After scrounging the local classifieds and our version of Craigslist to find pre-owned equipment and getting frustrated I decided that there needs to be a flea market but for electronics tools and homelab stuff. The Berlin Swapfest follows in the same spirit as the MIT Swapfest!
I’ve partners with a long time hacker space in Berlin c-base who will be hosting this event!
Would love for local hackers to come by and buy and sell their old gear!
Details on the site!
* US Boston / New England area -- MIT Swapfest, http://w1mx.mit.edu/flea-at-mit/
It was when people were still using phone modems, and I recall that every time a new speed came out, all of the businesses swapped them out immediately. On a couple of occasions, I was able to get a previous generation modem for like 5 bucks from some guy who had a trailer heaped with them.
Also, there were piles of Apple Macs shortly after System 7.5 came out. I barely had to buy any new computer gear during the time I lived there.
Weather-wise, I preferred winter, because during the summer, it got really sweaty and stinky.
BTW, you probably know this, but just for HN: some of the vendors and shoppers will be calibrated a bit differently than average, so there might be miscommunication, or awkwardness, or different conventions, to get past.
A few years ago at Swapfest, a friend and I met up there, as vendors were packing up, and one of the vendors in the parking garage was having trouble starting their truck, dead battery. So, maybe because my friend thought the vendor might be averse to asking for help, she quietly went and asked another nearby vendor with a vehicle, if they could give a jump, and they cheerfully did.
(Friend is a former military officer, who had also gone to MIT, and who exemplifies some of the best of tech industry leadership, including Knowing Your Nerds.)
https://www.arrl.org/hamfests-and-conventions-calendar
Note I have found searching by city and state is broken. You need to search by zipcode.
The coolest part was someone brought a Gemini lander to sell!
The first one of 2025 is on March 9th.
That's the problem - in the US there's an abundance of surplus electronics equipment at low prices. In Europe there isn't, and it's priced too high.
I.e. the problem is not the market venue, it's the amount of available stuff.
Which is a direct consequence of the local purchasing power and consumer spending habits.
Consumer electronics are cheaper in the US, and Americans have a lot more disposable income and a lot more inclination to buy into the latest trend or to experiment with latest and greatest gadgets, even if they don't need it so the used market is full of great stuff at bangout prices.
Consumer electronics cost more in Europe and Europeans are also poorer and need to be more frugal with their spending so the used market has fewer new stuff at rock bottom prices.
Would love to see a follow-up on what interesting items were brought there...
Good luck!
Our event person at c-base ligi also suggested to idea of having a small show and tell time permitting for really cool items that have a story to them.
Kinda encouraging me to clear out my garage to bring new junk, err, stuff in there.
It is really hard to get second hand electronics and equipment in this city if you don't want to go online. Sign me up for the next one!
I did not know about c-base either. Are there similar associations throughout Europe? I'd love to join one — seems to have a very cool hacker-y spirit :)
Generally you can find some sort of space in nearly every city.
https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hackerspaces
https://web.archive.org/web/20250214091402/https://wiki.hack... (mirror as the wiki is slow to load right now).
Any idea how non-german-speaker friendly this will be? The hackerspace website is german only, but I'm hoping we can expect most attendees / sellers to speak english?
A majority of events are in English there, one tonight was all in English as well.
We have limited space at c-base and I want to be respectful of their fire code!
Back in the day I loved to visit these kinds of shows in the Timmonium, Maryland area. Went to Gaithersburg once, too. If you were motivated to dig through cardboard boxes of cables and miscellaneous stuff, you could spend the entire day there. But as the internet grew they got smaller every year, to the degree that there wasn't much of a point anymore.
While I never got to one, I recall Columbus, Ohio having the biggest show in the mid-Atlantic. Wonder if they're still a thing?
And as it's slightly on topic, a brief humorous story. At least one of the two annual Timonium shows was sponsored by the local Ham Radio (amateur radio) club. This was common because (I suppose) the radio clubs were typically bigger and more organized than the computer clubs. When I was in my 20's it was a rite of passage for some of my friends to get their Ham Radio license.
Fast forward to around 2007 and my sister and I are driving to Phoenixville in eastern Pennsylvania for Blobfest. Getting off topic, but it's an annual celebration of the classic 1958 sci-fi/horror film The Blob.
On the way back I notice a sign on the side of the road that reads "Ham Fest Today". I go a little crazy, telling my sister, "Turn there! Turn there!! I have to see this!!!" We turn and it's a bust. The show was the previous weekend and somebody forgot to take down the sign.
We get back on the road. About a minute later she turns to me, completely innocently and wide-eyed, saying, "I had NO IDEA how much you liked ham!"
Btw one could get company sponsorship for a ewaste container so that one doesn’t have to take stuff back home - after all it’s the big companies that produce this stuff and then make it redundant. Perhaps ewaste could be segregated by company to see who is the biggest “offender” - I’m sure there’s many a Fritz box lying around…
Hope it goes really well!
Yeah c-base crew was incredibly adamant about that, they used to have people leaving stuff there or bringing them electronics, they’ve got closets of switches.
As you said the deposit will handle it, worst case if someone brings a 19” rack that will be used to bring it to the tip
We’ll be using this microsite for now for updates, but will likely spin up a bluesky account for the swapfest!
