Where can I find old (expired) packages?

Suppose the packages were around when 11 came out but are no longer available. Like glib12 stuff. I suppose I could find then in the 11 repos, but I can't browse pkg.freebsd.org. Is it not supposed to be accessed from a web browser? Because it always gives me error 403.
 
Not really. I was looking for prebuilt packages. If I were to build them then I might as well just checkout an older revision of the ports tree instead of compiling the ports tree from scratch.
 
Suppose the packages were around when 11 came out but are no longer available. Like glib12 stuff. I suppose I could find then in the 11 repos, but I can't browse pkg.freebsd.org. Is it not supposed to be accessed from a web browser? Because it always gives me error 403.

It used to be able to be viewed but I think about a month ago, suddenly, it went all 403 on me as well.
It's a shame as it was handy for looking at packages for specific architectures.
 
Suppose the packages were around when 11 came out but are no longer available. Like glib12 stuff. I suppose I could find then in the 11 repos

You wouldn't find them there. Packages are constantly replaced by newer versions. 11 came out 2016, packages from then are long gone. The present 11 repositories offers the current latest and quarterly packages and there is no other (archived) 11 repository.

but I can't browse pkg.freebsd.org. Is it not supposed to be accessed from a web browser? Because it always gives me error 403.

Subfolders of pkg*.freebsd.org are not accessible anymore, it's done on purpose to reduce excessive CPU load on the servers:

I was looking for pre-build packages.

You won't find pre-build old package for 11, at least I'm not aware of such an archive.
 
It used to be able to be viewed but I think about a month ago, suddenly, it went all 403 on me as well.
It's a shame as it was handy for looking at packages for specific architectures.

You can use freshports.org. Almost every port has a "Packages" table, showing ABI, latest, quarterly repository, and version, except ports where no package can be build (license restricted for example). Hovering over the version cells gives additional info, e.g.:

 
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I had come across that. It only goes up to 9.2 though.

You wouldn't find them there. Packages are constantly replaced by newer versions. 11 came out 2016, packages from then are long gone. The present 11 repositories offers the current latest and quarterly packages and there is no other (archived) 11 repository.

Well, quarterly could have what I'm looking for, couldn't it?

You won't find pre-build old package for 11, at least I'm not aware of such an archive.

To clarify, that wasn't a typo. I meant prebuilt as in already built (binary), as opposed to ports (source). Not pre-build as in beta builds or something.
 
So, suppose I have a 2nd HDD with an installation of FreeBSD that has the packages I need installed. I then mount its root filesystem on /mnt. This secondary system no longer has any packages in /var/cache/pkg/.

How do I create packages from the installed files using pkg create? I have read the manual and I know it goes something like pkg create -r /mnt -M manifest but where can I find the manifest or metadata dir?
 
Well, quarterly could have what I'm looking for, couldn't it?
The current 11 repositories don't contain any past version packages, they are not archived, they are replaced by packages build from 2020Q3 ports for quarterly and head ports for latest, and any deleted ports have no packages there.

To clarify, that wasn't a typo. I meant prebuilt as in already built (binary), as opposed to ports (source). Not pre-build as in beta builds or something.
I understood that, you are looking for old 11 packages from when 11 came out in 2016, like glib12, but there are no such old packages. The devel/glib12 port expired on 2018-12-20, and again there are no 11 repositories with archived package from past versions or expired ports. The 11 repositories from then are the same they are now for present quarterly and latest packages.
 
So, suppose I have a 2nd HDD with an installation of FreeBSD that has the packages I need installed. I then mount its root filesystem on /mnt. This secondary system no longer has any packages in /var/cache/pkg/.

How do I create packages from the installed files using pkg create? I have read the manual and I know it goes something like pkg create -r /mnt -M manifest but where can I find the manifest or metadata dir?

That's not how it's done, have a look at man pkg-create(8):
Code:
EXAMPLES
     Create package files for installed    packages:
       % pkg create    -a -o /usr/ports/packages/All

     Create package file for pkg:
       % pkg create    -o /usr/ports/packages/All pkg
Before creating packages chroot(8) into /mnt.
 
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