How do I sell an old Silicon Graphics workstation locally?

April 22, 2023 10:09 AM

My techie brother-in-law passed away and left a house full of mostly junk, but I found a PC I didn't recognize and it turned out to be an SGI Octane workstation. I found one going for $600 on eBay, so I'd like to get a little money out of it.

I have no idea if it works, but it's physically in decent condition. Even more interesting, I found two other related items elsewhere in the house:

1) A 20" Silicon Graphics CRT monitor with tilt base, like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/175654937380?hash=item28e5d9a324:g:pIAAAOSwbRVkFODk.
2) A closed shipping box with a used external 9GB Silicon Graphics HDD and the cable for connecting it to the PC. My guess is he planned to rebuild it but never did.

Someone who collects and refurbishes old systems might really enjoy these three as a package, but I know nothing about local or national groups or lists for this kind of thing. I am in Wake County, NC and here's the rub ... I need the buyer to come to the house to get it as it's VERY heavy; just the PC is over 50 pounds. I don't want to ship it anywhere.

In the grand scheme, I care more about it giving someone some pleasure and less about getting top dollar. Where do I advertise such a thing?

posted by caviar2d2 to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Reddit is a bit of a catchall answer but there seems to be a relatively active /r/sgi community among other places worth looking. If nothing else they may have leads for further research.
posted by Alensin at 12:13 PM on April 22, 2023

I would list it on eBay with the specification that it's local pickup only.
posted by fellion at 2:45 PM on April 22, 2023

The monitor may be worth more to old workstation enthusiasts but may move more easily if you post it as a high quality retro gaming display. Trinitrons are highly prized, and it may be even better than the TV version of it has more/better inputs.
posted by SaltySalticid at 3:02 PM on April 22, 2023

You might reach out to Clint at LGR; (you can reveal his contact email on that page) he's in the general geo area (road-trippable, at least) and retro computers are kind of his thing. He may want the entire lot of it.
posted by xedrik at 4:35 PM on April 22, 2023

I sold an SGI and a Twentieth Anniversary Mac on Craigslist locally for money very close to what I could have sold them for on eBay. It just required keeping the listings up many months until the right buyer came along.
posted by MonsieurBon at 5:10 PM on April 22, 2023

I think that’s great that you want to give this special machine a good home. If I saw a complete Octane like yours come up locally on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist I’d be on it immediately (I purchased an SGI Indy on Marketplace a couple years ago and an SGI VW 320 on Craigslist just last week). So posting on the general mostly-local places can work, but you may have to wait for the right person to find it. There’s a good amount of techies in your area so you might have good luck!

For a more targeted approach, there are some Facebook buy/sell groups focusing on retro hardware. In particular Vintage/Retro Computer Swap Meet gets a lot of activity and plenty of people post local-only posts there. An Octane would get a lot of attention there.

There are also a couple SGI forums that have buy/sell subforums: Silicon Graphics User Group and IRIXnet.
posted by zsazsa at 12:37 AM on April 23, 2023

Thanks - all these answers are super helpful! I'll poke around and post back with results.
posted by caviar2d2 at 12:02 PM on April 23, 2023

Update: zsazsa, I used the Facebook group and after a few duds I found someone locally who was super excited and making a mini PC museum in the garage. I gave him the whole shebang for $300 and he and his partner came and got it the same day. It's going to get refurbished and live again!
posted by caviar2d2 at 12:05 PM on May 2, 2023