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FYI: Computer Reset liquidation (Dallas, TX)

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Honestly, that's the thing that probably annoys me the most. When I see something locally and someone tells me (either in person or in the ad) about how much it's worth on eBay. First, in this hobby, anyone who might be interested in this stuff already knows what it sells for online. Second, if I'm going to pay online prices, i'd have already done it and had it shipped to my door long ago... i wouldn't driving all around the city to get one locally for the same price. :)

In the case of this place though, you'd think with the size of that warehouse and what rent must be, he would have needed to actually sell stuff and how many customers would want to wade through that and pay a premium for it.

Wasn't always like that. When I purchased from him prices were more reasonable. Eventually, as other sellers prices crept up he started jacking up his prices too. Or if he did not the S&H was wacked. So sales went down. I think the Uhaul business subsidized the warehouse and it is Texas so rent is cheap if he did not outright own the property.
 
Said folks need to watch "Pawn Stars" re-runs to see the responses to "I saw it with a price of fifty-three jillion dollars on the Internet".

"Asking is not the same as getting". :)
 
Silicon Valley's "Weirdstuff Warehouse" succumbed to the "we're gonna price it like it's on the Internet" urge in its last years. It might have been sort of forgivable if they'd actually cleaned up and properly "showroomed" the pieces they wanted collector's prices for, but instead they'd just plop a filthy 5160 on a wire rack alongside a random collection of other mangy specimens and stick a $300 price tag on it.
 
Silicon Valley's "Weirdstuff Warehouse" succumbed to the "we're gonna price it like it's on the Internet" urge in its last years.

Only on a couple of racks they though were collectable, and you could haggle with Jimmy about it.

What bothered me more is when i'd dump something off there to get rid of (two logic analyzers in particular) and the cables would get separated from the units

I actually took the time once I saw what had happened to put the cables back ON the analyzers.

WS suffered from attacks by the "Knob Bandit" along with all the other surplus places here.
Someone would steal the knobs off of Tek and HP test equipment.
Bob at Halted took the knobs off his gear and put them behind the counter with a note on the gear saying where they were
 
Silicon Valley's "Weirdstuff Warehouse" succumbed to the "we're gonna price it like it's on the Internet" urge in its last years. It might have been sort of forgivable if they'd actually cleaned up and properly "showroomed" the pieces they wanted collector's prices for, but instead they'd just plop a filthy 5160 on a wire rack alongside a random collection of other mangy specimens and stick a $300 price tag on it.

And that is the general trend for these guys. They have had what hey considered trash all these years in a warehouse that now they this has turned into gold (well maybe copper :)). However, if they actually spend time getting it cleaned out sorted then the profit margin would only be 300 or 400% not 3000%. And there are fools out there that will pay $300 for a rusted over XT.
 
When someone is selling something face to face, they need to remember
- They don't have to pay shipping
- They don't have to spend time/money packing
- They don't have expensive eBay fees
- They don't have to pad the price to make up for other buyers screwing them
- They don't have rich foreigners or businesses competing against the buyer
- Auctions are not the same as a "buy it now" price, auctions can go insanely high or end at $0.99. It is mostly luck.
- eBay "asking" prices are meaningless, and some "sold" items are BS.

Some buyers very well might pay more for a cheap item if
- The seller warrants the item
- The seller demonstrates operability or usefulness for a purpose
- The seller shows the item is in good condition
- The seller has proof of prior storage/ownership to certify condition
- The seller has a proven track record
- The seller includes a support and replacement contract
- The seller makes the item easy to find/view or get more info
- The item happens to be very exactly what one person is looking for (again, luck)
- And optionally: Drugs. :)
 
Only on a couple of racks they though were collectable, and you could haggle with Jimmy about it.

Really, I don't suppose I can blame anyone who has to make SV rents for trying, but... I don't know, in addition to the lack of effort put into making the "premium" items presentable the other issue was simply that the disconnect between the prices they slapped on them verses the general merchandise was so huge I never felt that it'd even be worth my time to start haggling.

(And there's also the factor for me that unless I specifically wanted something like an oddball serial cable or whatever a trip to Weirdstuff was more of an Easter Egg hunt than a serious shopping expedition, so I'm going in there programmed to expect "Impulse Buy" level pricing. That tended to be the mindset of most of the people I knew who also shopped there. If I wanted to pay a lot of an XT, well, yeah, there's eBay.)

That all said I miss the place. And HSC, for that matter.

What bothered me more is when i'd dump something off there to get rid of (two logic analyzers in particular) and the cables would get separated from the units

That's another thing, the stuff on the wire racks was usually just bare system units. If you want someone to impulse-buy an old 386 for north of a hundred dollars it's probably worth spending a few minutes going through your back room and making a complete computer out of it; they probably did have the parts to do it on hand, even if they had to fish them out of the "gold recovery" bin or wherever they ended up after initial sorting.... anyway.

WS suffered from attacks by the "Knob Bandit" along with all the other surplus places here.

People are terrible, unfortunately. Anyone who's ever worked in retail knows. :(
 
I hadn't heard of the "knob bandit", but I know if I was running a store and this sort of thing started happening, then everything would be on shelving behind a counter or in a back room with pictures in a notebook on the counter.

I really hate it when people take tiny bits out of a complete system.
 
Knobs get lost or broken and you can get a few bucks for them on ebay, and they are easy to put in your pocket if you like being an ass and robbing stores.
 
(And there's also the factor for me that unless I specifically wanted something like an oddball serial cable or whatever a trip to Weirdstuff was more of an Easter Egg hunt than a serious shopping expedition, so I'm going in there programmed to expect "Impulse Buy" level pricing.

Actually, that impulse buying thing, I think about that often when i go to the monthly electronics swap meet. Most stuff doesn't have a price, and unless I'm really interested in it, i'm not going to bother with asking the price. However, theres been a number of times I've bought something I didn't need because it was priced at an impulse buy price. Many times though i'll ask the price on something that's unpriced and I either get the 'sizing up the customer' stare with some crazy price, or the 'make me an offer' comment. I usually just respond with 'Honestly, i don't really need it.. thanks'.

I did have someone trying to sell a super crappy trs-80 model 3 that was in really poor shape and in unknown working condition for $100 and told me 'they sell for $1000 online'. Uhh, yeah, i don't think so and definitely not in that condition. :)
 
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Knobs get lost or broken and you can get a few bucks for them on ebay, and they are easy to put in your pocket if you like being an ass and robbing stores.

Heck, you can even 3d print them now. Maybe those 'few bucks on ebay' are from the people stealing them. :)

I hadn't heard of the "knob bandit", but I know if I was running a store and this sort of thing started happening, then everything would be on shelving behind a counter or in a back room with pictures in a notebook on the counter.

I really hate it when people take tiny bits out of a complete system.

I've seen it at places like fry's or similar, where people steal keyboard keys, etc. off the demo units.
 
Ok, I had a COMPLETELY different kind of person in mind when 'knob bandit' was mentioned.

There is a small part of me that would condone breaking hands for theft. Not so much the losing the whole hand like certain groups of people are known for, but I understand. Somewhere between 'slap on the wrist' and losing said wrist.
 
Actually, that impulse buying thing, I think about that often when i go to the monthly electronics swap meet...

I did have someone trying to sell a super crappy trs-80 model 3 that was in really poor shape and in unknown working condition for $100 and told me 'they sell for $1000 online'. Uhh, yeah, i don't think so and definitely not in that condition. :)

Last few times I went to the local big HAM/electronics swap meet there were these guys running a stand stocked with Apple II-related hardware that literally looked like it had been collectively chucked down a flight of stairs and they wanted top dollar for all of it, thank you very much. (An Apple IIe with half a dozen keycaps missing and a Disk II controller inside that had a stub of drive cable attached because someone had literally just ripped/slashed the drives off without opening the case? That's $150, bub, take it or leave it, that's a collector's item!) Notably their stock seemed to be basically unchanged month-to-month so I don't know what they were actually selling that justified showing up at all.
 
Last few times I went to the local big HAM/electronics swap meet there were these guys running a stand stocked with Apple II-related hardware that literally looked like it had been collectively chucked down a flight of stairs and they wanted top dollar for all of it, thank you very much. (An Apple IIe with half a dozen keycaps missing and a Disk II controller inside that had a stub of drive cable attached because someone had literally just ripped/slashed the drives off without opening the case? That's $150, bub, take it or leave it, that's a collector's item!) Notably their stock seemed to be basically unchanged month-to-month so I don't know what they were actually selling that justified showing up at all.

Yeah, I feel like most Apple II series computers look like they got chucked down a flight of stairs with said key bandit hitting them on the way down. Plus, they're apple computers so they think that makes them more valuable. The only thing less rare than an apple iie is a commodore 64, so if these wind up in salvage due to their misguided beliefs, I'm not going to lose any sleep... let them keep trying to sell their "Apple Macintosh IIe Keyboards" :)
 
On the flip side, some stuff does sell for insane amounts. I just happened to do a search for Leading Edge stuff, and the keyboards seem to sell for more than the CPU units. (Pff, missed what might have been an early Leading Edge Word processing disk set that sold for almost nothing)

Anyway, whatever the Computer Reset guy did, he apparently made enough to pay the bills, at least until whatever happened.
 
I don't know about you guys, but some items I used to think of as being somewhat common and readily available seem to be uncommon and hard to find these days, so they command a few bucks.

Most of what I collect has been recycled or hoarded.
 
Geez this thread took a left turn down some oddball avenue.

This past Saturday I pulled out an IBM Industrial Monitor. This is a repackaged EGA monitor and I'll be modifying it for analog inputs so I can have a medium resolution monitor on my bench for repairing arcade game boards. I've pulled out an incredible number of EPROMs and over 200 IBM ProPrinter buffer upgrade kits which are simply 8K x 8 150ns static RAM chips. :)

Lots of test gear and IBM jr parts/pieces including some fairly rare 3rd party upgrades.

I still have not found a hard drive upgrade for a Jr. I have the card from years ago but someone at Weirdstuff had a damn EPROM fetish and removed a horn from this damn unicorn of a sidecar.
 
I still have not yet stopped by there since the liquidation, but hope to before it is too late. I am somewhat curious to see the building when it is close to empty. After digging through a pile of business cards I did find this:

img001.jpg

On the back was hand written "jenesaispas1f" which I believe was the eBay store name.
 
I still have not yet stopped by there since the liquidation, but hope to before it is too late. I am somewhat curious to see the building when it is close to empty. After digging through a pile of business cards I did find this:

View attachment 54065

On the back was hand written "jenesaispas1f" which I believe was the eBay store name.

Heh, it'll be going for a while. There's so much stuff in there that it would take months to sell it off even with the rate that stuff is going away now.
 
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