People trying to sell stuff to computer stores

[An Haddock]

Probably once a day we get someone who calls or stops by trying to sell us computer stuff.

Once in a while you get someone who has a laptop and either they got one from work so they don't theirs any more or they just have an older one and they've upgraded. Sometimes we'll take a chance on those, although newer laptops we require an ID before purchasing.

These people don't take "no" for an answer, either. Had one call today, described as a "couple of years old" (read: probably more like 4 - 5) The guy apparently wanted $180 for it, which gut instinct tells me is probably too high. Even after telling my lackey to tell the guy on the phone we weren't interested, he still kept trying... "but it comes with this, it comes with that" - if we say no, that's the end of the conversation. Stop trying because it's only going to piss me off.


My favorite is when people bring in old desktops and think they're worth something. A couple of years old, maybe. But I've had people bring in desktops 5 - 6 years old, probably some even older, and with a straight face ask me if we'll buy it from them. I must admit I take a certain amount of sadistic glee in telling them not only that their machine is worthless, but that we'll recycle it for no charge to them. And in the case of monitors and printers, we actually charge people to dispose of them because my recycling guy charges me for them.

Some people have tried bringing in parts (video cards, memory, etc.) but usually it's worthless. So I get to give them the same speech about recycling it for no charge.


One of my favorites was some obvious druggie-type who had found an old Sun Microsystems CRT monitor (one of the older style monitors, not one of the new, lightweight flatscreens - for those who are techno-challenged) It's a bit dirty and it actually has chunk of plastic missing from a corner. And he thinks he's going to get $20 for it. After telling him no and reiterating it several times, he unhappily took the monitor and left. I later found out that the guy usually hangs around the main street in the next town over, about a half mile away... so this dumbass must have found the monitor out for the trash and walked a half mile to bring it to us to try and sell.


I noticed someone had left a television set near the mailbox a half block from the shop today... I'm a little surprised some drugged up moron hasn't tried bringing it in to sell to us or to sell on Ebay. (a side-service we offer)


Anyone else have similar experiences with dumbasses trying to sell you junk?

[An Haddock]

Shoot... quick somewhat related story:


Speaking of people selling junk, you've probably seen these guys walking around your town with a satchel of crap they try to sell... electronic alarm clocks, sports tickets, electronic gadgets, toys, etc. We don't get them that much around here any more, but they're basically 21st century door to door salesmen.

A couple of years ago a couple of them tried selling us some crap but we waved them off. (gotta remember to put a new No Solicitors sign on our door... but I digress)

Well, about a half hour later I see them hurrying down the block across the street from my shop and then a cop stops them... and the cop proceeds to yell at them for what I swear had to be ten minutes straight. He let them go and the solicitors disappeared. I later asked my detective friend on the force what happened and he said that they went into the Mexican restaurant a block away and asked to be seated... but after placing a lunch order they got up and proceeded to try and sell their crap to whoever was sitting in the restaurant!

The owner was pissed and called the cops on them... the cop gave them both tickets for selling without a license or some such thing and they got out of town.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Some video games stores are similar. Even though we limit what we take to pretty much modern and last gen consoles, it's still pretty common for people to bring us all manner of older stuff like NES and Super NES consoles and controllers, old Gameboy units, the occasional Game Gear or Master System and all kinds of old cables and game controllers. Now interestingly we are permitted to make a deal with a customer if we want to, I've gotten some great classic gaming stuff myself this way.

But most of the time the stuff they bring us is crap. Scratched up, dusty, missing pieces, wires damaged and so forth.

Some time ago a guy brought in an old Atari console and wanted $50. If it were in good shape that's one thing, but this thing was beat UP. Dealing with secondhand product in general, it blows my mind how few people actually realize the quality of an item really, REALLY matters where resale value is concerned.

[dalesys]

I remember summer of '67 or '68 many of the elementary school kids in my neighborhood were dragging wagons full of rocks around trying to sell them...


Pet Rocks weren't until '75, so they were a little ahead of the curve.

[Teefies2]

I remember summer of '67 or '68 many of the elementary school kids in my neighborhood were dragging wagons full of rocks around trying to sell them...


Pet Rocks weren't until '75, so they were a little ahead of the curve.

ROFL

[Frantic Freddie]

"A thing is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it"

I'm a Ludwig drum geek,been one long before the word "geek" was popular Had a guy once try to sell me a 70s-80s Acrolite snare drum for $200,citing it's "rarity".

Bullshit,I said,Ludwig made a gazillion of 'em,it was THE student snare drum in the world,told him mine was older (ostensibly more valuable) & even then it wasn't worth any damn $200

[Kanalah]

I had a no soliciting sign on my door at the toy store and that didn't stop the guy selling "miracle cleaner"(He would not leave my store. I said no about 50 times, and only when I told him I was going to call the police and then picked up the phone did he leave.)

And then the shady "look at this awesome stuff that we sell to wal-mart, we'll sell to you cheaper." (and even after I told them that I don't want to carry anything in common with walmart, they still ran through thier whole speil, even though I was ignoring them and cleaning/doing inventory. Didn't stop them from coming in about once a month and they'd get the same treatment.)

[camjuniper]

Luckily, we don't get many people trying to sell us stuff. The occasional 'self-published' (read: photocopied and stapled) author wanting us to buy a book (though that spam comes through email now).

What we do get are people who want to donate any old crappy books or tapes they don't want anymore.

Grandma had a moldy box of paperbacks from the '80s in her basement? Sure, libraries LOVE moldy old paperbacks! You never see them on the shelves because they're always checked out, of course.

Textbooks only 20 years out of date? My gosh, the students we get in looking for a 3rd edition of a book they need the 15th for! They'll be thrilled!

Weeding out your VHS collection. Oh man. We just cleared our shelves of DVDs so we could put your crappy videos in. Seriously. And if we don't have room? They just fly out of our booksale, even at $15 a pop. High demand. Oh yeah.

[underemployeed]

I was at a garage sale today and someone told me VHS was making a comeback too, after I said something about how people always talk of record quality (and yeah I don't think they were trying to be sarcastic).

I also think it funny where people say something is going for $200 on ebay.... while they may be asking for that, or ONE out of 1000 auctions for it hit that and the rest are $10 does it really make yours worth that $200? It is funny how people don't realize technology loses so much value these days, it doesn't matter you spent $40 on each game, only a few are likely to go up in value and even then condition is everything, your OCD son never bent the corners of the manual and kept the box perfect sounds better than junior used the game in place of a hammer for years but it "still works" just gotta tap it hard.

[Amina516]

My father in law used to own a small corner store and the people he got in there..just wow. Anything from meats, shrimp, laptops, VCRs (then eventually DVD players/DVDs), Old baby forumula, food stamps, jewelry, ... yeah...anything. Most of the stuff was stolen too..

[protege]

I'm a Ludwig drum geek,been one long before the word "geek" was popular Had a guy once try to sell me a 70s-80s Acrolite snare drum for $200,citing it's "rarity".

Similar idiots exist on Ebay as well. Some of you know that I build models as a hobby. Most of what I build, are somewhat-obscure sports cars...most of which came from a certain hobby shop across town. But, occasionally I get on Ebay just to see if there's anything interesting, especially if I need parts. It annoys the hell out of me, that I'll see certain kits (for example, AMT's 1958 Chevy, or their '63 Corvette) going for ridiculous prices, simply because someone described them as "rare."

Sorry guys, but those two kits have been reissued millions of times since their 1960s debut. Rare, my ass--I have *6* of them in my collection. The only differences between them, are the decal sheets and the box art. Well, the Chevy got one-piece vinyl racing slicks...but that's beside the point.

I can see paying upwards for kits that have never been reissued (Aoshima's MGB, Doyusha's Aston DB5, etc.), but common stuff I can find at the hobby shop?

[Gravekeeper]

Computer parts depreciate in value stupid fast. But really, unless you're actually a used computer store, why would anyone think you'd want to buy anything? -.-

I despise soliciting. We had this one dickwank in another office in my building try to drop pamphlets to some stupid seminar of his to every other office in the building. He thought he'd be real sneaky and do it at 3am when no one was around ( Or so he thought ). Of course, I was lurking about.

I gathered up every last god damn pamphlet and shoved them all under his office door. With enough force to make a nice little bouquet of them across half his lobby >.> ( he had windows on either side of the door so I could admire my handiwork ).

[Shalom]

One of my favorites was some obvious druggie-type who had found an old Sun Microsystems CRT monitor (one of the older style monitors, not one of the new, lightweight flatscreens - for those who are techno-challenged)

Oh, hey, I remember those. They had Trinitron tubes in them. The graphics labs at acsu.buffalo.edu had a bunch of Sparcstations (aka "pizza boxes") with those monitors. They were pretty darned good for the time (1995).

(The direct ethernet connection to a full T3 was also pretty darn good for '95. We had broadband before practically anybody else in the state, as long as you were on campus. I'm told the university's ISP bill was $45,000 a month for that connection. Spoiled us for modems, lemme tell you.)

Regarding idiots on eBuy trying to sell stuff as "rare", check out the vintage camera section sometime. Kodak made a gazillion of folding cameras back in the teens and twenties, many of which are still extant in people's attics and basements. People just don't realize that "old" doesn't necessarily connote "rare", much less "worth a whole lot of money". Unless you've got something truly rare and/or still usable today (e.g. a wartime Medalist), you ain't gonna get that much for it. Sellers offering Instamatic X-15's for more money now than they sold for in the '60s are going to be sorely disappointed, unless they manage to find some sucker who doesn't realize that the last manufacturer of 126 film quit in 2008 and they've just bought themselves a fancy doorstop. Same goes for the Polaroid rollfilm cameras and the Kodak instants, which are worthless for lack of anything to feed them with.

(Some of the more pricey Pola rollfilm cameras, e.g. the 110b, are still in demand because they can be converted to take 4x5 sheet film, but absent such conversion they're useless.)

[ShadowBall]

Regarding eBay sellers, I think the ones who make me laugh the most trying to sell useless crap under the guise of rarity are any sellers peddling Beanie Babies. Maybe those were valuable in their first couple of years, but now they are a dime a dozen at thrift stores. Even then ones that were uber-rare like that blue elephant aren't worth a bloody cent now. You can't even give these things away.

Computers seem to be, by far, the hardest things to sell once they become obsolete. If you have an Atari in good condition with a few games, you might be able to sell it to a collector. Same with toys. But your old Windows 95 with 50 MB of space and no USB capabilities? I'd bet even the thrift store would laugh at you.

But dumb people think that every moth-eaten, rusted, broken, dusty hunk of shit in their basements is going to be worth a fortune.

[protege]

Computers seem to be, by far, the hardest things to sell once they become obsolete.

That's why I don't bother trying to sell them. I get old computers from relatives and from work. To the owners, the things are worthless. Instead, they get repaired and donated to charities. What I can't fix...gets turned into spare parts. Some of those spares find their way into my own projects. Enough, that I've rebuilt my computer, my server...and occasionally sold parts back to the people I got them from. I do it enough that I haven't bought new parts since about 2004

As for everything else--cases, wiring, nuts and bolts--I reuse what I can, but sometimes that's not always possible. I'll hang onto scrap wire, nuts, and bolts--much of the wiring can be reused on my model railroad. The cases though...are truly worthless. Those get taken across town, and dropped off at the recycler.