Agree with Tetrium...

I begun hunting for old PC parts around 2012/13. I had only one complete 486 and one Pentium 166MMX. As I was broke back then I only hunted locally if the price was really low. Like 5€ for a complete PC. At first it went nowhere. I begun posting ads at local flea-like web sites and eventually found a few good deals. Like a whole car of PC's and parts - not cheap but not all that much money too. From time to time I also watched at ebay/amibay for my wanted parts and now I'm really close to ending everything... There are still a few parts missing in my collection but overall I have many times over what I wanted. I still buy not really needed things if I get bored 🤣

I mostly got what I have locally in a country of 2M people 😉 I can only imagine what is still out there in bigger countries/cities.

We now live in 2016. The vast bulk of 1980/90/00s equipment has been recycled. However: there is still a lot out there. It requires vigilance and funds. Either by visiting many thrift stores, monitoring eBay / Craigslist, driving long distance, developing relationships with metal recyclers and so on. Or simply pay for shipping.

I would leave all the political discussions out of it. The demand for old equipment is less than 1% of volume processed every year. Recycling and waste management are professional organizations: not indended to be vintage hardware suppliers.

I have owned many vintage PCs, sound cards and parts. I am somewhat over it and am down to one PC and a few sound cards.

However: if I wanted it would be fairly easy and a matter of weeks / months to ramp it up again.

I just don't get why you guys say thing are rare, scarce and pricey. The only thing I find hard to get are good motherboards.

You guys are starting to make me realize why people look at me funny when I mention that my hobby is vintage/legacy computing.

It's time to put away your capes and wizard hats. Take off the trilby and shave those neckbeards. Turn off the AM rage radio and go outside for awhile. Get some exercise and sunshine. Meet some new people. Talk to new folks and try to understand them before you judge them. Take a few steps outside your comfort-zone.

There is no grand conspiracy. The sky is not falling.

FFS, at least the hipsters we've been bashing are a generally happy and positive bunch.

Everything good is usually rare and pricey - as best things were never made in great volumes.

Yeah building connections is important. Just got a EVGA 680i SLI mobo in exchange for my 9800GX2 (i had no motherboards that support it) which is a deal that came into existance because i bought a Gateway M685E laptop off reddit for $50

PeterLI wrote:

Or simply pay for shipping

This is the main problem that I'm facing. Shipping stuff to my country almost always costs around 3 times nore than the item itself. If I can find stuff locally then its just a couple euro or even free, but just finding old hardware here is really hard.
I make around 450 Euro/month, so plopping down 30 just to ship a 20 year old component is a bit too much for me.

Jade Falcon wrote:

patience is golden, but knowing were to find a good deal is another thing. […]
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Tetrium wrote:

I don't know how long you've been busy collecting this retro stuff, but (and this kinda goes for most people who collect retro stuff, including software) most of us who for the first time start collecting retro computer stuff, will take at least a year or 2 before our collections start getting anywhere substantial and before we start getting a hang on what kind of items we actually prefer.

A little bit of patience goes a long way and makes it less frustrating (and possibly cheaper) at the same time 😀.

patience is golden, but knowing were to find a good deal is another thing.

Here a top tip (Edd china voice)
Look up OEM part numbers on ebay or ewaist sites when looking for video cards or sounds cards. Or any part for that matter.
I got a med flat rate box of OEM video cards the other day I got from one seller on ebay for about 20$ in total, I even had some goodies in it like a Matrox Mystique.
I even gotten new delta fans for less then 5$ by looking them up by their part number.

These are excellent tips, especially to know where to find what you want.

One source that had proven to be an exquisite source, turned out to be cpu-world, where I've gotten most of my harder-to-find chips from and at very good prices as well.

Buying whole discarded PCs for €5 or €10 can also be a good source, but it's like opening a Christmas present. It's a bit of a gamble, especially if you can't open the thing up before buying it, but I've developed a keen eye to take good guesses at what's probably inside just by looking at the exterior of the system.
I can often make out the PSU brand and will actually buy those instead of ones with very crappy ones which probably have better parts inside (crappy PSUs more frequently means the components inside are damaged). I can even often make out if the case the system is in, is build by a hobbyist or is one that had been originally assembled in this case (the hobbyist's systems are often containing more recent, higher-end and more interesting parts and often have their memory upgraded and often have been taken care of in a better way (and are less dusty 😁).

And another tip: Bring a small but bright flashlight. I always have a bicycle light with me (those are less long so I can go around corners more easily), because often the systems in thrift stores will have at least some expansion cards missing, meaning I can peek through the little holes and see if I can recognize stuff, like the CPU heatsink, the expansion slots of the motherboard (so I can make out the era of the parts) and if the memory and harddrive are missing. Will also try to see if I can see the brand or model number of any parts and look for damages like bulging caps and burn marks.

Munx wrote:

PeterLI wrote:

Or simply pay for shipping

This is the main problem that I'm facing. Shipping stuff to my country almost always costs around 3 times nore than the item itself. If I can find stuff locally then its just a couple euro or even free, but just finding old hardware here is really hard.
I make around 450 Euro/month, so plopping down 30 just to ship a 20 year old component is a bit too much for me.

What I do whenever I see a seller offering a parts I'd really want, is to see what other items this seller has for sale so I can buy in bulk and only pay for shipping once.

I sometimes mail and will often include a statement somewhere near the end of the mail with something along the lines of ", and this way you'll be rid of your offerings in a single package, saves you some time and extra work and it's one easy transaction". I'll often offer some nicely rounded amount and ask friendly if it can be packed up with lots of soft filler material. If I suspect the seller to be inexperienced with handling computer parts (doesn't know what an anti-static bag is for instance), I might remark that I prefer the seller to stuff the space between the parts with leftover bubble plastic, old newspapers or even toilet paper, but please not the little foam bits (those produce lots of static) etc and so on).
And of course always be friendly and respectful. The idea is that this way, we (me and the seller) can help each other out so we both end up with what we want. Nice, quick and easy 😁.

The idea is that he'll gladly dump the extra bits for next to nothing that will probably take ages to sell and not generate any substantial amounts of money anyway. I'll often have less interesting parts included. For instance, I might make an offer on a FX5900u and ask to include a couple MX cards and a Live! for next to nothing or so.

Drive to DE occassionally or go work there for a year or two. LT is too small. 🤣

kixs wrote:

Everything good is usually rare and pricey - as best things were never made in great volumes.

Well...actually...this isn't the case at all!

Theres plenty examples of good stuff that's actually in good supply and I can name a few from top of my head.

Tualatin-S 1400?
Slot 1 BX boards?
Voodoo 3 AGP?
S3 Virge/Trio?
Soundblasters? (yeah I know, not all of them are super, but it beats having to pay through the nose just to get any dedicated one).
Pentium MMX 233?
DX4? Even the AMD 5x86 133MHz was actually very easy to find in volumes a couple years ago.
Heck, even those K6-3+ chips were absolutely dirt cheap till at least a few years ago 😜.
And I'm pretty sure theres plenty more examples like this.

I was more thinking about top models for its range. Like Voodoo 3 3500, best ISA & VLB graphic cards...

From your examples... of course they have to become rare first 😉

But then again it's also a matter of perspective... to some 10€ is expensive, to others 100€ isn't a problem.

kixs wrote:

I was more thinking about top models for its range. Like Voodoo 3 3500, best ISA & VLB graphic cards...

The top stuff is always premium. Doesn't really matter when you're looking. For example P4 chips are dirt cheap, but a Extreme Edition will always cost a lot more.

Just wanted to say this: OP's quoted prices are pretty much BS. Proofs follow.

In the last couple of days alone, now still ongoing for some items -- I've seen 6800 GT AGP, 7900 GS AGP, Radeon 9800 XT and even a complete 9700 Pro AIW all for superlow prices at $30 or lower, including the FX 5950 Ultra. Most in US, but some in UK and Germany as well.

Now GF256, branded ones are indeed rarer AFAIK, having been replaced by the GF2 GTS just about half a year after actual launch, and then by the ubiquitous MX. For a retro rig, It has no practical advantage compared to a GF2 or GF3 (pretty much same performance as a GF2/4 MX), so why do you want to get it in the first place? For its status? Well, you're not alone, apparently, since the cheap ones went pretty quick. But I think you had that figured by now. 😉

So I'll put here only what's already sold (the others are still live as I write this, and I don't feel like doing your homework):

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/XFX-NVIDIA-GeForce- … g-/152099666975
No "AGP" keyword, even listed as "PCI Express", but you can see from the picture clearly what it really is.

Now if your problem is with rising overseas shipping costs (esp from the US but also from ebay sellers in general), that I can understand. The shipping to item price ratio can be really off sometimes, so if you're not in one of the retro tech havens (that's mostly USA, Germany and in some cases Japan), then HAHAHAHA. (no really, I know what it's like)

But if you live in the US / Germany for example, and you still complain... duhhh I'll just give you a f*(&#@*) bitchslap for not trying hard/smart/good enough.

If you're just quoting random overpriced stuff, then I guess it's clear now as everybody else with experience has pointed out: you just need patience (and/or better income--which also needs patience anyway). Sorry if that comes off as rude, but that pretty much sums it all. It's not the fault of the world, so how about deal with yourself? 😀

where I live, people throw good stuff out in the dumps thinking old computers have no value. its sad. seeing old crts thrown into the dump 🙁 its either worthless or worth a fortune to them. nothing in between.

Tetrium wrote:

most of us who for the first time start collecting retro computer stuff, will take at least a year or 2 before our collections start getting anywhere substantial

True... For me it has taken 3 years so far and not finished building the collection yet.
Still missing vital pieces, before the collection are done. ISA cards, coolers and that sort of stuff.
I have spent a lot of money so far. Yeah... Could have gotten a lot of tasty steaks instead.

brostenen wrote:

True... For me it has taken 3 years so far and not finished building the collection yet. Still missing vital pieces, before the […]
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Tetrium wrote:

most of us who for the first time start collecting retro computer stuff, will take at least a year or 2 before our collections start getting anywhere substantial

True... For me it has taken 3 years so far and not finished building the collection yet.
Still missing vital pieces, before the collection are done. ISA cards, coolers and that sort of stuff.
I have spent a lot of money so far. Yeah... Could have gotten a lot of tasty steaks instead.

But your collection will be there for you, you can walk up to it whenever you like and go mess with it ^^.
Those steaks you will only see them 1 more time before they go finds their way to the sea or wherever they will go 😜.

Iirc, for the first year or 2, I basically hoarded everything I I came across, but very quickly decided I was going to concentrate on standard PC hardware or compatible. And if I found out later couldn't find a use for it, I could always toss it out. But I only found whatever had been sold, so I had tons of chips and boards, but hardly any high-end stuff or maxed out stuff like Pentium MMX 233, but I found so many mid-range Pentium 1s (mostly 100MHz and 133MHz and MMX 166MHz) that at some point I didn't even bother to take these out of their sockets anymore when I found another one.

Later on, I started filling in the gaps by buying online and concentrating more on what could actually be more useful (like for instance Pentium MMX 233 which can run at 166MHz anyway, but could also run at 250Mhz if I wanted to) or parts I was unable to find locally.

I find it very hard to collect things. I always end up selling / trading / trashing. 😀 I do spend a lot of time playing with things that are fun. Like my W520 that has been with me since 2010. Admitted: I upgraded it to 16GB RAM and a SSD HDD. 🤣

PeterLI wrote:

I find it very hard to collect things. I always end up selling / trading / trashing. 😀 I do spend a lot of time playing with things that are fun. Like my W520 that has been with me since 2010. Admitted: I upgraded it to 16GB RAM and a SSD HDD. 🤣

For me it's kinda reversed, I just can't be arsed to sell anything and mostly because I think it's a hassle.

But if I were to go sell whatever, I'd try out amibay first (no ebay for me).

eBay or Amibay.... Depends on what one would need. Batteries are cheap on eBay, 80's hardware are typically not.