For more than two decades, over 2,200 unused NABU personal computers sat stacked in an aging barn in rural Massachusetts. In 2023 they suddenly resurfaced online, sold for under €100 each on eBay to buyers eager for a slice of early home computing history.
The collection belonged to retired computer designer James Pellegrini, who had bought the machines in the late 1980s while dreaming of a new communications network for small firms.
That idea never turned into a working service, yet the forgotten stockpile has now become a textbook example of how nostalgia, rarity, and the right online marketplace can transform obsolete hardware into sought after collectibles.
A forgotten stockpile in a shaky barn
After Pellegrini moved the computers into a barn outside a small town around the year 2000, they stayed there for about 23 years. Stacked on the second floor, the units weighed roughly 22 tons in total, enough to spark worries about the safety of the aging wooden structure.
The barn was never meant to hold what was essentially a small data center in boxes. Over time, structural concerns turned what had been quiet long-term storage into a pressing problem that had to be solved.
From Craigslist to eBay
Once the barn began to look less like a safe warehouse and more like a risk, Pellegrini decided the computers had to go. His first attempt ran through Craigslist, where he offered the machines at low prices but saw only modest interest from local buyers.
The real change came when he moved the listings to eBay and set prices that stayed under €100 euros. Within just a few days, nearly a quarter of the stock was gone, snapped up by collectors and curious tinkerers, and eventually the entire supply disappeared from the platform.
If you imagine opening your front door to find a courier delivering a sealed NABU box from the early 80s, you get a sense of the appeal. For many buyers it was like unboxing a time capsule from the first era of connected home computing.
NABU computers and their digital legacy
NABU systems came from a little-known home computer platform of the early 1980s that connected through cable television networks. In simple terms, they let households download software, games, and information from a central server into the living room, a concept that anticipated later cloud services and app stores.
Today that technical legacy is documented by institutions such as the School of Computer Science at Carleton University, which describes the NABU personal computer as one of the first cable ready home machines designed for network delivered software.
The barn discovery did more than clear space for its owner, since it also supplied researchers and hobbyists with a large batch of identical systems to study and restore.
For retro fans, the Massachusetts stockpile offered a rare chance to own that piece of history at a relatively accessible price, at least while the listings lasted.
