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by PumpkinSpice 956 days ago
Right. It's not even that they need to create a market. These things are already selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars. I guess it's a fairly common decor element for offices and homes. The same goes for old typewriters.

There are obsolete electronics that would be a lot harder to sell, for example CRT TVs - but phones are basically free money.
2 comments
neilv 956 days ago
Seems like it could be stock for a nice little retirement side business (maybe for someone closer to 65 than to 90), hand-refurbishing old phones, and slowly trickling them out for sale on eBay and elsewhere, for premium prices.

A complication is that they have so much stock, you'd need to get (road-worthy) transportation to wherever you arranged storage accessible to you.

Maybe the collection could be parted out to multiple buyers, to make some of the higher-value lots sell more easily? For example, separate buyers for the lots of wood, candlestick, and novelty phones, then another buyer pays for right to pick over the remainder for 2 weeks, then maybe it's still worthwhile for an area scrap yard to haul away all remaining stock/trailers/fixtures for free?

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RetroTechie 954 days ago
If selling individual phones becomes too cumbersome (due to this couple's age, cost of storage space etc), then the obvious fix would be to sell bigger lots.

Some people will see a market niche in it (existing or not), and bet some $ on that to start a little side business.

Bigger lots + whatever pricing makes it move.

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Dwedit 956 days ago
Retro gamers are interested in CRTs, as they have no input lag whatsoever.
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PumpkinSpice 956 days ago
In practice, it's a tiny market. CRTs are bulky, unsightly... and for the most part, really not as amazing as claimed. Plus, they are difficult to ship. Most of them end up in the landfill.

Meanwhile, antique phones, typewriters, cameras, and so on are popular enough that people make replicas: https://www.ebay.com/itm/266280860021

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ghaff 956 days ago
But you have this 50 pound CRT that has to be connected to the right retro gamer. I think mine was small enough to be recycled for free but, over the years, I paid a fair bit to recycle CRTs.
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