CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – “All Things Nerdly” is the unofficial slogan of the MIT Swapfest, a monthly electronics flea market at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“That’s not meant to be derogatory,” said Steve Finberg, who helped found the “Flea at MIT” 21 years ago. “Nerdy is a compliment for most of these people.”
Every third Sunday from April through October, hundreds of technophiles gather in a parking lot off Main Street in Cambridge to pick through piles of electronic equipment – everything from antique computers and ham radios to spectrophotometers and oscilloscopes.
Vendors begin lining up around midnight to secure prime spots in the lot. When the market opens at 9 a.m., buyers scurry inside to hunt for the best bargains.
Mark Beck, 14, spent a mere $20 to add a banged-up Apple II Plus to his growing collection of old Apple computers.
“This one doesn’t look like it will work, but I can fix it,” he said.
Mark has more than a dozen computers on display in his family’s Newton home. His father, Shel, said his son gives tours of his Apple “museum” to school groups.
“This one is a find,” Shel Beck said of the newest addition to the museum. “It’s like finding a Rembrandt in a flea market.”
The MIT flea market isn’t the largest of its kind, but its setting on the campus of an elite technical school makes it a destination for people from all over New England.
Gary Reuter, a retired submarine technician, and his 29-year-old son, Eric, traveled from Kittery, Maine, to sell their wares, an array of hard-to-find optical equipment.
“A lot of people here are engineers who live to tinker with weird things you wouldn’t find anywhere else,” said Eric Reuter, a professional sound engineer who teaches at the nearby Berklee College of Music.
The flea market is run by the Harvard Wireless Club, the MIT Electronics Research Society, the MIT UHF Repeater Association and the MIT Radio Society, a club for ham radio operators that dates back to 1909.
Finberg, a club member who works as an engineer at a MIT-affiliated laboratory, said school officials initially weren’t sold on the flea market.
“One of the deans thought it was much too commercial,” he said. “And then that dean went away.”
Today, Swapfest is as much a social event as a marketplace for electronics equipment.
Marcellus Stamps, a self-described “high-tech recycler” who sells used office computers at flea markets all over New England, sees many of the same faces wherever he and his wife go. He pointed to one friend whom he described as “the epitome of a geek.”
“He loves coming out here and interfacing with the people, showing off the hardware,” said Stamps, a Framingham resident.
Stamps, a newly retired computer consultant, isn’t in it for the money.
“We cover our costs, and I make enough to take my wife to dinner,” he said.
In contrast to Stamps’ businesslike approach, some vendors are just selling belongings that have been collecting dust in their basements or – in Ray Pease’s case – on the front lawn.
“I’m trying to get rid of some of my old junk,” the Dartmouth resident said. “The Board of Health doesn’t like me.”
Comments are no longer available on this story