The Supa Journal.
Five longer reads we wrote between intake and pack-out — about cap audits on Saturn boards, why the CRT corner never gets sold off, who's actually behind the Friday Drop, and what we learned cleaning a hundred PSP UMDs in a fortnight. No affiliate links, no SEO filler.
Refurb bench diary · week 23
Twenty-one consoles came through in seven days. Three of them fought us. One — a Saturn that smelled vaguely of cat — needed almost a full cap bank. The week, in field notes.
CRT vs flat-panel · the field report
We took six light-gun games and three CRT TVs to a basement in Hackney, calibrated everything against a flat panel, and timed the IR sweep. The flat panel lost. By a lot. Notes from the trip.
Eden Whitestone, on curation, mark-ups & the Friday Drop
The curator answers ten questions about how the lockup actually works — intake comps, why we don't carry day-one, the eight rules of the Friday Drop, and which game she'd genuinely never sell.
Friday Drop · a photo diary from the lockup
Seven photographs from Drop 45. The intake bench at 11:00, the bench team at 14:00, the photo corner at 17:00, the Royal Mail handover at 17:55, the empty lockup at 18:30. No captions over fifteen words.
Twelve things a single Saturn taught us about retro refurb
One PAL Sega Saturn from a Newcastle estate clear-out, every drama known to the bench: a swollen cap, a missing internal battery, a stuck disc-tray, a CR-2032 holder pulled clean off the board. A short education.