Derilicts

[AdamBoy]

I have recently been reading the thrawn books for the first time, and after reading about the Katana fleet just being abandoned it made me wonder how many empty or derilict ships could be just sitting there waiting for someone to run into and find?

Many of the republic venators abandoned by the empire spring to mind...

[Scarecrow63]

Most old republic cruisers were probably used for scrap to build newer ones.

[vadereclipse]

I have recently been reading the thrawn books for the first time, and after reading about the Katana fleet just being abandoned it made me wonder how many empty or derilict ships could be just sitting there waiting for someone to run into and find?

Many of the republic venators abandoned by the empire spring to mind...

as said by scarecrow, venators and other obsolete ships were probably recycled to make ISDs and TIEs and the likes.
as for things like the katana fleet, most would likely drift towards asteroid fields or into the territory of other groups and be destroyed/used by them.

[Znieh]

I remember the Katana fleet being in hyperspace, so their probably isn't many derelicts out there. Unless of course there are more derelict ships traveling through hyperspace and all that is needed to bring them out is an Interdictor. If that be the case I'm sure some very old and very interesting ships would be discovered.

[Zeron]

I doubt it. The Katana fleet wasn't in hyperspace, it picked up a hive virus and everyone died..it was sitting in normal space for many years. And if everyone on a ship died or something while in hyperspace, it'd still drop out at it's destination. And failing that, it'd hit something. And failing that, the hyperdrive would eventually fail due to lack of maintenance/fuel. There's almost no chance of the last happening however, as there's very little chance it'd go that long without hitting something.

[Znieh]

Ahh, I thought a ship constantly going through hyperspace seemed fishy. After doing some research I realized that they made a random hyperspace jump to somewhere, so that being the case maybe there are derelict ships out there that had their hyperdrives fail mid flight or something. Of course the only way to ever find them would be meticulous exploring and searches; which in the long run would probably not be worth it for the searchers.

[Scarecrow63]

99.9999999999999% of the galaxy is vast nothingness.  You'd be lucky to ever find anything.