I Dream of Cameras #25 Where have all the cameras gone?

The mailbag!
It's a New Year — once again, check your batteries and exercise your cameras!
As of October 2021, Paul BG is no longer making The Thingy, so how do we replace the discontinued mercury 625 battery? The 675 hearing-aid battery plus either a #9 rubber O-ring or a #10 split lock washer
Time for more controversy: do you use the self-timer?
Jeff's Electro Spotmatic meter has failed, and when a camera isn’t working, he cannot have it in the house
Our thrift-store odyssey: Where are all the film cameras? They’ve been camer-raptured!
Where to sell stuff, other than eBay? OfferUp, Mercari, Facebook Marketplace, ShopGoodwill, Etsy...
Jeff’s hunt for an XPan / Fujifilm TX
Are digicams the new film? (see this Casual Photophile article)
Books: Pentti Sammallahti’s Here, Far Away
Finally: Gabe’s annual report from the IDOC corporate retreat