• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Considering Buying an Abandoned Computer Store – Seeking Advice

R

rreinke

New Member
Joined
Jun 25, 2024
Messages
9
Hi all,

I recently stumbled upon an intriguing opportunity: an abandoned computer store. The store spans approximately 6,000 square feet and houses equipment dating back to the late 1990s. Here are the key details:

  • Inventory: The store is fully stocked with an assortment of items, including:
    • Monitors (including ViewSonic models)
    • Late '90s PC expansion cards
    • Enterprise computers from Dell
    • Beige PC towers
    • CIB Software
  • Market Potential: Now, my expertise lies mainly in consumer PCs from the late '90s. However, I’m curious about the market for late '90s servers and workstations. Are there collectors or enthusiasts who would appreciate these?
  • Purchasing Offer: The seller is offering to sell the entire lot in one go. Given the vast inventory, I’m hesitant to commit without understanding its value. Unfortunately, a comprehensive inventory would take weeks.

So, I turn to you for advice:
  1. Market Assessment: Is there a demand for late '90s servers and workstations? Any insights on potential buyers or use cases?
  2. Valuation: How can I estimate the worth of this store's inventory? Are there any benchmarks or resources I should consult?


Thank you in advance for your input.
 
First off, check the interior of the building. Abandoned for about 30 years may mean a high probability of rodents and the resulting damage. The cost of cleanup may exceed any possible return.

There is some demand for it. But I don't know how many sell a year so it could take a long time to sell off the complete inventory.

My guess would be to look at what those sell on Ebay and divide by 10 to get an approximate valuation. Some units won't be in sellable condition and others just won't be wanted.
 
If you are considering the purchase for the sake of reselling the merchandise my advice would be DONT. That isnt a particularly interesting or valuable era. Not to mention the condition and possible rodent or elemental damage mentioned by @krebizfan .
 
Last edited:
Does this include the building? I don't think you're going to get dollar 1 for the stock, but 6,000 square feet could come in handy.
 
Computer Reset was an example of how hard it can be to sell decades old stock once the big ticket items either sell or once you've satisfied the demand you flood the market and while you manage to bring the price down you also hurt your own bottom line. Then you are left with tons of E-waste that new or used, nobody will pay for and ultimately you end up writing it off because you will never break even on it. Only so many people are interested in Microsoft Money.
 
If you want to buy it in order to save/preserve the stuff from ending in a landfill, and given you have the money to spend, yes, go on. You may even get a big part of the money back when selling what's still in good condition and working.

But if you want to buy it hoping to make profit out of the inventory: DON'T. It's not going to work and it would be just silly to buy stuff you have no real idea about the condition, value etc.
 
Peak capacitor plague era.

I would eco the sentiment above inventory might be a negative value and the value is only in the building/land

Selling vintage equipment is a very slow tedious low volume endeavor
 
I owned a computer business and was forced to shut it down due to health issues. At about the same time we relocated from the left coast to the N.E. USA and I had to haul all of my inventory with us. I spent a few years recovering and going through physical therapy learning how to walk again. So it sat and sat and gathered dust and so most of it is still in our basement. As others said selling old computer equipment unless rare for some reason is a slow and painful process. Shipping is often more than the value of the goods.

Also, the computer owner of a failed business wrote off the value of any remaining inventory and so has zero value to them. Most likely that was a tenant and they left in the middle of the night leaving the building owner to clean up. If so, then the "cost basis" for the seller is zero plus whatever profit he can extract from you the buyer. If he has to scrap it out then there's the cost of recycling electronics waste, which is not cheap, IMHO. Offer to take the stuff away and not charge for the clean up! Be willing to walk away if the seller has pie in the sky thoughts of value. Remember you want to make a profit, even if it is a long time coming.

If the building is included then also due research as to the town reg's on operating a business and if there are any new building codes. A lot of old buildings have asbestos in the drywall, covering over air ducts and in the flooring. Cost of removing that stuff will make you cry. You are often forced to update before opening a new business and almost always if any remodeling happens. Taxes on a business can add up real fast! and then there's the cost licenses too.
 
If I were imagining a “typical” late-90’s computer store just frozen in carbonite (the 6,000 square feet is making me think of an “indie” computer store, vs. something like a CompUSA) I would honestly guess that more than 90% of the inventory would be close to zero value. Sure, there might be some stashes of expansion cards or whatever (over)valued by gamers, especially if there are virgin retail boxes, but against that you’re going to have heaps of stuff that you’ll likely have to pay to have hauled off.

In short making any kind of profit, even if you got the whole heap for free, would very much rely on being able to sit indefinitely on the stash as you sort through it and dribble out eBay listings for the most desirable items. If you’re not prepared to make this your life you’d be better off passing.

(As others have noted, it’s not clear if this deal is for the store or just the inventory. If it’s just the inventory then, yeah, they should probably be paying *you*. And I would guess the sellers already know that. In that situation the basis for negotiation is how much less you’re willing to charge for moving this stuff to your own warehouse than the local professional recycler is.)
 
More than likely it was selling cheap components which is why it went belly up. Any store that has sat idle for 30 years would be falling apart and in a bad neighborhood (vandalized) or else somebody would have junked the inventory and sold the real estate long ago.

It's not like the store is full of NIB 3dfx cards and boxed Sony Trinitrons.

Ask the seller what he will pay you to recycle that store (and you can keep what little is worth keeping).
 
rreinke said:
Hi all,

I recently stumbled upon an intriguing opportunity: an abandoned computer store. The store spans approximately 6,000 square feet and houses equipment dating back to the late 1990s. Here are the key details:

  • Inventory: The store is fully stocked with an assortment of items, including:
    • Monitors (including ViewSonic models)
    • Late '90s PC expansion cards
    • Enterprise computers from Dell
    • Beige PC towers
    • CIB Software
  • Market Potential: Now, my expertise lies mainly in consumer PCs from the late '90s. However, I’m curious about the market for late '90s servers and workstations. Are there collectors or enthusiasts who would appreciate these?
  • Purchasing Offer: The seller is offering to sell the entire lot in one go. Given the vast inventory, I’m hesitant to commit without understanding its value. Unfortunately, a comprehensive inventory would take weeks.

So, I turn to you for advice:
  1. Market Assessment: Is there a demand for late '90s servers and workstations? Any insights on potential buyers or use cases?
  2. Valuation: How can I estimate the worth of this store's inventory? Are there any benchmarks or resources I should consult?


Thank you in advance for your input.
Click to expand...
Update:
- So the deal would be for the inventory.
- Here is a walk-through of the computer store.
- I appreciate all your responses! They have been very eye-opening.
- I don't plan to make money on this but would like to break even at least.
- I would just hate to see all this stuff end up in a landfill.
 
Last edited:
Unknown_K said:
It's not like the store is full of NIB 3dfx cards and boxed Sony Trinitrons.
Click to expand...

I mean, technically you don't know unless you walk around and start breaking into any sealed boxes you find in the backroom, anything's strictly *possible*...

But, well, that's just it, we're not even seeing blurry pictures of dusty inventory, we just have a vague description that it's an "abandoned" 90's computer store. (But "Abandoned" how? Did they have a fire sale before they closed? Is what's left all stuff they couldn't sell even when it was fresh?) The description of "Enterprise computers from Dell" and "Beige PC towers" sounds like a business-centric supplier, but we also need to remember that all PCs were "beige towers" in the 1990's so if the store *did* cater to recreational users then sure, it's totally possible there's a few boxes of Voodoos and sexy sound cards you could flip on eBay for pretty reliably high prices. But, realistically, the thing about these kind of stores is they usually didn't have particularly large inventories of high priced stuff like that, so when I say a "few boxes" I mean "a few units", not a few crates.

6,000 square feet sounds like a lot of space, but if this store had several rows of demo desks each with a computer on them plus several aisles of stuff like boxed software, keyboards, mice, and other bulky-when-you-factor-in-the-packaging accessories there really might not be that much stuff in there, let alone stuff that would count as "valuable" today. How much of this computer store is showroom verses backroom? Do you have even *rough* estimates of how much bulk inventory there is? Are you prepared for all the work it's going to take to move the stuff that "has value" but is logistically a huge pain in the neck? For instance, new-in-box CRT monitors do have some value as gamer collector items; depending on what they are you might be able to flip brand new Viewsonic CRT monitors for $200-300 a pop or so... but you're going to have to deal with listing them on eBay, shipping them packed well enough not to get smashed, dealing with buyers complaining about infant mortality when they discover their NIB monitor has terminally dried out capacitors from a quarter century of sitting in an abandoned building... So, again: even if you get everything for free the potential payday isn't exactly earth shattering once all the effort is factored in.

rreinke said:
However, I’m curious about the market for late '90s servers and workstations. Are there collectors or enthusiasts who would appreciate these?
Click to expand...

Honestly, late 90's Dells might be among least valuable items in the store by volume. When I think of the late 90's and Dell all that comes to mind is truely hateful machines like the Optiplex GX1. While I'm sure that geninely virginal NIB examples of these machines would inevitably trigger some level of interest just for sheer novelty (Clint at the Lazy Game Reviews YouTube channel would be tickled absolutely pink if you sent him one to unbox) I don't think you'd actually be able to get very much money for them. (Especially if you tried to move them all at once.) They have essentially negative value in the "Retro Gamer" scene because their proprietary designs make them less "tweakable" than normal builds and harder to repair if something goes wrong.
 
Unknown_K said:
More than likely it was selling cheap components which is why it went belly up.
Click to expand...

In most places the independent computer store went extinct around the turn of the century because, let's be frank, your standard mom-and-pop computer store's entire business model was based around getting small bulk discounts on orders from Computer Shopper and justifying their markup solely on being "local". (I mean, sure, a *good* store would be able to offer the novice customer a little bit of handholding, but even by the late 80's the commidification of the PC and its increasing presense in big box stores made the margins pretty small.) We don't know if this store was just selling "cheap junk" or was the bestest-bestest gold-plated A1 computer store in town, but, really, in the end it hardly mattered. Between mere mortals getting comfortable with the idea of mail ordering PCs (increasingly shopped for online, not just out of magazines or TV ads) and their local edge getting undercut by the Office Depots and Best Buys independant computer stores were pretty much hosed.

That said, it is nonetheless suspicious/unlikely that a store that *did* have anything particularly valuable in stock would just close without at least having a fire sale, either publically or behind the scenes. There *could* be treasure in there, but I'm very much onboard in thinking there's nothing in there but a toxic mix of Dell GX1s, eMachines, and, if they did customs, mostly empty parts bins and a few boxed Asus cases.
 
@Eudimorphodon you hate the Dell optiplex GX1? Can I ask why? Is it the riser card? I used to be quite biased against systems with riser cards years and years ago... But not anymore? Maybe you dont like the BX chipset or the FSB? I have two of these. They are pretty versatile systems. I can set one machine up as a pentium 2 266mhz and the other as an 1100mhz pentium 3.

Its a pretty unbreakable system... The only failures I have seen have been psus for the most part.
 
VERAULT said:
@Eudimorphodon you hate the Dell optiplex GX1? Can I ask why? Is it the riser card? I used to be quite biased against systems with riser cards years and years ago... But not anymore? Maybe you dont like the BX chipset or the FSB? I have two of these. They are pretty versatile systems. I can set one machine up as a pentium 2 266mhz and the other as an 1100mhz pentium 3.

Its a pretty unbreakable system... The only failures I have seen have been psus for the most part.
Click to expand...

Maybe you’ve just had better luck, but in my experience Dells from that era were unreliable, especially the power supplies, and that case design as used on the GX1 (and several other contemporary models) was just *awful*. It was a bad copy of the cases Apple used on the 7200-7600 PowerPC Macintoshes, IE, a rickety pile of too thin metal and flimsy plastic, except not even as well executed.

I’m frankly surprised they haven’t crumbled to dust like the Apple machines have. I guess maybe they used slightly better grade plastic and only the casting was worse.
 
I had the privilege of plundering an abandoned shop back in the late '90s. There was a local "mini-Computer-Shopper" rag which the white-box shops advertised in and I put in a free "willing to buy old kit" ad. Got a lot of interesting parts to work with that way, on a high-schooler's budget. One of the callers was clearly a landlord who had been given a room full of inventory from a shop which had either failed, or was using this as a way to settle back rent. But because this was the late 1990s, the abandoned gear was fairly interesting, and I ended up filling the trunk of the old Toyota for 50 bucks-- got an Amiga 1000, a Zenith Z-150, a decent NEC amber-composite monitor, one of the early Zenith flatscreen-VGA CRTs (dead :( ) and a PS/2 model 30 IIRC. OTOH, I realize I left a lot of good things on the table-- I can recall a Mac XL/Lisa 2, a Compaq Portable III, and I think one of the Rana Atari drives.

Maybe the play here is to talk to the owner, explain that this stuff won't sell itself for years, and say "Let me fill my trunk with stuff I like for $250, and I can refer you a bunch of people off of VCF who'd be willing to do the same." Once a few rounds of ~~locusts~~ hobbyists have grazed on it, what's left is going to be D-list boxed software (make sure you get one archiving enthusiast on your crew who will take one box of each title and image them), 1Mb Cirrus Logic PCI VGA cards, and dried-out cartridges for early inkjet printers that long ago clogged hard, and nobody's going to mourn that being left out at the dustbin. It's probably easier for the owner to flog the building as an empty storefront than one full of stuff that 90% of people consider "stuff I have to pay someone to take to the dump".
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top