Everyone in this business has a closet. And they’re all full to bursting.

I’m not talking about deep, dark secrets. No, I’m talking about the OBC, or the Obsolete Gear Closet.

Here I’ll give you a peek into mine:

A Harmony 880 remote control.

A shoe box full of miscellaneous unbalanced analog audio interconnects in various lengths.

A 900 Mhz cordless phone.

There’s a bunch of other miscellaneous crap, but the real pride and joy (if you can call it that) of my collection of obsolete gear is a 2002 Sony Cybershot camera that cost $650 back then and today is completely and hopelessly outclassed by the camera in my iPhone 4S.

It’s worth mentioning that thirteen years ago, I was assigned to be store manager of a location that for years had been the dumping ground for obsolete gear for all the other stores in our chain’s region. That store’s back room was an Aladdin’s Cave of ridiculously obsolete crap. The crown jewel of that collection was a baker’s dozen of Sony NP-1 NiCad Handycam batteries.

Remember those? Each one was the size of the magazine for an AR-15, and you needed six of them on a leather belt to give your vintage Handycam 20 minutes of recording time.

Can any of you top that? What’s in your closet?