Technology updates pretty frequently. And so does the equipment that people use over time. But when equipment isn’t maintained, it breaks down. Sometimes it get’s dangerous to even use.
I pulled a set of nice studio lights, the kind used for high end photography, from the trash. On the surface they looked okay, but once I got the nice diffusers off, well, they looked less okay. Because they hadn’t been maintained there were loose nuts and washers floating around inside a housing with bare connectors. This is a massive fire hazard.
I was able to get them apart and fix them. Now I have a working set of soft boxes that I could never afford on my own.