Retro Finds of the Week (Vol. 6)
1/9 - 1/15/2023
Welcome back to another installment of Retro Finds of the Week! Now let’s get something out of the way: this collection was from back in January of 2023. Volume 5 was published back in October of 2022 and I had a whole folder of photos set aside for the next several posts. Unfortunately, all of them were lost in my iCloud backup fiasco — which I discussed back in episode 20 of the podcast — when upgrading from Catalina to Monterey on an unsupported MacBook Pro. With that said, I found these photos in another folder and wanted to get the Retro Finds series back up and running.
Some Cool Old-ish Books
During this week’s trip to the local Goodwill I stopped by the book section before heading over to the tech corner. There weren’t a lot that jumped out at me but I did find a few things of interest.
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six
The first book to catch my eye was a small, “pocket-sized” copy of the Tom Clancy techno-thriller. While I haven’t read the entire story, I have played several of the spin-off video games from Red Storm Studios on the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. This was one of the books I remember living on my step-dad’s bookshelf when I was a kid. This copy was only $0.50 so I probably should have grabbed it, but I decided to hold out for the larger hardback version which will fit in better with the rest of my Tom Clancy collection.
An Incomplete Nancy Drew Collection
Along the bottom shelf of the first bookshelf I noticed this long line of yellow hardbacks. Upon closer inspection it was a bunch of Nancy Drew stories. While I’ve heard of Nancy Drew and know that it’s a series of juvenile mystery stories, I’ve never read them. Growing up I was never much of a reader, though I did have a lot of the Hardy Boys books, and there was always this assumption — perhaps wrongly — that the Hardy Boys were for boys and Nancy Drew was for girls. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s what I thought back then and I doubt my house full of teen and pre-teen boys would be interested in them so I left them for someone who might appreciate them more. Still, I enjoy finding collections that maintain a uniform spine like these with books, video games, movies, etc.
An Old Random House Dictionary
Now this one took me back. My mother had this for years when I was a little kid. I remember using it for school on occasion — you know, in the before times without internet — but it was the design of the house on the front and the red letters that stuck with my subconscious all these years. I had no use for this whatsoever, but I did make sure to send these photos to my mom and my older sister to bring them that little nostalgia hit.
A Couple of Old Programming Books
I have no real interest in most of the topics in these books, but whenever I find tech books I can’t help but snap a photo. Side-by-side I found:
PHP Fast & Easy Web Development 2nd edition by Julie C. Meloni, published in 2002.
HTML, Java , CGI, VRML, SGML Web Publishing Unleashed by William Stanek, Steven DeRose, and others published in 1996.
Clearly someone learned web development back in the day and was clearing out their closet or something.
Random Tech
After spending more time than I needed to at the book section I made my way over to the tech corner of the store. There wasn’t a lot that caught my attention this time, but one thing that does was a lonely Xbox One Kinect just sitting there in front of a stack of keyboards. In hindsight, I probably should have grabbed this for my son who’d just picked up a refurbished Xbox One S as his first ever console, but I didn’t think about it at the time.
A Used Router
The next thing that caught my eye was a Linksys EA6350 dual-band router complete in box. A quick search for the model number shows that this device came out back in 2014. It would probably still serve someone well who needed wifi in their home or dorm, but at this stage in life and my career I am moving toward more professional-grade options. The price tag was removed (or never placed) so I had no idea of what they were asking for this. However, based on other tech items this Goodwill has tried to sell in the past, it was probably overpriced for what you’re getting.
Vintage VTech Kit!
Okay, this one was pretty cool. We’ve all heard of VTech. You know, the company that makes those LeapFrog laptop-style games for little kids? I alway just assumed they were a product of the late 1990s — because that is when I first recall seeing them in stores — but apparently they’ve been around a lot longer than I realized.
This here is the VTech Talking Super Smart Start model number is 80-1440. According to it’s Fandom Wiki — and yes, they have a Fandom site for it… — it was released in 1991 and 1992. Apparently these are also on eBay going for anywhere from $10-$30 these days. If I’d known that I’d probably have picked it up to try and flip it, but I didn’t.
And with that I left the store empty-handed. Until next time…