Massive Vintage Apple Haul in Idaho

PotatoFi

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Oct 18, 2021
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Requesting Items

Here's how to claim an item! Please follow this process exactly to keep things running smoothly. If you don't follow the process, you probably won't get the item(s) that you want.

1. In the list spreadsheet, leave a comment in the ID Number cell, indicating that you're interested.
2. On the TinkerDifferent forum, send me a DM with your real name as the title (not your screen name). Note: Forum DM's only please! Replies to this thread or messages on other platforms will be ignored.
3. In the message, send me your address, and the ID Number(s) that you're interested in.
3. I will calculate a total price (item + shipping + shipping supplies), and send it to you. Note: You'll have 24 hours to decide before I release the hold on the items that you are interested in.
4. If you accept the price and pay via PayPal, I'll put you in the (potentially very long) queue for shipping.
5. I'll let you know when your item has shipped with a tracking number.

The List!

Note: Before requesting items, please review the process above! If you deviate from the process or make things difficult for me in general, I will probably ignore your request. Sorry to be salty about this, it's just a REALLY big project and I need everyone's help!

You can find the complete list here!
 

PotatoFi

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Oct 18, 2021
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Item Spotlight: Polycarbonate MacBook
Item #45

This didn't actually come with the pile, but it came to me at about the same time! It has a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, the original media remote, comes in the original box (although it seems to be missing the upper half of packing material), and comes with a power adapter. The battery, unfortunately, has begun toii swell up and has been separated from the machine (for now).

The images really highlight the discoloration. The rest of the machine looks pretty good and would likely clean up well.

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PotatoFi

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Item Spotlight: ImageWriter II
Item #130

This very nice ImageWriter II was given to me a couple of years ago, and has been sitting on my workbench ever since! I have no idea about it's operating condition, but it appears to be in very nice shape. It absolutely needs a good cleaning. This one will be annoying to ship!

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Volvo242GT

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Feb 7, 2022
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Currently Duvall, WA
I'd be tempted to sell the sheet feeder separately. It's an uncommon option. Does mean that the printer will be missing the smoked plastic window that fits in the lid that covers the print head, but, it'll be a lot easier to ship the IWII as the basic printer.

I have come across NOS tractor feed printer paper for these in recent years, btw. Actually have a thick ream of it in this room with no printer at this time to use it with.
 
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PotatoFi

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I could use some feedback, especially from people who are interested in buying. For anything with a CRT, I'm seeing $55-80 to ship via UPS. Additionally, I need two boxes and lots of packing material for each one, so I need either $15 or $20 per large item to ship to partially recuperate my costs - you can see how this adds up quickly.

I'm looking for the sanity check before I pull the trigger on shipping supplies:

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Certificate of Excellence

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Nov 1, 2021
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Man that is a lot of dough when I see alot of interest but zero guarantee that you will recoup that cost. It is awesome that you have saved these machines and want to provide them at a fair price but I have a hard time with the notion that you'll have to invest another 800 bones for folks to have the option to purchase. Could it be as easy as folks donating on the front end to your packaging cost (like an unofficial gofundme) to help with that financial lift and then those folks get discounted shipping maybe in return? That plus the reality check that shipping could take a while as you amass the shipping budget+time to meet that $800 buy in?

It'd be one thing if you were a professional reseller LLC with packaging and the labor (not even considering your own time, gas, cam etc) factored into your margin but you're not that so to expect you to foot that bill up front so others can have the privilege to tire kick & maybe buy is a little oscar meyer move IMO. I say hell no to that packaging buy until you get enough interest and by that I mean actual money - skin in the game to make this endeavor make money-sense. As is, unless you're going to charge closer to ebay pricing upfront on each transaction to cover your costs, it does not IMO.

**One final thought (assuredly not a popular one) is to keep what you want and do a bulk buy on ebay with local pickup only and put the price at something stupid like $75 USD and then post the auction to Facebook macintosh groups. The auction will spread fast and interested folks will bid up the auction somewhat, you'll make your money back, you'll still keep the stuff out of landfill & you wont have to ship a darn thing.
 
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Volvo242GT

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Feb 7, 2022
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It might be easier to take the larger items to either FedEx Office or the UPS store and have them pack them, while taking care of the smaller items yourself. Could be cheaper, too. I'm doing this with the B&W G3 I'm selling to @cc_333 on 68kMLA. Just going to be easier than my sourcing a box, the packing materials, and tape to do it myself.
 

PotatoFi

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Oct 18, 2021
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It might be easier to take the larger items to either FedEx Office or the UPS store and have them pack them, while taking care of the smaller items yourself. Could be cheaper, too.

I appreciate the idea and suggestion! A couple of years ago, I had a remote UPS Store pack a PVM-14M2 (14" CRT) and ship it to me, and I must say that I was impressed. That said, I don't it will work in this situation for a few reasons:

1. I can't quite total shipping costs to buyers ahead of time
2. I can't ensure that items are adequately packed
3. Our UPS Store is always extremely crowded, and the employees are always frantically running around trying to keep up, which makes me worry about the quality of packing jobs, and will consume a lot of my time taking items in for them to pack
 

This Does Not Compute

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Something to consider are expandable foam inserts, like those from Instapak. In the very least they could save you packaging time and increase the likelihood of item survival in shipping, and maybe even save costs (wouldn't need any bubble wrap or peanuts).
 
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Volvo242GT

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Currently Duvall, WA
I appreciate the idea and suggestion! A couple of years ago, I had a remote UPS Store pack a PVM-14M2 (14" CRT) and ship it to me, and I must say that I was impressed. That said, I don't it will work in this situation for a few reasons:

1. I can't quite total shipping costs to buyers ahead of time
2. I can't ensure that items are adequately packed
3. Our UPS Store is always extremely crowded, and the employees are always frantically running around trying to keep up, which makes me worry about the quality of packing jobs, and will consume a lot of my time taking items in for them to pack
Yeah, it depends on the store, firstly, and, secondly, how many items you're planning on shipping out using their services. The three monitors, might not be that big of a deal. Would have to show up early and have them do the packing. The G3/G4 PowerMacs, might be better to box them up yourself and then ship them... In my case, I do know one of the eBay sellers who caters to our crowd, so I was able to get a ballpark quote for packaging up and shipping my G3 to California. Looks to be less than $50.
 
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PotatoFi

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Hey everyone! I have another update about the haul.

As you know, the collection has been in the 3rd bay of our garage, which is normally dedicated to my wife's upholstery work. She's been cheerfully working around the pile, but as she gets more and more requests from clients, it's was becoming tougher and tougher to contend with the massive pile of old computers.

Meanwhile, claims for items had slowed pretty significantly (but I have continued to box up and ship smaller items while I figure out shipping for the larger items). The was enough stuff in there that it was hard to move things around to even pick out machines and items.

I decided to do something about it, and ran a local ad on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. I used the exact same pricing model - free for most machines, and a bit of cash for certain items and keyboards. Machines and monitors that have already been claimed were off-limits, of course.

The response was overwhelming! I had about 20 people asking to come see everything - the vintage Mac enthusiasts really came out of the woodwork. I set up appointments for people to come individually, which ended up being a lot of fun. One guy poked around with me in the garage for an hour, and even helped me revive a couple of non-booting machines! I practically had to beg him to take stuff because he was worried about not leaving things for other people. He said that I made his year, which was a totally awesome feeling. Here's what he decided to take home after lots of prompting from me (The iMac in this photo wouldn't boot at all, but we managed to find some RAM in the pile that worked).

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A couple of kids came through, which was exciting! One was a PC enthusiast, so I recommended a Blue and White G3 and a G4. He was thrilled to get them!

One thing I was able to do between appointments was work on machines. I am very happy to report that of all of the Blue and White G3's, I was able to get all of them working and booting, save one machine that is going to a TinkerDifferent member for parts.

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After an entire day of nearly continuous visitors to my garage, all of the G3's, G4's, monitors, and other machines were gone. The collection, at this point, has been cut down by about 50 percent, which is a huge relief. We can finally move around in the garage again, and I have room to package and ship the claimed items. All that is left are smaller items, keyboards, 4 or 5 printers, and a bunch of claimed items that are awaiting shipping. I also have a waiting list for some items, just in case people back out on paying for shipping.

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With a significant weight taken off my shoulders, I took some time to actually play with vintage Macs again! I kept a Blue and White G3 out of the pile, and installed Mac OS 9.2.2 on it. I did grab a 400 MHz processor for it, but sadly forgot to grab the jumper block to correctly clock it. The good news is that one of the G3's that went out has been overclocked from 350 to 400 MHz! The bad news is that underclocking a 400 MHz G3 to 350 MHz produces all kinds of weirdness, like random failures to chime and general system instability. I borrowed the 350 MHz processor out of that parts machine so we could play some Simcity 2000, which the kids did a LOT over the weekend.

I am looking forward to getting some jumpers, upgrading to the 400 MHz processor, and doing some other upgrades to this machine Action Retro style (ok, maybe not that crazy). I have never really used Mac OS 9 before, but am enjoying it very much.

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Don't worry, there are quite a few things left, and I have lots of shippable items to add to the list! I have recently added some ADB cables, but have lots more to add such as CD-ROM drives, hard drive sleds, SCSI cables, and serial cables. Keep an eye on the list (be sure to follow the item request process), and on this thread.
 

AdeptRapier

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Jan 16, 2022
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Hey TinkerDifferent! It's the last day or #MARCHintosh2020, which seems like a good time to share this!

Something happened.

Something big.

This is what my garage looked like about two weeks ago.

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If you want to hear the whole story, I recorded a YouTube video describing what happened, and what I plan to do with this collection! You can find it here:

YouTube: Massive Vintage Apple Haul



What Happened?!

The story began a few weeks ago (maybe six?) when someone posted "some Macs" on Facebook Marketplace. He posted 6-10 Macs, mostly laptops, but said he didn't know what they were worth. I responded to the ad, asking if I could come take a look and help assess what he had, and he replied with, "I'll sell you the whole lot for $2,500."

I had no idea what he had, and thought he had visited eBay and thought his 10 Macs were worth way more than they are, so I didn't bother responding.

A few weeks later, he sent me another message: "Still interested?"

I replied asking if he had a photo of everything, to which he replied with a video of him panning around a cargo trailer. It was pretty mind-boggling! Then, he offered me the whole thing for $1,000. I hemmed and hawed about it for awhile, noting that even getting them home would be a massive challenge.

He asked where I lived, and then said, "$1,000 and I will deliver them to you."

That was it. I drove to his location to make sure the offer was real (and it was), and then helped him rearrange the trailer for transport. We brought some moving blankets, and tried to pack things tightly for the 30+ minute drive across town. Here's what it looked like before he followed me back to my house:

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We have a third bay in our garage that my wife uses for upholstery, so we cleared that out as fast as possible and helped him unload the trailer. The photos at the beginning of the thread are a few minutes after that happened - we just piled everything in there as fast as possible. He wrote up a bill of sale, and it was done!

I now have 60+ Macs in my garage.

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What am I going to do with them?

The whole point of this project is to get these machines into the hands of retro Macintosh enthusiasts. I'm going to hang on to a few (like the LCIII, LC475, external CD-ROM drive, and 12" PowerBook G4), but the rest I intend to sell off at nominal prices.

Local pickup is a bit of a problem, as I am in Boise, Idaho. Salt Lake City is 6 hours East, and Portland is 6 hours West. If anyone wants to come and grab a bunch to haul to a major city, I'd welcome that! We might also need to consider some creative alternatives, like palletizing a bunch and shipping them to VCF.

Or maybe nobody wants these machines at all, and now I have a billion Macs on my hands that nobody wants! I'm interested in hearing what people think, and if there are any creative ideas for getting these into people's hands.

As for the money... obviously, I want to make my money back, but I'm going to try to keep these as affordable as possible, especially if we need to ship stuff. The only "Beige Whale" I have left is a Color Classic... so maybe there's a big trade in here somewhere? I don't know.

Several friends, on seeing the photos, immediately send me money to help fund the whole thing! They've claimed a handful of machines already, but the majority will be made available soon. I would ask that you refrain from asking for machines for a bit - I need to set up a good system for that.



The Project So Far

I've tested some of them, and I've been pulling batteries at every opportunity! I'll post an update video about where things are at soon.



What I (Probably) Have

I'll post a complete list when I'm ready to start moving them out, but it looks something like this:
  • 6 Blue and White G4's
  • 8 Power Mac G4's
  • 5 Power Macintosh 6000's and 7000's
  • 1 Power Macintosh G3
  • 1 Performa 5215CD
  • 1 Power Macintosh G3
  • 1 Power Macintosh 52160/100
  • 4 iMac G3's
  • 1 iMac G4
  • 6 Power Macintosh 8000's
  • 1 LCIII (actually not part of this haul but procured same day)
  • 1 LC475
  • 6 Macintosh IIsi's
  • 2 iBooks
  • 2 PowerBook G4 12"
  • 4 Multiple Scan 15 Displays
  • 1 Oddball display
  • About 6 laser printers
  • A couple of other printers
  • 2 milk crates of hard drives, brackets, and sleds
  • 1 SE/30
  • 1 PowerBook G3
  • 40-50 keyboards
  • About 3 AirPort Base Stations
  • 2 or 3 third party hard drive enclosures
  • Gobs of SCSI cables
  • Gobs of ADB cables
  • Gobs of power cables
  • A few manuals
  • Several accessory boxes
  • Toner cartridges
Hold off on asking for stuff - let's wait until I can post a more complete list, and after I've heard some ideas about how to distribute these.



That's it for now! I'm looking forward to hearing what you think!

Man, I'd throw up if I had all that in my Garage. I work in a place where they "recycle" computers constantly and I could end up with a ton of crap myself if I wasn't careful.

I decided awhile ago "you don't own stuff, stuff owns you" and have been REALLY careful about what I drag home even if it's free.

Good luck dealing with all of that.

:)
 

PotatoFi

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Oct 18, 2021
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Man, I'd throw up if I had all that in my Garage. I work in a place where they "recycle" computers constantly and I could end up with a ton of crap myself if I wasn't careful.

I decided awhile ago "you don't own stuff, stuff owns you" and have been REALLY careful about what I drag home even if it's free.

Good luck dealing with all of that.

:)

Yes, this has absolutely been a consideration! It's amazing how quickly I went from "I can't ever seem to find anything for sale in my area" to "I have more vintage computers than I can possibly find time for".

The "payoff" has been the look on people's faces when they stop to pick something up, or the messages of thanks I get when people receive their packages of vintage gear. One guy told me that I made his year!

As for "stuff owns you", I've been very careful to keep as little as possible. Even the Quadra 840AV and PowerBook 540 (with rare maxed out RAM) are not staying with me - they're being passed on (or have been passed on) to other enthusiasts.
 

PotatoFi

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Oct 18, 2021
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Hi everyone! I have another update for you today, if you're curious about how things are going.

First, I pulled the motherboard out of the last remaining Blue and White G3. It's going to a community member who has a board motherboard in theirs. I put what was left of the G3 on Facebook Marketplace for free, and within a couple of days someone grabbed it. Unfortunately, I didn't get to speak to them about what they planned to use it for.

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Next, I turned my attention to the last G4, which is a Quicksilver. The TinkerDifferent member who was interested in this one had obtained another in the time since claiming it. I am pretty overwhelmed with machines to ship, so I decided to sell this one locally. I spent a few hours working on it:

- Wet-sanded and polished up the sides, which got a lot of attention on Twitter
- Zeroed out the hard drives
- Created a USB flash drive installer per the excellent guide by @Action Retro
- Installed Mac OS 10.4, the newest that would run on it
- Opened up the optical drive and tried to fix it... no luck

Ultimately, I made a few bucks selling it on Craigslist!

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Tons of machines in the pile, prior to the big local purge, had SCSI cards in them. I foolishly didn't keep one behind, until I discovered one in the Quicksilver! A few months ago, I had purchased an Adaptec 2130CU on eBay for $30, and I could never get it to work in my G3. Lo and behold, the Quicksilver also had a 2130CU!

Yoink!

It's now in my Blue and White G3, helping me test and wipe all of these danged SCSI hard drives.

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Speaking of hard drives, I have many of them, possibly hundreds. Please send help.

Many of them work! If they do, I quickly check them for interesting software before zeroing them out. The ones that don't work get their sleds, brackets, and cables removed to be saved, and the drives themselves will go to recycling.

By the way, the LC brackets are available on my Etsy store!

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PotatoFi

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Oct 18, 2021
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As for the pile itself, I am now aggressively packing up machines and getting them shipped. Here's a Power Macintosh 6100/66, ready to go out to one of our TinkerDifferent friends. Just shipping one machine drained most of my packing materials instantly, which would prove to be a problem.

I feel kinda sorry for this recipient, as they got tons of our used Christmas present wrapping paper. 🤪

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At this point. the pile was starting to look pretty small! I wanted to aggressively start shipping machines, but was fighting the lack of appropriate boxes and packing materials.

Note: The IBM XT is mine, it's just in the pile until I can get it running again.

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I finally bit the bullet, and went to a local packing supply company. They seem to make packaging for commercial goods (like boxes for butter, according to their website), but they have a small retail store. I bought well over $200 worth of boxes and bubble wrap. Here's what $150 worth of heavy bubble wrap looks like!

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I also bought quite a few boxes. The 22x22x22 inch (55x55x55 cm) boxes were $10 each! Yikes! And for most machines, I plan to double-box them, which means about $17 per item in boxes alone. Now I see why most sellers refuse to ship items!

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PotatoFi

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Oct 18, 2021
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Now that I had some shipping supplies, I decided to tackle the items that are taking up the most space first. One of the worst offenders was an iMac G3 Tray Loader. On this particular machine, I hadn't got the battery out, as I'm more familiar with the iMac G3 DV. I couldn't stand shipping it with a battery in there, so I decided to look up a guide and get it out!

Yikes, a Maxell! Terrifying!

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With the bomb safely removed, I packaged up the machine. I'll get into my method shortly, but for now, just know that I relied on bubble wrap... and it consumed a lot. Here's the machine boxed up:

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...and here's what the bubble wrap situation looked like after packing that one machine. Yikes!

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Despite the extreme bubble wrap usage, it was pretty awesome to have three machines (a IIsi, iMac, and 6100/66) boxed up and ready to go! I'm happy to report that these three are on their way right now. I'm on the edge of my seat to hear whether they arrive in one piece or not!

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When you are ready to sell SCSI drives, please let us know!

Will do! Considering their weight (and associated expense to ship), and possibility of being damaged in shipping, what are SCSI drives worth?
 
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PotatoFi

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Oct 18, 2021
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Next, I decided to tackle the next three most space consuming items: the pair of 15" Apple Multiple Scan monitors, and the Power Macintosh 5260/100. The packing process was the same for all of them, so I'll show you the Power Macintosh.

First, I start out by taping some foam to the screen. I use masking tape to make it easy to remove.

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Next, I tape all of the joints to try to take stress off the internal clips as it moves around in shipping.

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Next, I place the computer face-down, and on top of a couple extra layers of bubble wrap. The idea here is to have the weight of the computer on the CRT, not the chassis.

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Next, I wrap the machine in a later of bubble wrap, and tape everything up.

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Then, I turn it 90°, and wrap again. This time, I use packing tape to tightly tape it up.

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I also like to add a little "handle" with tape to make it easier to get out of the box (but NOT carry around).

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In the bottom of the inner box (which in this case is 22x22x22"), I do a layer of bubble wrap, a layer of cardboard, and another layer of bubble wrap.

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In goes the Mac! Remember that this is face-down - if the bubble wrap wasn't in the way, you'd be looking at the back of the machine here.

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Next, I roll up some more bubble wrap to about the size of pool noodles, and shove one down to the bottom in each corner to hold the machine still.

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I made another trip down to the packaging supply store, and discovered THIS stuff! This is 20 cubic feet of foam pieces. It looks like they do custom cut foam packing, and shred up the extras to make this stuff! The best part about it is that it's only $20 per 20 cubic feet! Traditional packing peanuts were $55 for 20 cubic feet.

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I packed foam peanuts all around the computer, put another layer of bubble wrap in the bottom of the outer box, placed the inner box inside, and then packed foam peanuts all around that. Here are the results:

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Finally, I closed it all up. I am comfortable dropping this box 1 foot, which makes me hope that the machine will survive shipping! The tricky part is that this is a $10 outer box, a $7.50 inner box, and quite a bit of bubble wrap. I'm guessing that this is around $25 of material, but I've been asking for $15-20 depending on the size of the item. Shipping is expensive!

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Currently in transit:
- IIsi
- iMac G3
- Power Macintosh 6100/60

Will they make it in one piece?! I sure hope so, and I'll let you know!

Pending shipping:
- 15" Multiple Scan
- 15" Multiple Scan
- Power Macintosh 5260/100

🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞