Garage Sales and eBay

Last week the family went on a foray into the local neighborhood garage sales. I accompanied them, with the hopes of bringing home some "new" computer stuff to play with. I must say I was quite successful. Total results:

• Compaq tower/monitor/peripherals, 900MHz, ~15GB hd w/ Win98, 256MB, and an extra 8GB hd - $25


• Older tower/monitor/peripherals, 866MHz, 10GB w/ unregistered copy of WinXP, 512MB, and an 80GB hd installed - $15


• Big box of electronic goodies - $10

I was a bit torn on whether or not to get the Compaq. I decided $25 was an acceptable price for a machine that might make a decent linux server.
The box was originally a bunch of stuff in two boxes, and the guy was asking $2 per item. As I was looking through to see what I thought would be worth $2, he came up and said, "Tell you what, guys, I'll give you both boxes for $10". SOLD! Considering I had seen at least one external hd enclosure and a few (working?) wireless mice.
The XP computer was sitting inside the owner's garage, not easily visible from the street. And the sign on it indicated that it had been marked down from $25. And, yes, when I got home, XP notified me that I had 28 days to register my copy. Oops. Oh, well, linux works just fine.

Now, back to the box. When I started actually looking through it, I found all sorts of goodies. Two working external 3.5" hd enclosure, two working 2.5" enclosures, several camera card readers, four wireless mice (two working, two non), two Geek Squad flash drives (1GB working, 2GB not), and a few other items. But the major find was an iGo Stowaway, a bluetooth fold-up keyboard for your PDA or smartphone. At time of writing, if you market it right, it can go for as much as $60, including priority mail shipping. So, if I'm lucky, I'll be able to recoup my entire costs from the garage sale with one eBay sale. Cool or what?

If you're interested, I've also put some of the other items I'm not interested in up for auction. Here's a link: eternicode's eBay auctions. Before clicking through, though, be sure to check the date on this post; the auctions have a little less than two days left. I may also put some of the card readers up there, so watch out for those, too.