17 Jul
2019
17 Jul
'19
9:12 a.m.
At 10:29 AM 7/17/2019, Patrick Finnegan via cctalk wrote:
On Wed, Jul 17, 2019 at 10:17 AM Ethan O'Toole via
cctalk <
There are likely to be similar places around flyover America.
You been poking around my warehouse?
I'd agree in prinicpal, but if even 0.1% of
LGR's 1M youtube followers try
to show up one day, it'd be a Problem. More people going will create a
bigger headache for the volunteers helping to deal with the situation and
might end up in no one getting anything.
YouTube subscriber numbers versus reality; you'd have a hard time
getting 0.00001% of those subscribers to do anything in the real world.
I've been overwhelmed trying to
deal with my own collection sometimes; I can't imagine having 10-20x the
space filled up would be like.
I'm overwhelmed and it's time to purge. The problem isn't a desire
for old computers, the problem is having too much space. You might
like motorcycles or tractors or Beanie Babies, but if you have the
space and the inclination, you can eventually fill your available space.
There's some threshold where
instead of "more people getting retrocomputers", it's "This is too
much
stress, so it's all going to a landfill".
Yes, assuming you expended the effort to organize and document,
then organization makes dispersal slightly more easy... but most of
the problem is still there. You want to advertise what you have?
Effort. Put a value on it? More effort. Want to give it away?
Sell it? All that takes time and effort.
Lots of time. Packing, shipping, even just dealing with schedules and
communication and meet-ups and those who don't show up. And yes,
if you're in "flyover America" you have far fewer enthusiasts to attract
for local pickup.
Even sending it all to recycling takes a tremendous amount of effort.
I put some stuff on eBay the other day, some server stuff less than
ten years old plus some other items, like 18 VoIP phones with a
starting bid of 99 cents... the only thing seeing a bid so far
is a NIB toner cartridge for an HP laser printer.
So, to deal with my own hoarding / collecting, I'll strive to make
a list of stuff I haven't touched in 10, 20, 30 years, and I'll
post here to see if anyone is interested. Too much lingering
obligation and future debt, even if it only has to go to recycling.
I've considered taking a truckful to VCF Midwest, but apparently
I'd need to make a big scary sign that says "If you don't take it now,
it's going to recycling" because I can't imagine that I'd be able
to give away half the load.
- John