I used to live in a college town. They had a salvage depot they used to get rid of stuff no one wanted. When I first moved there, it was open to the public on Friday. There was a lot of interesting lab equipment and occasionally some good video gear, and always a bunch of old desks and other furniture, much of it from the 1970s. My home office looked like the set of the Bob Newhart show for years.
Unfortunately it got outsourced. They opened every day. Then the guy running it started comparing everything to the Ebay price and it was all downhill from there. Still could find a good deal if they didn't know what they were looking at (got a video switcher for $20 once), but you had to go all the time, which got to be a big pain.
Some hamfests are still good places to find stuff, although ebay has really ruined a lot of them. The Northern VA/DC/Maryland area has a lot of good ones.
I know the government/Pentagon used to have pallet auctions, but that can be a pain too. I would imagine, like everything else, someone decided to make money on it, and drove up the costs for everyone.
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I used to live in a college town. They had a salvage depot they used to get rid of stuff no one wanted. When I first moved there, it was open to the public on Friday. There was a lot of interesting lab equipment and occasionally some good video gear, and always a bunch of old desks and other furniture, much of it from the 1970s. My home office looked like the set of the Bob Newhart show for years.
Unfortunately it got outsourced. They opened every day. Then the guy running it started comparing everything to the Ebay price and it was all downhill from there. Still could find a good deal if they didn't know what they were looking at (got a video switcher for $20 once), but you had to go all the time, which got to be a big pain.
Some hamfests are still good places to find stuff, although ebay has really ruined a lot of them. The Northern VA/DC/Maryland area has a lot of good ones.
I know the government/Pentagon used to have pallet auctions, but that can be a pain too. I would imagine, like everything else, someone decided to make money on it, and drove up the costs for everyone.