Finding Decommisioned Parts

Hi Everyone,
How can I go about finding old fire alarms parts taken out of service? Most rare items don’t show up on ebay and are being trashed all the time. Could I call my local Simplex branch about inquiring out of service parts? Is there a special place where these items are dumped? I’m out looking for the simplex light plates and 4050’s or anything similar from that time period, even old panels from the 60’s 70’s and 80s. Also where do these ebay wholesalers get all those items anyway?

Probably the best thing to do would be to find the buildings that do have old devices, and watch those buildings like a hawk. If you hear that the building may be torn down, swoop in and ask the building manager if you can salvage some of the devices.

My office puts a lot of them in our dumpster by the street. They also get dumped in rolloff dumpsters at construction sites at remodel jobs. I honestly don’t have the time or space to salvage much of anything, plus it’s mostly parts from the past 25 years and I’ve seen a million of them – not many antiques around here.

I would guess that those sellers are likely the ones removing them themselves, may even be in the fire alarm trade. I’m not a huge proponent of making money that way, though, since I don’t like to encourage installing used parts in real systems. It is good for collectors, though.

Perhaps check some dumpsters, as always, using discretion.

Another note: you may not get the best response by just calling offices you don’t know. They probably will question your motives, either thinking you want the parts for a real system or to sell for money. I’d try to make friends first with someone in the field, and see if they appreciate your interest and desire to build model systems. Then they may be an excellent resource, not just for parts but for all kinds of information.

Great Answers! I’ll take them into consideration.

I usually dump old parts in a dumpster behind our office, so I would check in dumpsters near/behind fire alarm offices with discretion. Also if you see building renos I’d check dumpsters there too, because most likely the FA system was upgraded and they just toss them in the dumpster.

we give all our old parts to scrappers. warehouse guy has a list of them and just randomly calls them whenever he has a pallet worth of stuff to toss.