Orange County company does brisk business selling the obsolete disks to hobbyists and embroiderers. Jonathan Gonzalez reports for the NBC4 News on Oct. 27, 2022.
Tom Persky is the proud owner of Orange County-based FloppyDisc.com where they buy, recycle and sell these colorful, functional relics.
Tom's shop in Lake Forest is a time machine, filled with tens of thousands of those flat, square disks you really can't find anywhere anymore.
"We sell floppy disks every day. I have thousands of customers who continue to find them useful and dependable," says Persky.
In the early 90s, Tom duplicated software for a living and as the floppy disk business declined, he ended up with too many.
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"I was left with a big inventory of discs and they were a bunch of people who wanted to buy floppy disks and they begin to find us. It's hard to overstate how little information most floppy disks can even carry...less than 1.5 megabytes," he added.
So who is actually still buying these discs?
The biggest consumers of Tom's floppy discs are embroidery businesses, hobbyists, medical equipment, and even airplanes.
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Tom still sells thousands every week.
"I think we have upwards of half a million, and they come in every day and they go out every day."
