Whom here buys vintage computers?

You can easily break something taking apart old laptops with brittle plastics, and parts can become broken or lost easily. Unless you know what your doing and have experience with laptops you should sell them whole.

I don't pay much (or anything) for vintage laptops where somebody was poking around and screws and parts are missing. For example old I series IBM Thinkpads have a short cable between the keyboard (controls the trackpoint) and body that is very easy to rip when removing the keyboard. Most old systems have custom HD mounting sleds and adapters, if they are missing then the system is pretty much useless.

Just got these two HP Vectra VE 4/66s in an auction lot. They both power on and appear to be in good condition. One keyboard comes with them. Anyone have any interest or off to Ebay (only one for sale there was shipping from Bulgaria and was $500)?

In a similar vein, I have noticed a strong following for the "clickback" keyboards from this era. I don't know what it driving that collector's market, only that they have become surprisingly valuable.

Also, we've had better than modest success selling the 5.25" diskettes. I think the last lot was nearly 40 disks for $50, a nice draw when you consider the Media Mail rate for that amount is about $6. And that was for a lot, to say nothing of the price some specific titles/makes command among Those In The Know.

The 3.5" disks seem to have some value, too, but there are so many of them which are just old dox and backup disks that we just ship everything to a CA refurbisher who reimburses at Media rates. The value of old PC games is very spotty, especially once you make the CD-ROM crossover.

I do great with the Keyboards. $20 plus shipping easy, even if mid-90s era Dell & IBM. True clicky keyboards are indeed becoming collectible. Some programmers won't use anything else.