Comment by shit_game
11 hours ago
I love seeing art like this. Using things that are forgotten, obscure, unused, insignificant, or otherwise inconsequential is an ethos unto its own. Obsolete technologies are becoming exponentially rare; I unfortunately passed up an auction for an Osbourne 1 just this week and I'm regretting it more every second since.
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.
Thrift stores throw out things THEY don't think are valuable. Skip that bottleneck, go straight to the estate sales.
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.
Meanwhile some of us just want to simplify, accessories and cables have probably been scattered, etc. it’s not worth it to me to find a home for a lot of this stuff or just live with the clutter until probably someone else needs to deal with it.
I get it, but, for every estate sale, there are people that have lost a parent, a grandparent, a friend, a neighbour.
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.
Oh, all the estate sales I go to are run (and posted) by third parties, who do it as a business, for a percentage of the sales. The heirs are nowhere to be found -- they got a first pass through the house a few days prior to grab anything sentimental, and they'll show up a few days later when the business has been transacted. But the folks running the sale are professionals.
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.
It's almost certainly that they refuse the donations or throw them out when they find them.
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.