Why do people go looking for old hardware that has a wallet? Don't you just need the recovery phrase to get your bitcoins back if your computer is lost or damaged?

I don't understand these stories of people trying to find old computers with wallets on them at the dump.
Are you talking about the people who mined or bought bitcoins in 2009 - 2011 and are surprised that the price is that high now?

HD-wallets (wallets with such a recovery phrase, it's called seed) are available since BIP 32 and that was around 2013.

So they don't have such a wallet and can't recover anything. That's why they search their old hardware.