What does $50 buy you these days? A Mac LC, if you know where to look!! :)

[Scott Baret]

On Thanksgiving, I was totally bored and was browsing through Marketplace. I found a Mac LC for $50. My first thought was that it was probably in some far away place, but as it turned out, it was only a short drive from me. Today, I picked it up on my break from work.

It doesn't have a keyboard or mouse. It obviously needs caps (though it did power up). The computer is a bit dirty, so I suspect the floppy drive probably either needs cleaned or replaced entirely (I do have a few spare drives sitting around), but otherwise works. Sadly, no IIe card (otherwise I'd have paid off all my Christmas shopping overnight by flinging it on the 'Bay; I already have one IIe card and it would be unfair of me to have only one in the lab since I want those machines to be pretty much uniform).

The Mac needs a MAJOR BATH. It was in an auto repair shop. The guy had used it in SC when he did graphic design with Corel Draw. There's nothing a little isopropyl can't fix; I got an SE/30 from a warehouse last year and it was even filthier but cleaned up nicely and today is a mainstay in my lab.

This one will go into the lab, which is once again at seven LC machines (and 14 overall if you count a currently out of order IIsi). I did get a keyboard for $40 shipped on eBay, yet it lacks an ADB cable. (If anyone has a spare one with the shorter plug sitting around that they'd be willing to swap for something little like RAM or a few bucks, let me know). I have an extra mouse already so basically I got the LC for $90 plus whatever the re-cap of it costs me. I'm sending it out tomorrow for that along with the IIsi that I've had on my to-do list since September.

This comes six days after getting a 128K in the bag with two swivel stands and an ImageWriter I (I don't need the printer or one of the stands, so if you want them, let me know; might get pics later in the week so I can put them on the trading post). I'd say I'm ending 2024 on a pretty good note with cheap conquests, especially after getting out of a bit of a financial pickle earlier this year caused by my wedding, my wife's health issues, and a slower than expected summer. I've been working over 40 hours most weeks, so I think it's time I got myself a few toys.

Now if I can find a Quadra 950 for $100

 

[Scott Baret]

I forgot to add that this came with the matching 12 inch monitor. It’s honestly not a good bargain unless you factor in that it not only had the monitor, but it was a local pick up.

 

[Unknown_K]

These days if you find a reasonable LC it is probably dirty, needs recapped, missing the HD, and the floppy is probably dead. I remember picking up a couple LC IIIs from a sketchy guy that had a trailer full of them from a school twenty years ago and one whistling to death five minutes after I turned it on (fixed after recap).

All those problems and $50 plus you had to go out in the cold to get it, not much fun. There are just no decent deal for 68k gear these days unless you find one at a garage sale which I don't bother doing. $100 for a 950 would be very lucky considering what they are listed for these days, and I still remember people not even being able to give them away (which is how I got so many).

 

[olePigeon]

$50 can get you 100 tacos at Jack in the Box.

 

[CC_333]

$50 can get you 100 tacos at Jack in the Box.

Until you factor in sales tax, after which you can get somewhere between 80 - 90 tacos, depending on where in the state you buy them.

c

 

[Scott Baret]

There are some deals to be had though. In February 2023, I got an SE/30 at a recycler for $70. No cards, but it had 8MB RAM and came with a keyboard and mouse. All it needed was a recap and a floppy drive (which I still haven't put in). The drive inside is gummed to the max.

 

[tecneeq]

Got a Quadra 700 not so long ago for 100€. You need luck, but most importantly, you need to actively look all the time for hardware.

 

[CC_333]

Sometime in the past year I found a Power Mac 8500 for $35, which seemed like a decent deal at the time.

Other than that, I haven't really been in the market, so I haven't been looking around much. I wasn't even looking for the 8500; I happened upon it by chance while looking for something else, and I couldn't pass it up after seeing the price

c

 

[mikes-macs]

I have over 200 computer/device power cords. You know, the 3 prong standard computer power cord? I'll can sell you all of them for $50. Some are black some are beige some are brown some are white. All of them are standard length, whatever that is. LMK

 

[Unknown_K]

I look for deals on old macs but only once in a while.

The last Mac I purchased was an Intel iMac this year, a 660av was the last 68K I snagged in 2017, and a PPC G4 20" iMac was the last PPC I snagged in 2017. Like most 68K gear the 660av needed a HD, PS was replaced, and the board was recapped so more invested in it then just the purchase price.

Anything 68k/ppc I don't have and would be interested in just goes for too much these days for something that would just end up on the shelf.

My time lately has been in collecting PC GPUs and gaming motherboards.

 

[Juror22]

These days if you find a reasonable LC it is probably dirty, needs recapped, missing the HD, and the floppy is probably dead.

I can't argue much...
I picked up an LC from eBay a couple months back for 66 bucks shipped and it literally was missing the HD, floppy, needed a re-cap and was missing the PSU, but it had all the cables, memory, VRAM and was pristine inside and out with a perfect case.

I really didn't care if there was an HD or not, since nine times out of ten, they need to be replaced anyway. Same situation with re-capping and in both cases I'd rather take care of it myself. I also had a spare LC PSU laying about and plenty of replacement floppies, so it worked out well.

 

[Scott Baret]

Sometimes the mechanic special can be worth it.

I bought a IIsi for $20 at VCF. It's currently with Tom Andrews (Amiga of Rochester) getting a recap of both its main board and PSU. It lacked a HD but did have a floppy. There was no keyboard, mouse, or monitor, but I sourced a keyboard for $20 or so, already had a spare mouse, and was able to luck into a 12" monitor for $60 with free shipping. Our running total here is $100 minus whatever I have to pay for the recap, so that's not a terrible deal for a complete machine that's ready to go.

The only thing I'm not sure of offhand since I don't have it with me is whether or not there was any RAM inside it. I might have some chips laying around in this big envelope of RAM chips I have...

 

[Unknown_K]

I still remember getting a IIsi from the old VFC marketplace (vintagecomputermarketplace.com) just because I wanted the cheap 4x16MB 30 pin SIMMs (was used as a server with a hole drilled in the case for a red HD LED). The unit had the Nubus adapter in it, "new floppy drive" (I assume he just replaced it with one that worked) and had an ethernet card installed. Pretty decent condition for $5 plus whatever cheap shipping was back in 2005 (shipping inflation is probably 5x in 20 years).

Anyway, I mentioned the IIsi because it was an example of the days when you got a super loaded working machine for less than what the sum of the parts were worth, compared to the stripped smoked non-working stuff you pay top dollar for now.

I still can't believe how things have changed in the last 20 years, luckily for me I am a pack rat and pretty much kept everything.

 

[croissantking]

I’m still pleased about finding a Quadra 840AV (plus extra motherboard) this year for £50—although they were seriously worse for wear, I’ve managed to restore them.

 

[Scott Baret]

You know what I miss? The days when you could get a Color Classic from a school for free. Been there, done that.

 

[CC_333]

I got into the hobby a bit late (2005 or so). It seems like, from what I've been reading here for years now, that the golden age of vintage Mac collecting was back in the late 90s and early 2000s (say, 1997-2003), when most 68ks were considered worthless junk and early PowerMacs, which were still mostly useful, were just then aging out of their first lives, and thus could be had for pretty cheap.

As opposed to now, where everything decent from before 2005 might as well be made of solid gold with the prices people are expecting!

c

 

[Unknown_K]

The early days of eBay (very late 90's when PayPal came about) and freecycle (2003) were a gold mine. Also, the early 00's computer forums and even newsgroups were a great place to buy and trade. When people looked at collectors like they had a screw lose and you could just start finding gear up from grabs nationwide it was a ffa. The internet also made all the older stuff pretty much obsolete, so owners were dumping it after having kept some stuff a long time.

It wasn't just 68k/PPC but old 8/16 bit computers like Atari 800/C64 Amiga/ST SUN SGI and PC stuff. Along with the hardware software was being dumped as well which you don't really find these days.

 

[CC_333]

Yeah, I sometimes feel sad that I missed out on those early days of the hobby. As I mentioned, I did catch the tail end of it, and I found some pretty decent stuff. Had I known what to look for (I was only just then discovering that many of these machines even existed), I probably could've done even better.

By 2007 or so, however, PCs were by far the most common in my area. Macs were around, but I never saw too many of them in the wild (I think I saw a grand total of two, both in 2005, plus another nice haul in 2010 or so, where in I got a Plus, sone SEs and a Quicksilver, among other things). It was only when I joined this forum in early 2012 (it's been that long?!) that my collection took off, and the heyday of the scene at large was pretty much over by then.

Early MacIntel hardware, which was shiny and new when I started, is only now approaching junk status (I think mainly due to what @Cory5412 refers to as "The Plateau", those machines stayed relevant a lot longer than their earlier counterparts did in the 90s because performance pretty much leveled off for a good decade or so starting about 2008-2009), but prices seem to be bottoming out higher than the 68k and PPC stuff did in the early 2000s. I suspect this is, at least in part, due to overall costs to ship things being higher than they were in the 90s and 2000s. "Influencers" have also contributed, by way of all the extra demand they've created in their apparent efforts to make vintage computer collecting "trendy" and "fun".

c

 

[croissantking]

I had a bit of a Macintosh collection back in the 2000s, they were all of the Beige/PowerPC variety and not particularly valuable even now, but I eventually sold or disposed of all the machines. With hindsight, I would have probably kept a few of them, but it's not a huge regret or anything.

The thing is, a significant reason I've got back into the hobby now is precisely because of the resurgence of interest in vintage tech, so I can't really complain about the inflated value of these machines. For me, the enjoyment of owning and tinkering with them is as important as the community that comes with it, and knowing that the machines are valued by a wider society makes them more interesting. And obviously, it's great to reconnect with the classic Macintosh experience that I had in my teens, and learn a bunch of new stuff too.

 

[Jase]

During April, I bought an SE for £30. If you're patient and avoid the obvious chancers on eBay/FB marketplace, they can be found without breaking the bank. In recent years, I've found 90s hardware abandoned in my neighbourhood - complete with software.