In the 1980s, we happened on an estate sale that tooks months to complete because the house was stacked so full of stuff. When they managed to get to the wall upstairs with the basement door, they opened it to find the basement stacked to the ceiling so after about 3 or 4 steps, the stairs vanished. Once we could get down there, several weeks into the sale, we found an old chest freezer with a deteriorated gasket that allowed frost to accumulate on the outside of the lid and chest walls. There was also an elaborate apparatus over the laundry tubs involving 3 inch pipe and water sprays to turn a vented Bendix gas dryer into a condensing dryer. The poor, mad scientist finally died in his Palacio del Junko. His children arrived for the funeral and would not go into the house. They paid the estate sale lady to empty the place which she finally did.
My guess is that the younger people selling these things do not know about refrigerators that need defrosting or just don't want to be bothered with the task.
