Ask HN: Where to buy old computers and consoles?

1) eBay, that's the one place where I get a lot of old bits when needed... Secondly would be the vendor table as t local Vintage Computer event which would be a lot less than eBay prices but only available at specific times and places through the year. Other than that be diligent, check out craigslist, thrift shops, boot sales/flea markets, look for used electronics parts places, used games stores, other resellers (Habitat for Humanity Re-Stores) etc. Let your acquaintances know you collect old computers. Know what you are looking at and your results will widely vary.

2) Network, I guess, restoring computers like on the videos is a laborious process if they were in business to make a living doing such the labor costs would be significant. You might get some help from people for one aspect or another// If you are willing to pay a bit you could find professional restoration.

Maybe you’ll be the person to creat a store like that.

In my experience this stuff can be sourced on the cheap at tech flea markets, local classifieds and ebay, shopgoodwill, etc sites.

There are some stores that sell retro consoles along with comic books and stuff like that, although they tend to charge a premium

retro computers in a store I think is pretty rare, I haven't seen it personally

There's a lot of active Facebook groups for vintage computer users including a bunch of buy/sell groups. For the most part the community does a good job weeding out scammers or unreliable sellers.

If you're in the Boston area, stuff shows up at the MIT Flea a lot.

The first thing I'd do is find a forum, group, discord, whatever of people who dabble and deal in this kind of thing. Starting with YouTube channels and follow the strings. Said groups almost always have a "deals/trade/buy" subsection somewhere.

But you will be paying for "known good" items.

If you want to get deals you have to troll eBay, local auctions (this is a great source, especially if they're not well advertised/described - look for photos of piles or boxes of "equipment" where you can recognize something like an Apple II sticking out), estate sales (many of the people originally involved are now dying), government sales/auctions (schools and other government places that are shutting down/moving are a great source).

Get to know the people in your area who traffic in used computer gear and let it be know that you're in the market for "really old" stuff. Eventually your network will get large enough that you'll start to hear about things.

Start an electronics disposal side-business. Basically advertise that for $x per pound or machine or whatever, you'll come and clear out electronics. 90% of what you get will just be stuff you haul to the local electronic disposal place (charge enough to break even+) but now and then you'll get a treasure-trove of really old stuff.

See if there's any good vintage computer shows near you. They often have people selling stuff at them.

Mentioning what country you're in might be helpful here.

Pink Godzilla in Seattle does that

Any Singaporeans who where to pick up old computers,

I think emulation is the sincerest form of preservation for these old systems. The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) project would often say that preservation of the old hardware was their goal, the fact that you could use the code to play old roms was really more of a side affect. I used to think that was just a pretext for piracy, and I still think there's something to that, but more and more I appreciate what they did to document that old gear.

eBay is definitely the main place for any kind of vintage electronics. It's not just random people selling old junk there, you should also find professional stores that are basically operating out of eBay. They'll test stuff, do mod work, etc.

The Vintage Computer Fest has an annual event on each coast: https://vcfed.org/vcf-swap-meet/

I went last year and there was a smallish number of old 8- and 16-bit computers for sale at vendor booths. (Large numbers of old Macs, if you're into that.)

For vintage video games, you can find mom and pop stores all over the place. Some of them even have some basic repair services. Do a search, see what you find locally.

For vintage computers, I've never seen a dedicated store to this kind of thing that is still around. It's too niche of a market, with product that wont move fast enough to dedicate retail space to it.

Be sure to do a little research before heading to the mom and pop. These days most of these places are over priced or priced at the high end of what the market will bear because they are selling nostalgia. For example, a store in my city will often run out people that browse, and will adjust prices based on feeling or what the highest asking price on ebay for a mint version is on ebay plus markup.

Another issue, at least in my area, is the people that are out to flip vintage equipment. These people make their money off of scooping up anything at a bargain price and reselling it for more. One guy locally picks up every CRT TV and Monitor he can get his hands on that is in decent working order. He wipes them down, "services" them, and resells them online for 5 or 6 times what he paid. Other people in town do the same for vintage video games.

This is a deep rabbit hole, I have unfortunately fallen into. IT all highly depends where you are and which retro machinery are we talking about. In general though:

- Be prepared that old hardware breaks down, so you need some skills or someone with skills to keep it alive over time. Highly dependent on which hardware, of course.

- Ebay is your best bet if there's nothing nearby

- Some hardware have modern re-issues / re-interpretations of old hardware. Namely, NES/SNES/SEGA (look into Analogue), Commodore 64 (C64 Reloaded MK2), ZX Spectrum (Next and clones of Next), pocket (analogue), etc.

- Emulators are great these days

It's only about 60% of what you're asking for but I'm a fan of DKOldies: https://www.dkoldies.com

They're a US storefront but they ship internationally. They do a great job restoring consoles. And they have amazing customer service (one of the SNES Controller refurbs was a no-go and they cross-shipped a replacement with no expectation that I even returned the defective one).

I don't know if they have old computer stuff, mostly just consoles. They have Atari consoles sometimes though.

Garage sales seem the only chance of getting things cheap

Every gathering or public market or forum suffers from market prices

Find a retro game conference in your area, it almost always has refurbished and working hardware for sale. You're going to pay a premium for something that it working and ready to go though so be ready for some sticker shock. CRT monitors in particular are climbing in value because the vast majority are getting old enough to require repairs like capacitor replacement.

If you just want to use old hardware IMHO mess with MAME/MESS and emulation or the mister FPGA. Keeping old hardware running, particularly from that analog era, can be challenging and expensive.

We do hardware repairs and restoration as a side-business:

http://www.glitchwrks.com/

Site does not represent the business part :P Most of the hobbyist repair work we do is S-100 (Altair/IMSAI type stuff, and newer), Ohio Scientific, etc.

eBay is still your best bet if you're looking for a deal on the Internet. The trick is not to be in a hurry, if you don't want to pay retail. Either buy from a seller who guarantees their stuff as working, or pay significantly less and plan on fixing it or sending it off to be fixed.

If you're looking for old computers, CRTs, and all sorts of periphery, there's a fantastic little online shop that ships out of Vancouver, Canada: http://woodgrain.tv

Fortunately I have local stores that sell retro consoles, games, and peripherals exclusively. I took up restoring DMG-001 consoles and modding the Nintendo DS over the pandemic. It's a lot of fun.

For computers I haven't found better than kijiji/craigslist/ebay; basically swap-trade sites.

I can repair old machines, I started last year and have done a dozen or so.

Does that mean that I should start a repair business for old machines? I don't think the economics make sense for most machines; sometimes it takes less than an hour to "repair" an old machine, but most of the time it takes a long time to diagnose the issue, especially when looking at a machine you've never looked at before. Even at minimum wage, it would sometimes end up costing more than paying a little more on ebay to get a machine in working condition in the first place.

I've been thinking of maybe starting a rental service for vintage machines though. I imagine that most people just want to play around with something for a couple days or weeks, and buying and then selling is quite a lot of effort I imagine. (However I wouldn't like sending known working vintage machines using regular delivery services.)

Aside from ebay.ca and some bidding platforms, any good place for Canadians?