Monitor auction

I just checked back on a lot of monitors out of curiosity to see where the bidding stood. This was for 137 monitors (15" - 20"), "operational condition unknown. The high bid is at $401.00, or roughly $2.93 per unit. What would be the goal here? Hoping many of them would test ok and resell? $3 / unit plus time and handling seems a gamble.

Anyway, just curious.

There are buyers here paying 5-6.00 for 17" and up LCD monitors. I would imagine they are making at least a few bucks each on them, putting the value at 7-8 each for the larger recycler they ultimately go to. That leaves a lot of room for profit.

That makes sense. I guess it would come down to overall costs involved (purchase price, handling, shipping, etc.). Some of the buyers for these (that I have checked) have indicated certain conditions in which they will take them, so I just wasn't sure about paying $3 apiece unless there was an option of hoping to sell working units.

Thanks for the insight.

I was watching a couple auctions for desk top computers. they went off at over twenty thousand for almost seven hundred units. the description said unknown condition and most had hard drives removed. why someone would ride the prices like that. that comes out apx $25. per unit plus a hard drive and time to service and update each. its crazy. used desk tops here in my area are selling from $60. and up…

Yeah, I guess to me personally it just seems like you're buying "a pig in a poke" as the saying goes, hoping there are enough good pieces to come out. There must be something to that strategy because as pascoEscrapper noted, some of those lots go for big money. In fairness, though, I'm very low on the "repair / resell" scale right now, but hope to work in that direction in the future. Bottom line, it's good this stuff is going somewhere other than a landfill.

Originally Posted by matador

Governments are that way. For example, I'd purchase a retired car from the Wyoming state motor pool in a heartbeat, but I wouldn't touch one from the state of Montana. This is a similar case- especially in larger agencies where the IT staff is more likely to pull parts to keep as spares. You'll get them eventually- when they're obsolete. Some agencies are the exact opposite, sending complete, ready to refurbish machines out.

The thing about refurbishing is that it's a world of it's own. I've sold laptops for $500 before, but you have to know what exactly you're looking at. You also have to make sure that the Operating System is properly licensed- a lot of the computers for sale online don't have legal, genuine software. That makes it harder for those of us that do refurbish as a business, but that's just how it is. Never buy a lot from a place you haven't dealt with before on the grounds that everything will work- you'll usually be wrong.

There was a member on here a while back who posted results from an auction he attended. The computer refurbishers actually bought some items at prices that would be indicative of a loss, so there's not a lot of room there. Older desktops can't be sold online, because shipping and the cost of licensing Windows (Legally) would exceed what the computer could be sold for. Older desktops are primarily sold in retail environments, and those vary a lot.

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Now that I've derailed your thread (You can thank me later!), there are two buyers of screens on this forum. I've used one of them- IIRC, he would cover shipping if you had over $600 of monitors. The rate at that time was $6.00 per screen, so you can calculate backwards to see what bid would cover the cost of time and transportation (And, almost 17" or larger LCD monitor can be resold for more than scrap value). Most of my lot was test failures

Great info! Thanks. This (auctions) are just something I've been watching / checking out more seriously lately, but my mindset is still "scrap", so a lot of these prices surprise me. What you have said makes perfect sense. In this case, this appears to be from a college, and they advertise sales periodically. I've put in bids on a few things over the last few months, but bids blow past my limit in no time, telling me that there's likely something I'm missing out on. I'm not ready to pull the trigger on an expensive mistake just yet, so for me, it's hitting SMF for more info.

As long as these monitors are not cracked, bleeding, broken, scratched, cut cords or obviously waterlogged, several buyers on this forum pay good for them. At $3 each, plus shipping to you then shipping to the buyer, you'd come out ahead. You could always buy them and have them shipped to the buyer, if they will sort for you, and you basically get paid for being the middle guy that did the work to find the auction. Everyone wins.

I know of the lot you are posting about. Ended 3/3 3/4. A lot of them had i5 and better processors duel core up to i7 are going from 3.00 to 125.00 each. That if you were to scrap lot . Shred the mother and finger boards sell the processors ram . You could be in the mid thirtys for a return.