I've had good luck selling small stockpiles of "vintage" laptops on eBay (recently, around ten circa 2009 models). Prepping for sale can help. There seems to

I've had good luck selling small stockpiles of "vintage" laptops on eBay (recently, around ten circa 2009 models). Prepping for sale can help. There seems to be a category of buyers who not only want something clean, but that's had the original software restored, or something like that. For "vintage" PCs, this means putting on a vintage version of Windows, maybe not the one that came with it, but XP or something that people really liked and will run old software they have. For non-PCs, like 8-bits, I'm just guessing there are also buyers who want a good out-of-box experience, to play with for nostalgia, without having it be a restoration project for them. Also, specs do help for even "vintage" PCs, even ones that don't matter much, and aren't collectible. The larger the SSD you retrofit into it, it seems the more people are willing to pay, like someone is thinking of a Windows XP box as a daily driver for a video collection in 2024. Maybe people just like the idea of a Windows XP dream computer, and big specs help. People also seem to pay more for very minor CPU boost, even if the only difference is a 10% clock rate difference, same cache, and even if the CPU is socketed and they could upgrade it themselves. (It's easier to understand people wanting, say, the slightly faster variant of an 8-bit.) Condition and cleanliness also helps. Keyboards tend to show wear and accumulate grime you'll never fully get clean, and a $20 replacement keyboard, combined with wiping down the chassis with isopropyl 70% prep pads, can elevate condition of a laptop from gross to great. Older desktop keyboards, you can disassemble them to clean, and this works surprisingly well for some of them, so you're pretty much only cleaning big plastic parts under the faucet. But -- I implore you -- don't spray an eBay item with Febreeze or a scented duster. In the last couple years, most of the electronics I buy on eBay have had this done to them. Like, there must've been a TikTok, or something, that told people this was a best practice. The VOCs are nasty, and can persist on/in the item for weeks or longer.