This is the first post in (what I hope to be) a series on clearing out your excess stuff and making a little extra cash on the side.
My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. It had a whopping 3,583 bytes of RAM (0.003 MB) and cost $300 when I got it for my 10th birthday. Prior to that I had an Magnavox Odyssey 2 game system. It was to the Atari 2600 what the Beta was to VHS — better overall than the competition, but bit the dust because it didn't bring other developers to the table in time. Lots of hours spent on that game. 😉
But anyway, the stuff made its way from my parents' attic to my home, and it's time for some of it to go bye-bye. I've got loads of quarter-century-old hardware and software — books, power supplies, keyboards/CPUs, game controllers, 5.25″ disks and ROM cartridges, tape drives, disk drives, magazines. I had started selling some of it on eBay a while back; one cartridge expander for a Commodore 64 and a few cartridges went for $50.
What prompted me to write about this was my friend found some original-release Apple advertising posters hiding in a tube in his garage. (He's in the process of moving into a bigger house.) Original iPod, iMac, and other stuff. He's selling them on eBay now. This find should net him a few hundred bucks.
This and other vintage computer equipment has a good market on eBay because enthusiasts need to replace system equipment when parts go, and they're not being manufactured anymore. So they buy systems and cannibalize the parts they need.
There's a market for just about anything that is in your garage that you no longer use. Since the stuff is just taking up space and dragging on your psyche, why not let someone else use it and make a little green in the process?
I can't believe people buy that stuff. I remember a Texas Instruments keyboard thing my uncle would hook up to the TV and then my cousins would spend HOURS typing in the DOS coding to get it to do this crude shell game thing on the screen. If they had one digit out of place it didn't work. Wow.
But I'd look forward to this series. I've got random stuff that I'd just as soon toss because I didn't think anyone would need or want it… but if someone wants your Commodore…
My parents bought my sister and I an Apple IIe when we we're growing up. It must a cost $2500 back then. I forget. That was a classic machine, but we tossed it after it got outdated. Darn, we should have kept it.
you'd be surprised as what ppl will buy. we had a garage sale a few months ago 630-11am
$350 later, i didn't miss any of the crap at all. just yesterday i sold our futon and all the clothes my son has outgrown. it was the quickest $50 i've made in a long time. decluttering is so much fun 🙂