Every Thursday around lunch, I open up Estatesales.net and browse the sales for the upcoming weekend. There's typically a dozen or two. I open each one in a new tab, and scroll down through what's typically 100-300 photos per sale. Very quick skim, stopping if I see anything interesting.
I then paste links to specific photos into item-specific category threads in a local makerspace chat: Sewing machines/other fabric stuff, Typewriters/addingmachines/cashregisters/calculators, CRT TVs/VCRs/related, Computers/videogames/peripherals, Tools, Cameras/film/telescopes/projectors/optics, Radio/stereo/DJ/vinyl records, Landline phones. So basically I've done the horizontal browse and sorted it into vertical categories, and anyone who follows those threads for stuff they're interested in, can go to the sale and nab the stuff.
But crucially, estate sales have _everything_, and if the sale folks have reorganized the house, badger them into telling you where the accessories went. If they already threw out valuable cables or something, give 'em hell for it and refuse the purchase, and they'll be more mindful next time.
If you're looking for something specific, show up on the first day. But personally, I just want to keep it from being landfilled, so I show up near the end of the last day. Offer fifty bucks for all the VHS tapes in the house, they'll take it. I got about 3500 floppy disks this way -- other shoppers ended up helping bucket-brigade them to my car as the clerk was closing up shop.
There will be people, the executors of the will, that need to clear the house, however, much which is just $$$ to you will be heirloom grade stuff to them, with memories of happier times attached. Yet still, they need to realise the assets from the estate, maybe there are grandchildren with inheritances in that mountain of cruft left over after a long life.
Sure, there are things that just need to go, that the executors of the will would consider paying to get cleared.
As for getting things like the cables and power bricks that go with electrical items, chances are that the deceased was not doing a good job of keeping everything in order, they might even have a bit of hoarding going on. It is no easy job to repatriate cables with electrical items, that might have gone to the tip already, as e-waste.
There is also a tendency for men to put value on what most women will just see as e-waste. Similarly, with clothes, men see the whole lot as jumble sale trash, whereas women are more likely to see value in these items. I say this not to court sexist allegations, it is just that, if a woman clears the house, there is a slimmer likelihood of getting that lead for that obsolete electronic kit that somehow is considered valuable.
Sometimes the estate is too much work for the relatives, so the solicitor might get the keys to the house and instructions to get it all cleared. These are a minority of cases, usually, the relatives do pick through everything and put stuff in charity shops, charity shops that deal with big items of furniture, up to half a dozen 'skips' (British English term) and so on. I would say there isn't going to be a estate sale in these situations, really you are relying on the minority of sales where the solicitor gets the key, if you are going the estate sales route.
Which means they should know better. And some of them do -- I have a few local favorite companies, where I know they'll keep things together, they're good about finding manuals in file cabinets and putting them with their respective items, etc. I'm usually happy to pay their asking price, because they're interested in seeing the items go to good homes and get reused, and take care accordingly.
But, likewise I have some "un-favorites", one who was notorious for sticking price-tags on screens. I might've finally trained them out of this when I told them I'd only pay their asking price for a particular piece of test equipment if they could remove the sticker without damage. They removed it, the already-degrading plastic screen was obviously fucked by the adhesive, they exchanged awkward glances with each other, and I walked away. Maybe they'll keep that in mind on the next sale they run.
As exemplified by what is going on in the Middle East, the USA has different values to the rest of the world, so don't take this criticism as a slight, just don't come here and expect to be liked for what you are doing.
I'm from Aus if that helps, I would rather see that kind of stuff flow on to enthusiasts than get tossed.
I am however not a big fan of scalping or opportunistic/speculative profiteering. That does happen a lot with these kinds of second hand markets. But I am not seeing that being what the original commenter is doing, maybe I missed it though.
As he already said, they're almost always run as a very detached thing, run by professionals with no connection to the family, other than the transaction.
Some of the more rural thrift stores still have VHS, one still has cassettes, and I know of a place where there's a stash of 8-track.
Thrift stores are businesses; they stock what sells - but they also have the reality of often having to pay to dispose of electronic waste that was donated - they're not allowed to just dumpster it as in days of yore.
Of course the national thrift store chain machines (Goodwill) have policies for all this stuff - you gotta hit up and get to know the smaller independent stores if you want them to hold stuff for you - which they'll often do.
A VCR and some tapes are great for the kid's playroom - teach them rewind patience on equipment you won't cry much if they destroy.
As current smartphones as ditching own the auio cable this is great: I can listen to music/watch some niche scifi series at lowish res (PSP like) from an SD and I can also have nice matches with some old retro JRPGs and plataformers for almost nothing. Tons of homebrew ROMs are perfectly legal to share, too. I own a 100% legal collection which can be shared over Bittorrent and give a lot of fun for both kids and adults, from XRick to Cave Story ports for Genesis/MD to Supertux Advance, this one being a 100% libre game. As a plus, the phone battery will last for longer.
Oh, and with a mini keyboard I might be able to code in EForth whil seating down on a bus as they often have some foldable tray to place laptops and the like. I can just use a book to rest the console and with a keyboard I'm done :)
Oh, and podcasts, too. It wasn't the original purpose, but this is libre software. If an $20/$30 can do the same as an $100 netbook, better for everyone.
As current devices will get a much higher price because of RAM and storage shortages, repurposing devices as computers (and with the right software) can create drastic changes.
Completely agree! I would have much preferred original sounds, or - if anything - sounds taken from original recordings but restored to compensate for the bad recording equipment at the time of recording.
(The interface on the website is a bit confusing to use, IMHO)
It’s just kind of funny, I guess, the upcoming generation will never have the surprising “wow, my computer is silent” moment. I guess that was a one-time thing.
He has seen 3.5" discs, but never the large floppies. His mind almost exploded when I talked about games needing 7 or 8 discs and hitting certain points where the game would pause while you put a new disc in.
0. Note sure how true this was!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Library/comments/unek0c/old_library...
10 PING:ZAP:SHOOT:EXPLODE
20 GOTO 10bro go away from me with that crap. nothing has been invented, here.
I desperatey search thrift stores for anything I can find that isn't the generic consumer garbage that plagues the US; smart tvs, ISP-issued modem/routers, terrible dvd players, "media centers", other smart garbage. Really, any kind of digital circuit that isnt a dumb interface to media is sacrilige in my search. This has become all but a moot point because things like CRTs and other obscure electronics are all picked off at the donation point and then sold online because they've been indentified as valuable or "retro", or outright thrown away because theyre considered too old for anyone to ever give a shit about.
There is a disturbing situation regarding old technology right now where only a very, very specific subset of technologies are considered valuable to a very small, specific subset of consumers; this means that things like CRTs are shipped off to warehouses to be catalogued and sold on online auctions, and their accompanying hardware is being thrown into dumpsters because theres no immediately correlated market for this hardware. For the first time in about 10 years I saw two VCRs at a thrift store (a Quasar VHQ-40M and some lesser generic garbage). This was the first time I had seen a VCR for sale IRL since going to a pawn shop that has since been demolished; the man running the store said I could keep it for free because the person who pawned it was a crackhead and he didn't even know if it worked, but if it did, he wanted me to come back and pay him $10 for it. Lo and behold it worked perfectly, so I went back and did.
I've noticed just this week that both of the thrift store companies I frequent have stopped stocking VHS tapes; I don't know if this is because they have decided they're to be thrown out, sold online, or refused as donations. The last VHS tapes I've bought were Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Austin Powers in Goldmember.