Episode: 680
Title: HPR0680: Auctions yard sales and flea markets
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0680/hpr0680.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 00:47:25

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Hello again ladies and gentlemen this is Cheapsgate Computing for the Frugal
Technology Consumer. I'm your host Brom and I'm having a lovely commute
home and this is part of my mini-series on acquisitions and by mini-series I
just decided that with the advent of the dumpster diving episode I could
continue a little bit more about how to get computers for a low cost. So let's
begin. This episode is about auctions, yard sales and flea markets which are
basically a good way to pick up computing devices on the used market and the
first thing I would like to say for all of these modes of receiving information is
caveat mTOR. First of all you're not the one that bought the original
specification on this device so therefore it's not customized to your needs
it's customized to somebody else's needs even if it's a mass market device
that you normally would have bought well somebody else got to it first so
warranties are generally concerned but the real big thing is not to get taken on
price for example on an auction which is the first part of our episode here I
once purchased webcams and compared to a similar spec webcam that I was looking
to get that my work was using and I was like okay yeah I'll just buy these I'm
getting a good number of webcams cheaper than I would be able to purchase them
through other means well I didn't do my research and I will harp on this point
later but because I didn't do my research I paid double what I could have
gotten the exact same webcam for because this webcam was comparable to the ones
we were using at work but the exact same webcam was available on Amazon for half
the price I ended up giving some away selling some at the price I should have
paid so I still ended up taking like a hundred dollar loss it was a very
expensive lesson and one I recommend you don't repeat you know learn from
others mistakes in this case mine so caveat mentor do your research so let's
talk about options most of my auction experience beyond having giving the
old the odd estate auction and attending the odd furniture auction is every six
months the university in the home in my hometown where my parents still live has
a salvage auction they have a like a salvage department of this university that
sells things that the university leaster purchased that are no longer useful
to the university but are still quite good so it's a way for the university to
recoup some of their investment some of their money and the salvage is
opening around but the auction they bring in the seller here the salvage
people bring in an auction company and the auction company merges the
universities left over inventory with the auction years inventory and they do
reclaiming and off lease and hardware disposal and that type of thing from
companies around the area met these folks down in Maryland and they go up to
New York and to Erie and that type of thing this is all centered on Pennsylvania
so basically you're getting the best of us worlds you're getting the salvage from
the university and you're getting the auction years and you're not getting it in
one convenient place when you go to an auction obey the rules and understand how
they work this auction like many there's an item put up for bid bids started a
certain price if nobody bites they go lower which really irritates the
auction years but it's pretty much predictable somebody bids and then the
auction year keeps trying to get higher and higher bids until there is no other
competitor the highest bidder has a choice to how many items they want if they're
say three computers put up as a lot the high bidder can take one two or three and
they get their choice the next person in line was the back bidder and this auction
year company only goes one back bidder the back bidder will get their next pick
and if it's any leftover the seller has the option may or may not take it to
offer the rest up to anybody else who wants one at the bidder's price so
generally if you want something you're gonna have to be high bidder because you
have no clue if somebody is going to grab all six systems a lot of system
builders and computer resellers come to these auctions so if you want a
computer and you only want one and there's a lot of six and somebody's really
bidding against you they might be a reseller that wants all six and even if
you're the back bidder you will not get one but to that end you can get caught up
in the moment I overpaid for the webcams but I was also going up against
somebody else and a run point is I was really excited about these webcams man
and I was like yeah I'm getting a good price on these things and so I was like
yeah I can go higher I can go higher I can go higher this isn't a big deal well
it was a big deal as I found out later because I didn't do my research and so
you cannot get caught up in the emotional moment you have to detach yourself
emotionally from the purchase that you are making you have to look at it from
a logical perspective of is this a good price how many of these items am I going
to buy what am I going to use them for etc etc and I thought I had done that
research and it turns out I was incorrect so one of the resources that you can
use is a lot of auctions will give prospective buyers a time to come in
earlier before the auction starts let's say the auctions five to nine or five
to ten maybe to open up at four o'clock and the public can come in and just
tour and explore and see what's there most in the case of these computer
auctions the systems are turned on they're booted to in this case like DOS you
know the monitors are running some silly demo program to make so that you can
see there's no dead pixels things like that but they're really basic display
as you can sort of look at the items and research them and look at the model
numbers and call people if the auction is a casual environment you have the
auction to get on the phone and call somebody it's kind of hard to do that
while bidding is going on because it's very loud but you can call somebody
during this window and have them look things up for you if you don't have a
smartphone with internet access yourself you have a phone a cellular phone you
can just call somebody otherwise you're going to have to go with your
knowledge and your skills and your wiles I always liked back so to that end
if you're going to get things in auctions know honestly that some of the
useful life has been taken out of the crisis like any second-hand sale and
that your warranty is generally either as is or maybe sometimes you'll get
30 days but that's you know as most second-hand sales sales are gonna be
unless you get like a certified reseller and you're looking into short
warranty you are buying something at face value test it look at it see if
the seller will let you boot a live CD if something you want to run on it
that type of thing the other thing I will say about auctions is bring water
because water is expensive there water and bring some foods at least
something eat at this auction they sell food because they want their public to
be happy and healthy but and it's usually not a very high price but by bringing
your own food you have more money to spend on the things you want however
again it's also a cheap meal but you should not be hungry you should be
satiated but not overly full you're looking to you know use your brain power
rain cycles to evaluate the items that are being sold so that's a big thing and
that sort of ends our auction segment so I'm gonna get on to the other
portion of second-hand sales I wanted to talk about today on this community
home which was yard sales and flea markets and different parts of the
company country call them different things you have tag sales or garage sales
that type of thing they're all sort of the same thing this is a private seller
and I'll talk about yard sales first because flea market can mean a couple
different things so yard sales a private seller somebody just puts a bunch of
stuff in their yard puts price tags on it and says here show up it's usually a
Saturday morning thing I have friends that are really big in the yard sale
I spend their Saturday morning going around looking for deals and you can find
some really good stuff but in terms of technology it's a little harder to find
things computer systems are a little tougher to find simply because everyone
is concerned about their data I recommend DBAM for that I will say that over and
over again I really like DBAM even though it only boots on i386 machines I
think they have a power PC build finally tough to say but wiping the disc is
very important even if you have to offer to do it in front of the person you
sort of wonder you know why they want to trust people or not they're selling
an item but they don't they want to make sure that doesn't go in the wrong
hands which is kind of weird but I don't see it a lot and the other reason I
don't really see it a lot is because where I live there's electronics recycling
facilities where my parents live there's electronics recycling facilities so
a lot of things go straight to the scrap heap instead of being sold to second
parties or third party sold to you yes so second parties the first thing
you know about the yard sales and flame works is that you do actually have an
opportunity you don't really with an auction I mean you can kind of get this but
you can ask the seller you have some time to interview these people power on an
item test an item there's there's more one-on-one interaction use it to your
advantage you're trying to get the most for your money and your time you're
talking to one seller it's not they're not an auction here where you're having
to grab a lot of time slice from them before everything goes out but so you have
some time and usually there's not too much mobbing at the booth or the the
person's yard so you can ask the power things on you can ask the test you can
ask them why they're selling it you can ask them what they liked about you can
ask what they disliked about it take advantage of that because I don't think
I've ever been to a yard sale where I could get a refund all sales are
final just like with auctions the other thing is that your opportunity is
fleeting with a private yard sale you know it's it's going to be run
Saturday and that's all you get maybe Sunday maybe Friday but if you don't buy
it when you see it somebody else is going to get it and again like I say with
auctions you have to emotionally disconnect yourself from that reality you
have to say okay if I never came here I would have never seen this yes I must
I might really like this item I really like this device but somebody else will
get to it there was a Dell laptop didn't even boot I don't think I think I
had a hardware or a motherboard issue it would have been nice to work apart for
parts that somebody was selling for like five dollars I don't know it was a
fairly recent laptop but it just had BIOS issues and I didn't even get a chance
to look at it because with the time I got down there it had been sold and it's
fine you just have to let these things go and and to that and you can
haggle at your sales you don't want to pay ten bucks for that but you'll you'll
give them eight or five or seven fifty do it if it's especially if it's late in
the afternoon you may be able to get a rid of it you know I do I just want
this out of my house it's not worth that much to me I'd rather have the space
that sort of thing or you can say I you know I'll take it for five and they may
come back to you and say no I want more for it but at least you asked my mother
in law can haggle with pretty much anybody I'm not very good at it my wife's
actually fairly good at it I make her do the haggling when we do shared
purchases so to the end the only thing I've really found computer-wise it
a yard sale was there was something like Windows 95 computer years and years
ago for fifty dollars we didn't even bite it was so far priced out of our range
and looking back on it sure I should have offered twenty five or twenty four
maybe you've gotten it even then I may even just issue ten but people were
throwing out better so I didn't even bother I picked up a power-mac with a
four-digit model number for two dollars keyboard mouse video it turned out that
it was a terrible machine to run Linux on because it was a new bus power-mac but
that's really neither here nor there it had a lot to do with the fact that the
kernel the support of the processor was one kernel the kernel that had all the
drivers in it for the motherboards was another kernel because it was the
Mac 68K type motherboard but the power PC processor was one of those odd
ducks that really only got supported by Apple and on now two flea markets and
flea markets are kind of weird because you know anybody can show up and buy a
booth for twenty five dollars a day but some flea markets that I've been to
have permanent stalls or permanent booths they may be open a couple days
a week but the same sellers are always there in fact I think they leave their
stuff there and lock it up traffic's a little slower these items are generally a
little lower rent you might be able to haggle a little bit more but at the same
time it'll be there next week so you can come look at something take down a
serial number and go oh I actually like that because you've spent a week on
their internet researching it comparing prices and you come back much more
informed consumer that being said you're going to have a lot less luck
haggling because instead of being a private seller this is somebody who makes a
living selling these things at a flea market the same sort of thing as the
secondhand sale they may know things about it they may not know things about it
and they may do their own testing especially if they have a lot of computer
parts at this booth and they may not at all it's really a mixed bag and you're
gonna have to try your luck but the thing is that the monetary cost cost to get
in and and buy a piece of hardware from one of these sellers is a lot cheaper
than buying it new but at the same time you do pay for it a little bit and you
sort of lose that customizability you lose the shiny new features but you're
getting something cheap
thank you for listening to H.P.R. sponsored by
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