false. It's true when you only buy from resellers, false when you look elsewhere.
Hoarding hardware is smart if you have the space for it, that is the biggest problem people face. I only started collecting again since last year and I already filled 2 average sized rooms. I don't want to sell a thing but don't want to store them in the living spaces either. Half-jokingly told my wife that it's time to move to a bigger house!

Marentis wrote on 2020-06-17, 16:46:

Because if I'm honest to myself, I don't even have a look at most of the hardware anymore because you can only use so many systems at the same time.

I think of it as an investment for my children. I gave my wife specific instructions on what to do with my collection after I'm gone. "So no honey, don't throw everything in the dumpster or I'll come back and haunt you for the rest of your life!"

Miphee wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:02:

I like to follow biddings and people are crazy unpredictable. Sometimes they don't want to bid on a complete IBM 300GL with a monitor + printer at $15 but go crazy and start a bidding war for a generic untested 386 clone for $120. It's scary.

I've missed a few really good deals this way. Have stuff in my watch list just in case nobody bids on something.... then I get busy and miss bidding and then find out after the aution has ended that it went for the minimum or just above the minimum price.

Oh well.

And yeah, I've seen a few auctions go for crazy money when there is really nothing in the auction worth anything that I can tell. Almost like some people are using eBay to launder money... hmmmm.

If those crazy auctions are pickup only with cash, then laundering could be an explanation. But seems like it's not sustainable enough to be worth it. All my money laundering knowledge comes from Netflix's Ozark, 🤣.

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:19:

Miphee wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:02:

I like to follow biddings and people are crazy unpredictable. Sometimes they don't want to bid on a complete IBM 300GL with a monitor + printer at $15 but go crazy and start a bidding war for a generic untested 386 clone for $120. It's scary.

I've missed a few really good deals this way. Have stuff in my watch list just in case nobody bids on something.... then I get busy and miss bidding and then find out after the aution has ended that it went for the minimum or just above the minimum price.

that doesn't say much though, more often than not I only get outbid by one other person on a lot of things, so if I wouldn't have bid it would have often gone for the minimum amount, and just because I put in my bid of what I thought it was worth to me it went for a substantial amount instead.

the thing with richer collectors bidding on stuff is that they want that one specific part and don't care for how much (or at least have a far higher limit than me), so if you just collect all random stuff like me the chances that there is one person with more money that really wants that one particular item is really high ^^
hence why most of my collection comes from lots.

but a big trend I have noticed is that complete systems are often cheaper than going for any particular part... that means if you are looking for a specific part, and you find a system that has that part in it, it's likely to end up cheaper than just looking for that part by itself, this becomes especially true if you are looking for multiple in that particular system.

and then if you want you could sell whatever you don't need ^^

unfortunately I really don't have the nerves for selling stuff, so my hobby is a big red number for me.

imi wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:42:

cyclone3d wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:19:

Miphee wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:02:

I like to follow biddings and people are crazy unpredictable. Sometimes they don't want to bid on a complete IBM 300GL with a monitor + printer at $15 but go crazy and start a bidding war for a generic untested 386 clone for $120. It's scary.

I've missed a few really good deals this way. Have stuff in my watch list just in case nobody bids on something.... then I get busy and miss bidding and then find out after the aution has ended that it went for the minimum or just above the minimum price.

that doesn't say much though, more often than not I only get outbid by one other person on a lot of things, so if I wouldn't have bid it would have often gone for the minimum amount, and just because I put in my bid of what I thought it was worth to me and it went for a substantial amount instead.

That's the way capitalism works. In this case , it's a seller's market (even if only 2 buyers). The thing that makes it (sometimes extremely) unfair is the revenue/disposable income inequalities between countries and, to a lesser extent, individuals .

Miphee wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:02:

I visit smaller sites where resellers are non-existent and find sellers who want to make an honest bargain and don't overprice everything whenever the word "retro" gets thrown around. There are millions of people who stored their old computers in the attic and it's waiting for retro enthusiasts to find them without having to break the bank.

got a story on that, I found someone who was giving some motherboards away for free on the local classifieds (small site) closeby to where I live, the listing was pretty new and it included a motherboard I used to own when I was younger, my first socket A board a MSI K7T Turbo2, nothing particularly special, but had nostalgic value to me.
So I contacted that person, but because it was listed "for free" obviously someone had already snatched it up... even though the listing was only a few hours old iirc.
So I asked if they could contact whoever got them and ask if they needed that one board, because it was multiple boards anyways and if they were willing to give it to me, but I got a message back that they "needed it for their brother" apparently.
Not at all to my surprise a few days layter my ebay alert on K7T went off, and what did I see? not only did whoever got those boards just flat out lie, no they listed every single one of them for sale on ebay for prices of €40 and up (which is way too much for a simple socket A board anyways), I could identify they were the exact same boards because of the scuff marks on the boxes and the seller's location being closeby.
I messaged the person that had originally listed them on the local classifieds and they confirmed that yep, those were definitely the same boards.

so yeah, resellers are everywhere ^^
I've also seen plenty of items that went on ebay for a reasonable price pop up on amibay for double the amount sometimes for example.

darry wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:53:

That's the way capitalism works. In this case , it's a seller's market (even if only 2 buyers). The thing that makes it (sometimes extremely) unfair is the revenue/disposable income inequalities between countries and, to a lesser extent, individuals .

yep, I'm sure there's plenty of people buying up stuff from low income countries and reselling it in richer countries.
I pretty much only buy locally and on ebay germany because that's just the biggest selection in europe.

imi wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:42:

that means if you are looking for a specific part, and you find a system that has that part in it, it's likely to end up cheaper than just looking for that part by itself, this becomes especially true if you are looking for multiple in that particular system.

Especially true for my one weakness: IBM.
I wanted a power switch assembly for the incomplete IBM model 57SX I bought for $25. Ebay price: $70. PSU: $100. Complete model 57: $135. Fockin ell!

Miphee wrote on 2020-06-17, 18:20:

imi wrote on 2020-06-17, 17:42:

that means if you are looking for a specific part, and you find a system that has that part in it, it's likely to end up cheaper than just looking for that part by itself, this becomes especially true if you are looking for multiple in that particular system.

Especially true for my one weakness: IBM.
I wanted a power switch assembly for the incomplete IBM model 57SX I bought for $25. Ebay price: $70. PSU: $100. Complete model 57: $135. Fockin ell!

I guess it's like parting out an old car . That's the way car scrapyards make money . Or at least, that's the way I understand it .

imi wrote on 2020-06-17, 18:07:

Not at all to my surprise a few days layter my ebay alert on K7T went off, and what did I see? not only did whoever got those boards just flat out lie, no they listed every single one of them for sale on ebay for prices of €40 and up (which is way too much for a simple socket A board anyways), I could identify they were the exact same boards because of the scuff marks on the boxes and the seller's location being closeby.

A sad story that happens way too often. To be honest my biggest (former) retro supplier gets most of his inventory free from dumpsters. He is often called to empty houses and he gets to keep the furnitures and belongings as payment. And then there are evicted people who can't put their stuff anywhere so everything is taken to the city dump.. you never know where a prized hardware comes from.

darry wrote on 2020-06-17, 18:34:

I guess it's like parting out an old car . That's the way car scrapyards make money . Or at least, that's the way I understand it .

True, I'm just too cheap to pay $70 for a switch assembly. 😀
I don't have a problem with dealers making money as long as I can afford the part I'm looking for.
I doubt anyone would pay $70 for a switch assembly even if they could afford it.

darry wrote on 2020-06-17, 18:34:

I guess it's like parting out an old car . That's the way car scrapyards make money . Or at least, that's the way I understand it .

yeah, only when you're buying parts from scrapyards you get them for cheap usually x3

it only gets sad when you see an old retro laptop torn to bits just so every single individual part can be sold extra.

bottom panel of one particular laptop? €20
LCD panel of that laptop? €20
touchpad? €10
keyboard? €15
motherboard? €20
and so on...

and then a complete laptop turns up every now and then and sells for €15 x3

imi wrote on 2020-06-17, 19:04:

yeah, only when you're buying parts from scrapyards you get them for cheap usually x3 […]
Show full quote

darry wrote on 2020-06-17, 18:34:

I guess it's like parting out an old car . That's the way car scrapyards make money . Or at least, that's the way I understand it .

yeah, only when you're buying parts from scrapyards you get them for cheap usually x3

it only gets sad when you see an old retro laptop torn to bits just so every single individual part can be sold extra.

bottom panel of one particular laptop? €20
LCD panel of that laptop? €20
touchpad? €10
keyboard? €15
motherboard? €20
and so on...

and then a complete laptop turns up every now and then and sells for €15 x3

It is sad and often pointless . Some things are not really meant to be parted out . I wouldn't part out an old laptop from then these things were less common (because of their expense when new). How many potential clients can there be for the parts of a 20 year old high end laptop ? I can definitely understand parting out something recent with a big installed base and a scarcity of affordable parts .

Some people think that retro laptops are like old cars . What they don't realize, other than the previously mentioned, is that

a) the entire market is more niche.
b) the multitude of laptop vs car models means the potential market for parts is very fragmented.
c) The fact that laptop parts change at every generation (whereas car parts can span several model years) fragments the market even more .
d) The ability to part out a laptop without damaging relatively sensitive parts is not something everyone has .
e) The time it takes to properly part out a laptop is non negligeable and time is money .

That said, parting out non OEM desktops, and even OEM ones, to an extent, makes a lot more sense economically because of part inter-compatibility accrossbrands, models and generations (to a point).

Part of the problem with parting things out is that cases seem to be scrapped in a disproportionate amount due to their higher shipping costs, causing a shortage of vintage PC cases. To follow the junkyard analogy, imagine if you went to the junkyard and couldn't get a door, hood, or trunk lid because the yard only held on to stuff like engines and suspension components.