Old electronics sell on the model number

In September we catalogued about fifty pieces of audio and household electronics in a single batch. The lesson was how often a confident first guess is wrong. A Yamaha keyboard turned out to be a toy housing, a portable heater was a Sony clock radio, and a Star Wars electronic toy was a waffle maker. Photos of a Denon stack's model plates nearly became six separate listings, because the whole stack had been read as one cassette deck. Every piece is now identified from its model plate, not its silhouette.

Some electronics have a steady market. Vintage hi-fi from makers such as Marantz, McIntosh, Pioneer and Sansui, Technics turntables, film cameras and their lenses, and older game consoles all have buyers who search by model. Most mainstream electronics from the last fifteen years, DVD players and printers sell for little or nothing, and we will say so before you pay to have them listed.

Prices come from sold listings for the same model. A VCR advertised by a refurbishing shop is not a fair comparison for one coming out of a closet, and in that same batch we found asking prices running far above anything that had actually sold. We price against completed sales in comparable condition.

We describe condition from what we can see and photograph. We say a piece works only when you tell us it does. Electronics ship well, so most of it sells on eBay and through our own shop to buyers across the country, not just in Charlotte.

Phones, tablets and laptops need one thing from you before we can sell them: sign out of the device's account and erase it. On Apple devices that means turning off Find My so Activation Lock is released, because a locked phone cannot be sold. If the device belonged to someone who has died, start with the manufacturer's own account-recovery process. We do not bypass locks.