Hacker News Reader

Comment by petercoolz | Hacker News Reader

Can someone please explain how this works? Is the younger Mrs. B is paying them to remove everything? Why? Do they just throw it all away?

View on HN

There's plenty of details left out but it sounded like Mrs. B was paying the bills, but wasn't happy about it. There was a hint that Mrs. B was "sick" so perhaps she was under doctor's orders to remove the mold/animal feces/garbage/vermin/etc that may be present in her home. Alternatively, sometimes people are ordered by home inspectors to clear out their homes enough to bring them up to code or face condemnation.

The actual process is, by and large, taking everything to the dump. There do exist some hoarders who keep clean homes and for whom an estate sale could make sense, but many/most have homes that are pretty much garbage pits.

Source: a close relative of mine was a hoarder, and I've watched way too many hoarding shows.

The risk of sickness, in these cases, can be a serious concern. My next door neighbor was a hoarder, or so the neighborhood found out upon his death. He was allowing wild animals to live in his house; along with a dog that was located in the mess almost a week after he died.

His nephew, who ended up taking care of the cleaning and refinishing, told me he contracted Toxoplasmosis from the accumulated animal feces. I accidentally let that fact slip to the first cleaning crew that was working in the house (without masks) and I didn't see them return after that.

I expect every situation is slightly different. A couple of blocks from here a woman died and her son paid to have the house cleaned out. (it was eventually condemned) My wife helped her uncle move into an apartment and helped clean out his house so that he could rent it out (additional income to cover his costs).

There was an interesting truth in there. The longer you wait to get rid of something, the more it will cost you. I'm sure it would make for an excellent priceonomics story to look at things which cost $X, depreciate down to 0, and then start costing money to dispose. Some don't quite hit zero, but a lot of the stuff in her uncle's house had gone past it into the region of pay someone to haul it away territory.

things which cost $X, depreciate down to 0, and then start costing money to dispose

I'm a part of the hobby machinist community and this comes up quite a lot because many retirees have (literally) tons of heavy machinery in basements and garages. When your 5,000lb manual lathe that cost $50,000 brand new is now only worth its weight in scrap iron (about $500?) but it will cost $2,000 to call a rigger to take it away, that's a problem for whomever you leave behind when you die.

It's bad enough when it's just one or two items, but I've seen hoarder symptoms in many hobby machinists/machine collectors and I feel quite sorry for the wives and children of some of these guys that will be left to deal with the aftermath.

You sell it on ebay for a dollar, and let the enterprising person who wants it figure it out. That's how I got my 42U server rack!

This is key, and at least in the bay area there are enough folks who are crazy enough to rescue a "free" Hardinge lathe for the cost of hauling it out. But you also need an aging machinist, who probably paid top dollar for it, and it still has all the capability it had when they paid for it, and so it is just as "valuable" to let it go for nothing. The flip side is that the "kids" who are clearing out Dad's basement don't realize that a machine tool is a machine tool is a machine tool and so they sell it for scrap rather than post an ad on Craigslist or something. An old bridgeport can look worthless and still be a quite useful, especially with tooling included.

> it still has all the capability it had when they paid for it, and so it is just as "valuable" [to the original purchaser]

If this is the case, how can it have depreciated down to $0? I feel like I missed a key concept somewhere. With all the functionality of a new lathe, it must be worth something over the value of its materials as scrap... right?

It has degraded functionality, worn bearing/tolerances etc. and will require some amount of maintenance or work to keep it going. i.e. it might be fine, or it might be fine with some applied effort by a knowledgeable person with more time then money.

Those things play off against the costs of "buying" the machine for a non-nominal sum - and also the likelihood of a quick sale.

Most machine shops (production shops at least) are not purchasing new manual machine tools. Manual machine tools, even tool room (i.e. high precision) machines, like mills (and shapers) and lathes represent little or no value to commercial enterprises due to the labor costs and productivity relative to CNC machine tools.

Thus, there are an abundance of used manual machine tools on the market, now they are irrelevant to the manufacturing industry. They remain difficult and expensive to move. They are very heavy take up lots of space, and may have special electrical power requirements. Their capability is also a function of tooling, which may, or may not be readily and cheaply available when obtaining the machine. So, despite the bargain that used manual machine tools represent, they are not likely impulse purchases.

If I had the space, I would love a Monarch 612. You can get them for scrap prices, but its just far too impractical to consider.

This.

A manual tool that can still hold the same tolerances it did when it was new, in the hands of a skilled machinist, is worthless. Because a Haas machining center[1] can hold the same tolerances with an operator who has a 2 year certification degree.

So machine shops don't want (or need) the old manual tools, and yet they still work fine. Great way to build small arms on the cheap :-) If I ever retire to a ranch with space for a machine shop I'll collect these sorts of tools.

[1] http://haascnc.com/discover/hmc/

Short version is the market is not smooth and has very asymmetric knowledge and gaining the knowledge the hard way with measurement instruments is a time consuming specialized skill.

I know all about the condition of the bearings in the headstock of my lathe... you most certainly don't and if you're wise you'll hedge your bets.

Also the market is fragmented. I like screwing around in my shop and do not care about revenue per hour generated. A job shop only cares about revenue per hour generated. I don't think the markets are going to make sense to each other, but people insist that selling machine tools is selling machine tools and it doesn't matter if the buyer is a for profit shop or an amateur steam engine tinkerer, unfortunately it does matter, a lot.

And edited to add, skilled people can see hidden value. Sure the ways are worn out on that worthless lathe and that worthless lathe had a trashed QC gearbox but hoarder dude knows how to combine the parts from both and sell the one good one for $2000. True, individually each is worth $0, but combined, with a skilled repair man willing to put in maybe 100 hours of hard labor... And tragically I've seen some semi-hoarding situations where the guy just gets too old... he could make that $2K which would be really helpful for a retired guy's budget, but doc just said no lifting anything and no standing for long periods, so other than praying for an apprentice, it'll sit there till the estate sale.

I tried this once with a very large pen plotter (6' wide). The sole bidder on eBay had not read the description and was unable/willing to work out shipment for themselves.

Note that this was before there was Craigslist in the area.

If you have a house absolutely full of junk, it has to get cleaned out sometime. Either before the hoarder dies, if someone is trying to help them get their life straight, or after the hoarder dies, because the heir of the property will want to get some value and you can't sell a house that is full of stuff.

Based on the article, no, they don't throw away what they can sell or salvage. He talks about this. Whatever isn't valuable, I'm sure they throw away.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com