Where does the Apple II stuff on ebay come from?

[Keatah]

Where does the Apple II stuff on ebay come from? From sellers, duhh! But where do they get it from?

 

I'm seeing more and more old men die off, and some formerly had mom'n'pop computer stores in the 80's, and they took all their inventory and put it in storage or in their garage.

 

So Apple II material is coming from dead people's estates more and more frequently. And I bet the market is going to be flooded with this stuff. There'll be enough to go around for years to come.

 

And then there's the 70's hobbyist. It's about time for them to keel over, thus flooding the market. Some notables already kicked the bucket.

 

With this in mind I think there is little or no reason to pay the high prices being asked. I'm seeing a steady uptick in the amount of material currently available and first coming onto the market.

 

[carlsson]

That is assuming the relatives simply won't dump the old stuff, calculating that the revenue from selling it will be less than the amount of work associated with it. Of course they could sell whole lots to resellers, who though tend to want good money for their items.

 

Just recently I was bidding on some items from Bob Bishop's collection, but got outbid in the last second as usual. However I found some similarly priced items just the week later, so that was a score.

[JamesD]

It's not just estate sales.
People get old and have to go to nursing homes. Then their families clean out the house and sell it.
And others retire and move but have no room for their stuff in the RV or retirement housing.
So a couple things to look for listed on yard sales advertisements.

[spacecadet]

Even if there's a steady uptick in the amount for sale, there seems to also be a steady uptick in the number of buyers. A lot of people who got into Apple stuff after the II died off are now going back and discovering this whole era of the company that they never got to experience. And there are a lot more of those people than there are of us who did live through it. So I don't expect prices to come down.

 

I've got a thrift store near me that deals almost exclusively in estate sales. I bought my old IBM ThinkPad there (and I found out who it actually belonged to because his files were still on it... though he's still alive), but I've literally never seen *any* old video game or 8/16 bit computer stuff there. I always check, but I feel like most people sell that stuff on their own these days because they know it's more valuable than a bunch of old clothes or whatever.

[dudeslife]

Another reason stuff appears is because people's future thinking changes..I have a kid now, so I am ebaying apple software or books that I don't think she will ever be interested in.. I put my factory sealed Enchanter Trilogy on eBay this week because she will never really have any connection to infocom, but I am keeping my apple hardware because it is something she could grow to love also..

Edited December 9, 2016 by dudeslife