I would recommend selling working and vintage units as-is, for better than scrap price. It's usually less handling and, assuming you have i-series machines, the payout is quite a bit higher. There are a number of websites that buy laptops sight unseen and I have gotten excellent quotes for similar devices from SMF buyers. I have sold a few machines from the mid-1990's and while the take wasn't a ton higher than scrap, it was substantially less work than d-man. Most other machines go whole to scrap as it is the easiest and best way to handle the screens, regardless of condition, especially now with all the Core 2 machines and netbooks pouring in (though some very cheap netbooks have very new RAM chips; don't overlook that opportunity). I do have a pile of screens which look pretty OK but since I can't test them properly and don't want to get dinged for shipping broken junk, I haven't quite found away to cost effectively sell any number of them. Probably, for screens, it makes sense to ship a very high-value LTL load, top off with screens, and let the chips fall where they may. At this point, though, I hardly bother with tearing down anything that isn't already basically stripped.
Also, don't underestimate the parts market. If you have a damaged machine, especially if it's quite old or very new, you can flog the keypads and even some of the ports pretty consistently.
Bookmarks