VOGONS


First post, by gbeirn

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Please forgive me if this isn’t the correct place for this or if it isn’t allowed in the forums at all.

I’ve been collecting old and vintage x86 hardware for a long time. It started with just CPUs and then expanded from there to video cards, RAM, whole systems, CRTs, motherboards, you name it.

Most of it was a ‘one day I’ll really set this all up’. As I get older my hobbies and interests change and I am realizing I have way way too much stuff and what would really bring me joy is getting this stuff to people who would appreciate it.

I am not looking to sell it on this forum but how should I go about this?

It’s not well organized and selling individually would take likely as long as it didn’t collect it (30+ years).

Is there any place or person that would bulk buy vintage stuff?

I’m talking 1000s of x86 CPUs, dozen of motherboards and systems, 100s of sound and video cards.

It would really pain me to dump it as e-waste but I really want it out of my life ( and garage ) at this point.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

Reply 1 of 8, by lolo799

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Selling items individually or by lots would take a lot of time, not mentioning posting items and dealing with unhappy buyers...

You should post about it on the vcfed forum at https://vcfed.org/forum-4/
And look for computer clubs or museums somewhat locally to wherever you are.

PCMCIA Sound, Storage & Graphics

Reply 3 of 8, by kixs

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Just a thought. If you actually know what you have... take the most valuable items, test and sell individually. The rest sell locally as untested for "peanuts". If I look at my collection, there are probably ~30 items that are like 90% value of all the rest combined.

Visit my AmiBay items for sale (updated: 2025-03-14). I also take requests 😉
https://www.amibay.com/members/kixs.977/#sales-threads

Reply 4 of 8, by Unknown_K

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Sell the high value items yourself, part out the middle stuff to others to sell for a percentage, give the junk away for free locally.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 5 of 8, by DaveDDS

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There's a "classic computer collectors mailing list" -IIRC it's "classiccmp.org"

PCs are on the new side for many of the participants but if you have something old/interesting someone might want it.

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

Reply 6 of 8, by momaka

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I only sold a few stuff from my collection a little over a year ago when I was moving, but it didn't end up being that much of a hassle.

A lot of people are recommending Facebook... but I've heard of way too many scam stories and/or bots on there, so I still refuse to try it. On the other hand, I did have pretty decent experience with Craigslist and Ebay.

Craigslist can be quicker once you find someone interested in an item or set of items... but otherwise can be a bit slow due to being local only (so it will depend on the demand for this stuff in your area.

Ebay, on the other hand, is excellent for getting to a larger audience. And no, you wouldn't have to separate every individual item to list it. You could actually just as easily deal in bulk. For example, separate all PCI-E video cards and sell together as one large lot. To sell quicker, start the auction at $0.99 with no reserve, and the shipping to whatever Ebay calculates it as (usually based on the size of the shipping box.) To avoid dealing with returns, make sure to set the condition as "For Parts or Repair". Of course, if anything (or even the majority) from that lot works, do write that in your item title and description. Just write that you don't want returns because you are trying to clear this stuff. This is how I sold the few items I had time for in my collection, and not only did I get a decent amount of $ (which I didn't honestly care too much for, I just wanted the stuff to find a better home and/or some use), but all of the buyers were satisfied too. And the prices of my stuff was actually more fair this way, as I let the bidding determine the price instead of pricing something too high and waiting for months for someone "to bite". Like I said, I didn't care about how much I was going to make (or if anything at all.) But I had some old and obscure stuff that was getting hard to find but that I didn't have any use for myself. So I'm glad I was able to pass them down onto other people.
The only bothersome part with selling your stuff on Ebay, I suppose, would be the shipping part. Actually, the shipping part is easy. It's the packing that can get a little more tiresome. In my case, I was lucky that I lived in a fairly dense suburban area, so all I had to do was walk down the street in my neighborhood on the night/day before trash/recycling services came, and pick up empty boxes and packaging materials so that I wouldn't have to drive to my UPS or USPS or FedEx store, wait in line, and pay extra (sometimes too much) for packaging supplies that would only get used once anyways. The only packaging supplies I did buy was a large roll of masking tape (works better for cardboard boxes IMO) and clear mailing/packaging tape (for taping shipping labels onto the box.) That's it.
Of course, if you don't want to deal with shipping at all, you can list some or all of your items as local pickup only. That of course would probably limit the number of buyers/bidders quite a bit. But at least you would still get the wide Ebay audience. Just make sure that if you do "local pickup only", you write that in several places in your auction/ad, to make sure people see it. Dealing with people who bid blindly without noticing you have the auction set as "local pickup only" can be both frustrating for you and for them.

Anyways, at least that's how I'd tackle this.
You could also try posting your stuff on other computer & electronics forums that allow these kinds of posts (VOGONS is not one of them, unfortunately.)
(Or now that you've created this post, wait for PMs to pour in? 🤣 )

Reply 7 of 8, by gbeirn

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Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions.

I’ve been an avid eBayer for a long time so I’m familiar with it. Separating out the items into lots is a good idea.

Some of the stuff is going to have to be local pickup only ( dual and quad PPro systems loaded with SCSI drives are heavy.

I appreciate the other sites/ forums as well.

I’ll let people know how this goes.

Thanks all!

Reply 8 of 8, by momaka

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Yeah, the heavy systems should probably be local pickup-ed... unless the cards inside the system and everything is really well-secured. In that case, and if you properly box it, it should be able to survive the shipping just fine. But there is always a risk, of course. In my case, one of the items I sold was a DIGITAL Alphaserver system that was quite heavy. All of the cards looked well-secured inside... though I don't remember if I added some paper padding between a few I/O cards or not (I think I did). On the outside, I used thick (around 2" / 5 cm) styrofoam all around the case. Actually, IIRC, I had these special corners made for putting on furniture when being prepped for shipping. I got them all from moving boxes that I ended up picking up from the neighborhood on recycling days. (Basically, if you see anyone move into your neighborhood, wait a few days and they should have lots of shipping boxes with nice clean packing materials thrown out on recycling/trash day.) So anyways, those special thick cardboard corners with foam / styrofoam inside is what I used on the corners of the case. And I also added some styrofoam to the sides as well, just to make sure the box kept its shape. It was quite a heavy system so I didn't skimp on the shipping. Though in retrospect, I probably should have double-boxed the system. The thing is, I actually had ran out of boxes and I also was limited on time to go get some more materials/boxes. But in the end, I think the system arrived in one piece to the buyer... so all was well.

But indeed shipping bulky stuff is... a bit of work... and takes lots of packing materials (so if you do go scavenge your materials like I did, pickup as much as you can, because you will find you will run out very quickly.