Ask HN: Should I sell my vintage computer collection?

Some of the Amigas definitely have small lithium batteries that keep the NVRAM and real-time clock alive. These tend to leak rather often and the corrosive contents eat away PCB traces. So better double-check, I lost a Mac IIcx due to a leaking battery; luckily my NeXTs and the other Macs are fine (but need some recapping).

And it may not, in which case you've stored these for years for no real reason. I'm selling off the majority of my own collection because of this. I've told myself for years "maybe when things quiet down I can make a cool space to show them off". In the meantime, I've moved four times and had three kids. Most of it has been in boxes or bins throughout. I just have to accept that my life changed directions and it's not going to happen.

Yeah, that's exactly my point. A therapist will help you work through those kinds of thoughts.

They might ask you some leading questions on how you might work towards making that museum a reality now, instead of some nebulous future, or how you might come to accept that a computer museum is an unrealistic goal. I'm not saying that either of those things are "right". I'm just some punter on the internet who is making assumptions based on his own problems with hoarding (VR headsets and hobby project materials, in my case). The therapist will help you work through what you really, truly, want out of your life and create the sounding board and accountability to make you admit why you're avoiding it.

I got super overwhelmed with the search for a therapist. My health insurance had a provider search form online and when I used it, it came up with 3000 hits in a 5 mile radius around my house. That was ridiculous. I eventually realized that there actually was no way to make a decision on a therapist just from reading profiles on the internet. So I found local healthcare centers that had a lot of therapists on staff, looked up reviews for them, and called the center that had the most positive reviews. They then helped me schedule my first appointment with my therapist, because fitting your schedule is probably more important than finding exactly the right person the first time.

I'm somewhat considering changing to a different therapist, but I achieved a much more important thing: I got started, and I got into the system that can make it very easy to switch.

I grinding down the "collection" of my elderly, hoarder father. Here in California, all this "vintage" stuff is essentially worthless. Not only because there is no practical use for obsolete tech, but because there are so many other hoards out there. It's a bit like everyone who thought their decades of National Geographic magazines had value, but libraries do not want them because there are so many identical boxes of these left over from estate sales. In many ways, tech is worse. Hoarders think of it as having intrinsic value like precious metals, but I'd say old tech is more like expired canned food. Too many expired goods and not enough interested recipients, since the pre-expiration purpose of the goods is no longer relevant.

Roughly speaking, I am sifting large piles into several categories: somewhat contemporary stuff I can donate to a charity who might resell/reuse at least some of it; e-waste and metal I "donate" to a licensed scrapper for proper disposal; batteries and other items I separate and hand over to the county's household hazardous waste handler; recyclable paper and plastic; recordable media I have to at least attempt to erase before figuring out disposal as per above; and landfill for whatever is left.

Because he had no inventory, and hoarding seems to be an almost fractal disorder, I feel obligated to carefully sift and break down every item until all hiding places are revealed. I cannot predict when I will come across something in the midst which requires special handling. I wish I had found piles already sorted, so I could have just done the back-breaking work of shifting them out of the house in one heroic push. Instead, I have been forced to become intimate with it all. Now, I have an involuntary hobby to do this a little bit each week, filling the curbside bins and taking the occasional car load to other disposal sites.

I have had to remind myself not to "cry over spilled milk" and dwell on the sunk cost of all the unnecessary things he hoarded. It's hard to say how much that money (properly invested) could have gone to supporting his care and quality of life in the end. But it is all a liability to me now, as attempting to recover any value from it would take more of my time and cause more grief than it is possibly worth.

I'd keep one and sell the other one.

Where in Australia are you? (Roughly)

  > Here in Australia there's not much in the way of technology museums.

It sounds like you live in one. Seriously, you say that you don't have the means to display the equipment, but maybe a university or non-technology museum might be happy to maintain a technology exhibit.

Try emailing some of the people at the Computer Museum in Mountain View and try to get them to pay for the cost of shipping.

I don't think they're suggesting finding someone who values the collection so much as someone who will take care of the chores of listing and shipping that's involved.

If the alternatives are keep it all (undesirable because of space use, etc), sell it yourself (undesirable because of time use and disappointment), dumping it (undesirable because it's good stuff), or letting someone else sell it... Well you're not going to get the monetary value of the collection, but at least it's probably going to someone willing to pay for it... And hopefully they don't let it sit in boxes forever.

> I'm scared that when I die my wife will sell all my cars for what I told her I paid for them.

(Not my joke)

We're going through this right now. There are hoarder cleanup companies that can help. They're pricey, but we didn't have time and energy to haul out seven dumpsters full of stuff.

Then there are "estate sale" people. They sell the things that are worth money, and give you have of what they make. They keep the other half as their fee.

The problem is if you have to do both - if there's massive amounts of actual trash, but also a fair amount of good stuff. But at least we had some ideas of what categories of things probably included good stuff, so we didn't let the hoarder cleanup people take those.

Also, if your stuff burns down in a fire, you’re more likely to get some insurance money back if you have a well-maintained list of items, serial numbers, purchase price, etc., rather than depending on your post-trauma brain.

Scarcity doesn't imply value.

The Computer Museum in Boston merged with The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, which received nearly all of TCM’s artifacts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Computer_Museum,_Boston#...