FYI: Computer Reset liquidation (Dallas, TX)

[falter]

If it wasn't for the hoarders big and small we would not have a hobby today.

I think you confuse non stable people with people looking to make an easy quick buck. .

I don't know.. have you seen some of the exchanges Justin has had with some (now banned) folks on the FB page? They're not *all* a little off.. but some clearly are.

I have mixed feelings about 'hoarding'. I've certainly benefitted from that. I'm just saying for me, I don't want to get to the point where my 'collection' is rusting away in sheds, useless to anyone.

 

[falter]

I'll second that too. It's almost certainly about time they brought in a professional to deal with this situation. It seems like they've already had several bouts of basically open warfare over the tactics and behavior of some of the people who've shown up with their own personal obsessions/axes to grind, and every time they let the wrong person go in there and make off with tightly-picked pearls of the collection (like the aforementioned keyboard grabber) they're left with a harder job selling off what they leave behind at other than pure scrap prices.

Of course, the real question I suppose this has to bring up is whether or not there really are enough vintage enthusiasts out there with cash-in-hand willing to pay a "fair" compensation to a company or organization willing to put in the work to sort the wheat from the chaff and put it out there on the market in a reasonable condition, or is just sending all this stuff to China to be recycled without even trying to sort it actually, genuinely, the correct and reasonable thing to do from both a financial and a "preserve your own sanity" standpoint? Sometimes I do wonder just to what degree the prices we're seeing on eBay for our toys are built on a foundation of sand. If under all that dust and rat turds there turned out to be, I dunno, a pristine vein of Rev. 0 Apple IIs, would there *really* be buyers for them all at the prices to which we've become accustomed, or is what we see the result of a relatively tiny group of speculators just knocking each other out while the vast bulk of the population who mostly have what they want and are too poor to play are left on the sidelines? I honestly have no idea. I do know that most of the things that feel "expensive-ish" to most collectors today (leaving out crazy outliers like Apple Is, obviously) are still trading for well less than they sold for new even *before* you adjust for inflation. That's definitely worth a pause to anyone thinking there's a gold mine primed for runaway appreciation sitting there.

My observation on prices, now that I have been tracking, is that generally they have been going down. Which I kind of suspected they would, given we probably don't comprise the largest group of hobbyists out there in the first place, and there are a finite number of us with living memory of these machines to feel nostalgic about. Apple II prices are a prime example.. I remember years ago an original A2S1 coming up was rare and fought viciously over. The prices went into $2k plus for even mid production units. Now? Not even breaking $1k in a lot of cases. My Rev 0 sat for weeks with no takers.

These things are fun to play with.. but with few exceptions, investments they are not.

 

[legalize]

These things are fun to play with.. but with few exceptions, investments they are not.

Yeah, I don't understand the "investment" thinking in this space. I think some people go a little g00gley-eyed after they see something on ebay sell for $CRAZY and they think that this is the norm instead of a fluke.

 

[Shadow Lord]

Of course, the real question I suppose this has to bring up is whether or not there really are enough vintage enthusiasts out there with cash-in-hand willing to pay a "fair" compensation to a company or organization willing to put in the work to sort the wheat from the chaff and put it out there on the market in a reasonable condition, or is just sending all this stuff to China to be recycled without even trying to sort it actually, genuinely, the correct and reasonable thing to do from both a financial and a "preserve your own sanity" standpoint? Sometimes I do wonder just to what degree the prices we're seeing on eBay for our toys are built on a foundation of sand. If under all that dust and rat turds there turned out to be, I dunno, a pristine vein of Rev. 0 Apple IIs, would there *really* be buyers for them all at the prices to which we've become accustomed, or is what we see the result of a relatively tiny group of speculators just knocking each other out while the vast bulk of the population who mostly have what they want and are too poor to play are left on the sidelines? I honestly have no idea. I do know that most of the things that feel "expensive-ish" to most collectors today (leaving out crazy outliers like Apple Is, obviously) are still trading for well less than they sold for new even *before* you adjust for inflation. That's definitely worth a pause to anyone thinking there's a gold mine primed for runaway appreciation sitting there.

And there in lies the rub. Prices on eBay have gotten ridiculous. I saw yet another $3000 MCA sound card listing (be interesting to see what it sells for). So any company that comes in to clean up will base their "fair" compensation on those prices. Now I am not saying that MCA sound cards should sell for $30 but $3000? Really? Why? And its not just eBay but even members in the "community" are asking for ridiculous prices. Of course they can't bear to full blame - if you paid eBay prices for an item you don't want to lose money on resell just because it is another "community member". Add to that the ever increasing cost of S&H and now tax and "fair" compensation becomes a very hard to hit target.

 

[Unknown_K]

Individual systems can rise and fall with demand and supply but the stuff I am looking at seems to be going up in value not down and supply is getting worse not better.

Anybody with half a brain would quote scrap rates for that hoard minus the expense of moving it. Maybe you might find something of value to resell but few scrappers would sit on anything but a few rare cards. Even if you do find something of value you need to test it to see if it even works. There is a reason you can buy stuff cheap at recyclers, nothing is guaranteed to work.

 

[Shadow Lord]

There is a reason you can buy stuff cheap at recyclers, nothing is guaranteed to work.

And how is that any different then buying on eBay ? Oh yeah its not cheap on eBay LOL!

 

[Unknown_K]

And how is that any different then buying on eBay ? Oh yeah its not cheap on eBay LOL!

Anything sold as used is guaranteed by Ebay to work or money back. You have to lost it under broken not working to get around that.

 

[Shadow Lord]

Anything sold as used is guaranteed by Ebay to work or money back. You have to lost it under broken not working to get around that.

You are mixing Apples and IBMs there. The guarantee is provided by eBay.

My point is that the seller has not put in any time or money testing and cleaning up the goods to justify the higher prices on eBay vs. the recylcer. So there should not be any reason for their prices to be substantially higher then the recyclers. In fact many recyclers are just listing things as "working" and "tested" and rolling the dice that it will work and charging 10x, 20x, 100x more then what they paid for it.

 

[Unknown_K]

You are mixing Apples and IBMs there. The guarantee is provided by eBay.

My point is that the seller has not put in any time or money testing and cleaning up the goods to justify the higher prices on eBay vs. the recylcer. So there should not be any reason for their prices to be substantially higher then the recyclers. In fact many recyclers are just listing things as "working" and "tested" and rolling the dice that it will work and charging 10x, 20x, 100x more then what they paid for it.

The guarantee is the seller will give you a full refund, its not ebays money.

Yea, I have seen listings stating "working" while thinking that part was never tested but who knows.

There are plenty of people who don't have time or are too lazy to go looking for a part and will gladly pay whatever they have to to get it mailed to them.

I have plenty of expensive pieces of computer gear that you would have to pay me 10x, 20x, or 100x what I paid for them just because I plan to keep them and put in the effort to find them before they got recycled when nobody else wanted them. Do you go up to people with mint original Hemi Cuda's and offer them 60's sticker price for them? Do people in California have to sell their houses for what they paid for them in 1960? People have found million dollar paintings at Goodwill and nobody expects them to sell them for $5. The other end of that curve is full of people who paid the going rate for something just when the market tanked and never recovered.

 

[falter]

Hemi Cuda != Vintage computer

And even in vintage cars, prices have been coming down. Most of those expensive cars are in the hands of older boomers who are ultimately stepping off this mortal plane. Anecdotally I don't know too many millenials who have any interest in a gas guzzling 60s muscle car.

And I think it's gonna be the same thing in vintage computing, where the size of the collector base is even smaller. Ask a retro gaming shop how many young people are keen on Atari or Intellivision. They don't understand the point of something whose screen res is less than 1920x1080.

Not to paint with too broad a brush - I do know young people who *are* interested. But if I had to lay real money, I would not bet the replacement rate for vintage computer collectors is enough to sustain price growth in the long run, except with certain rare machines that have a certain, current cultural relevance.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Classic car vs. computer comparisons always rankle me, if for no other reason than this: unless your car significantly predates, I dunno, the 1920's?, there's a good chance that:

A: It performs well enough that you can at least take it for a Sunday drive, if not drive it to work. (IE, it is still effectively a "car" by the modern definition) and:

B: Complete laypeople born long after the car was made will still be able to look at what you have and easily appreciate it from at least an aesthetic viewpoint because they can assume that it functions like they expect a car to work and be mostly correct. You don't have to *explain* anything. (I suppose if we reach the point that your average, everyday car drives itself or flies or whatever then this will no longer be true, but I'm not holding my breath.)

I do think it's great that there *are* younger people who do take an interest in the retrocomputing hobby, but generally I'd say the "you had to be there to get it" factor is far greater than it'll ever be in car collecting.

 

[Culbrelai]

And there in lies the rub. Prices on eBay have gotten ridiculous. I saw yet another $3000 MCA sound card listing (be interesting to see what it sells for). So any company that comes in to clean up will base their "fair" compensation on those prices. Now I am not saying that MCA sound cards should sell for $30 but $3000? Really? Why? And its not just eBay but even members in the "community" are asking for ridiculous prices. Of course they can't bear to full blame - if you paid eBay prices for an item you don't want to lose money on resell just because it is another "community member". Add to that the ever increasing cost of S&H and now tax and "fair" compensation becomes a very hard to hit target.

I bet you could have an MCA sound card made for $3000 lmao

They usually go for $400-1000. Still ridiculous but less so. Ebay should be a last resort imo. Goodwill it up first.

Btw, i’m a 25 year old second wave millenial interested in ‘vintage’ computers (Pretty much only PS/2s tho, that vaporwave aesthetic ftw) so there are some of us out there =P

 

[Unknown_K]

I look at cars and computers the same way because they both meant youthful freedom to me. My first car allowed me to explore places far and wide alone and with my friends that I just could not before I was 18 and had to have a parent drop me off. I could be wrong but later generations didn't need to leave the house to explore the world like I did, they did it online with a computer and the WWW. So instead of working on a car some people learned to code. Younger generations are probably more into their laptops or phones then some big desktop setup because that is what they grew up with.

Anything from the 60's or earlier that had no power steering, power break , all weather tires that actually have good grip, and a stick shift would make then non driveable by a large part of todays drivers.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Anything from the 60's or earlier that had no power steering, power break , all weather tires that actually have good grip, and a stick shift would make then non driveable by a large part of todays drivers.

Torque converter automatics go back to the late 1940's, but that's beside the point: I don't off the top of my head know how to work the planetary transmission in a Model T (my grandpa had one), but I could probably learn it over a weekend if I really wanted to, or I could do what a lot of people who have T's they drive regularly do and throw a bulletproof 1970's Toyota Corolla transmission in it; I know they sell bolt-on kits to do just that. (And likewise I know people who sucked it up and taught themselves to drive more modern manual transmissions in a day or two when properly motivated.) And power steering and power brakes are likewise not exactly dealbreakers, you just need to build up a little upper body strength and learn how to stand on it. The "UI" is still essentially the same.

You can't say that about computers.

 

[vwestlife]

And power steering and power brakes are likewise not exactly dealbreakers, you just need to build up a little upper body strength and learn how to stand on it.

Or you just need to drive a light car with the engine at the back, such as a VW Beetle -- these young people have no problem driving it:

The "UI" is still essentially the same.

You can't say that about computers.

UK TV program Top Gear did a segment about determining what was the first car with modern controls:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2p03c3

 

[Eudimorphodon]

With a Beetle just be sure someone gives them the talk about oversteer vs. understeer in turns and, yeah, they'll be fine. Plenty of light American cars out there as well; something like a Ford Falcon or straight 6 Mustang shouldn't pose any particular challenge to your average Millenial unless there's some biological difference I'm not aware of.

UK TV program Top Gear did a segment about determining what was the first car with modern controls:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2p03c3

It was that episode I was thinking of when I ballparked the 1920s as around the time you started definitively seeing the last of tiller steering and throttle levers. The worst bummer I can think of with a bog standard 1930's car is no synchromesh sorta sucks.

 

[Samir]

Personally if I were the family I'd just find a single liquidator and clear it out. I think LGR's video created far too much interest and hype, and has drawn out all kinds of... well... not very stable-seeming people. Reading some of the posts in the Facebook group, you'd think someone had found El Dorado, instead of an old musty warehouse full of mostly junk and hantavirus. I would not want to be the one charged with managing another 'event' knowing what kind of crazies might show up, just based on the ones I've seen going off on Justin online. (Note to self: never let LGR showcase anything)

My sincerest sympathies to the family. Every time I see a story like this, be it a huge hoard like CR or just a guy with several sheds worth of stuff he'll never get around to touching, I'm reminded to keep my own collecting impulses in check, lest the estate sale vultures get the enjoyment of my efforts. To not be greedy and keep things circulating so others can enjoy. You don't get to take any of it with you.

The problem with a single liquidator will be the price. Typically when someone is buying a lot like this, it's for resale which means you have to buy it at the most at 1/4 of your intended sales price to cover the overhead of warehousing and resale. (I bought a lot of radiators this way from an autozone closeout when I distributed auto parts.) And at that price, that's far less than the community would offer even if it comes in spurts.

Luckily, in any online community/hobby, there's a lot of people who talk versus do anything. And in my experience, the more excited and eccentric the talk, the less likely they are able to do anything in real life. ymmv.

This is a solid reminder as to what is the eventual fate for all of our collections. I've been actually thinking about this myself and how long it would take to clear everything out if I wanted to, and it's not pretty. But it's not the clearing out that bothers me, it's the fact that I've not been able to do what I wanted with everything up to this point my life, and I realize that I'm on the other side of the bell curve now so I really need to think about what I'm going to do in a serious way as my life approaches its end in the next few decades.

 

[Samir]

If it wasn't for the hoarders big and small we would not have a hobby today.

I think you confuse non stable people with people looking to make an easy quick buck. It sounds like the guy who was parting out keyboards would have made a decent amount of cash if he wasn't stopped. Most likely some of what collectors did snag from that place was probably cleaned up and flipped on Ebay shortly after, much more within the year. A large amount of what was there is probably just junk unless you are a rabid collector with a keen eye to spot the real treasures.

I really dislike that someone who has a vast collection in bad shape is called a 'hoarder' versus someone with the same collection in a neater state is called a 'collector'. To me, both are simply collectors. Hoarding is to simply have stuff to have it, which I doubt this individual or anyone that has large lots initially did 'just to have it'. Plans can change as life changes, but that doesn't make you some sort of deviant hoarder. Otherwise, anyone who collects anything with a messy collection is a hoarder, and I doubt almost any of us have a nice museum to put all our stuff in.

 

[Samir]

I'll second that too. It's almost certainly about time they brought in a professional to deal with this situation. It seems like they've already had several bouts of basically open warfare over the tactics and behavior of some of the people who've shown up with their own personal obsessions/axes to grind, and every time they let the wrong person go in there and make off with tightly-picked pearls of the collection (like the aforementioned keyboard grabber) they're left with a harder job selling off what they leave behind at other than pure scrap prices.

Of course, the real question I suppose this has to bring up is whether or not there really are enough vintage enthusiasts out there with cash-in-hand willing to pay a "fair" compensation to a company or organization willing to put in the work to sort the wheat from the chaff and put it out there on the market in a reasonable condition, or is just sending all this stuff to China to be recycled without even trying to sort it actually, genuinely, the correct and reasonable thing to do from both a financial and a "preserve your own sanity" standpoint? Sometimes I do wonder just to what degree the prices we're seeing on eBay for our toys are built on a foundation of sand. If under all that dust and rat turds there turned out to be, I dunno, a pristine vein of Rev. 0 Apple IIs, would there *really* be buyers for them all at the prices to which we've become accustomed, or is what we see the result of a relatively tiny group of speculators just knocking each other out while the vast bulk of the population who mostly have what they want and are too poor to play are left on the sidelines? I honestly have no idea. I do know that most of the things that feel "expensive-ish" to most collectors today (leaving out crazy outliers like Apple Is, obviously) are still trading for well less than they sold for new even *before* you adjust for inflation. That's definitely worth a pause to anyone thinking there's a gold mine primed for runaway appreciation sitting there.

The best approach would be to at least have everything inventoried or find the old inventory sheets (I'm sure there were some or shipping manifests at some point), and use that to price and sell things. This is a slow and cumbersome process which takes time and energy, and there may not be enough compensation left at the end of the day to make it worth it. This is the crux of the problem.

One thing is for sure, letting people rummage through something like this is the wrong thing to do as everything will be left more of a mess than it started with, and things will be cherry picked for their high value, resale or otherwise, leaving money on the table essentially for the seller/owner.

You bring up a very important question--is there enough demand for the supply on hand? I think that depends on the scope of the sale. Is there enough demand on ebay over the course of a year? I would say yes. Is there enough demand locally to clear it out in 2 weeks? That's a hard no, imo.

There are companies that specialize in buying estate lots or auctioning such lots, and that would probably be the best bet. These companies typically come in after someone has passed away and disposes of their estate, which can consist of vast collections of all sorts of things. The sad thing is that these items get sold for about 1/2 of what they could fetch on ebay if not even less. A few saavy estate auction companies have started to have online bidding available with in-person bidding. A company such as that would be a good fit for a lot like this as long as there is enough revenue to make it worthwhile.

 

[Stone]

Plans can change as life changes, but that doesn't make you some sort of deviant hoarder.

He didn't say deviant -- you introduced that word into this discussion.