how do you find retro stuff for not a gazillion dollars? youve posted about flea markets before, like getting that astounding minidisc players, is that the main source?
honestly? it's mostly what feels like amazing luck, but there are ways to lean it in your favor pretty heavily:
- for flea markets, you need to show up early and you need to go a lot, a lot of my favorite times making insanely cheap purchases (like the minidisc you mentioned, and also the box and manual in near mint condition for super mario bros 1 (not the combo cart) for $40 with a bunch of other boxed NES software) happened VERY early in the morning, like at 6 AM, woke up at 5:15 AM to get there in the morning, and all it took was for one potential thrifter to notice it was a Cool Thing, may as well be you
- for computer things specifically (like the touch screen all-in-one monitor or the 486 compaq), that is all thanks to the goodwill clearance center local to my area, almost all local computers that get donated to goodwill end up here. ultra small form factor office computers, imacs from 2005-2013 (i've picked two personally, and gave one to a friend of my roommate that wanted a mid 00s one), emachines, i've seen an atari 400 come through here in someone's cart, i have a commodore 64 tape drive, floppy disc drive, and RGB monitor, just... not a C64 itself lol. all of these were sold by weight, for a total of $3 each! i've seen some clearance centers that just make all electronics $1.50 per item regardless of weight! it's super OP! it's also super fucking competitive, 20 people will be in line at open when new stuff is guaranteed to be out, and all of them are rushing and grabbing anything that looks expensive that they could resell on ebay or depop or whatever. i don't resell any electronics i buy while thrifting, i buy for keeps, to give to other people for free, or redonate to a smaller local thrift after fixing it up, BUT you have to compete with people that do this shit for a living. and it's almost never fun. but finding the Good Shit for extremely cheap and cutting out markup resellers out of the equations entirely is kind of worth it imo, and it's a good way to regulate my sleep schedule i guess to wake up at 7 AM lmfao
- having luck with just "normal thrift stores" also requires getting up and going every day at opening, but i don't do this as much anymore and just go to a normal thrift store whenever i feel like it. fucking finding cool ass turbografx-16 games at reasonable prices at 6 PM on a friday! miracles happen whenever! you just gotta roll the dice a Lot to make that 0.1% chance happen!
just don't stare at the thrifting abyss for too long. you gotta have fun with it, even if you don't buy anything for a day or a while from just browsing all the weird old shit. i hope this helps or even was related to what you were asking about lol