this astonishing listing appeared on bay area craigslist friday night. our local retro gamer / CRT enthusiast discord spotted it less than a half-hour after it went live
the price seemed too good to be true for these high-quality 29" Sony PVMs: $150 each or the whole lot of 14 for $1000. these are very desirable classic gaming displays in an unusual size. was there a catch?? (there is one 2950Q on ebay rn asking for $1750, lmao...)
i never want to get my hopes up for a CL listing, people are so quick to swoop. but i had the notion that if someone offered to buy the whole lot the seller would prefer that over piecing it out in multiple transactions. so i offered to buy the lot of 14 for $1000.
my decisive action worked. the seller took down their ad and said to show up at a tattoo parlor near San Jose at 11 a.m. Sunday.
won't go into excruciating detail but i spent every waking hour Saturday planning how a small team from the server would show up, briefly test the sets, and assess if a buy was worthwhile, which is what we did. (the server has a deep pool of expertise.) though the displays were each 25-27 years old and in various states of disrepair, we deemed the lot overall worthwhile, so i became the owner of 13 working and 1 non-working PVM-2950Qs.
we lugged the 114lb beasts to a member's nearby garage and spent another six hours running a battery of tests to figure out each unit's strengths and weaknesses and then offer them to the various discord members who'd put in dibs. by the end of Sunday all but four of the units were passed on at cost to new owners (those of us who did the work bought the best ones).
it's incredible how perfectly to plan everything went, and also how the half-dozen folks i called upon stepped up to meet major operational needs re: physical transport, storage, working space, testing expertise, specialized equipment, childcare... we all made it happen, and a bunch of retrogamers are really unexpectedly happy now. i struggle to take full pride in my wins but a little of that nice feeling is getting through here.
i'm just wrapping up the distribution process today with the last 2950Q (this one really needs repairs). i think i'll come out about $20-30 ahead (lol). that's the culture of the server though, helping each other rather than exploiting. it's really lovely there.
long live the PVM-2950Q Liberation Front.
