Basic PC scrapping question

Originally Posted by aph

I am extremely busy with my day job/business.

However, I really like breaking down PCs for its components. It's fun and makes some $$ as well.

A guy I deal with from time to time told me, he can get me 50-75 PCs and Laptops per week for $2 each.
Now I am leary of his numbers, but heck, even if he brings me 10 a week, that would be fine as well.

I dabbled into Pcs a couple years ago and revisited the issue after talking to this guy earlier this week.

For someone that just does this small scale on the site it seems very overwhelming. Just the differences in MoBos, CPUs etc is ridiculous.

I also likely will not be able to test anything for functionality due to the time it takes and also he likely will just bring me the PCs etc without cables, etc.

I do know how to research some of the better stuff above scrap value and how to sell it. But it seems very time consuming. Also I would rather not deal with anything under $20 value individually as it doesn;t seem worth my while. But i also do not want to ignore too much potential profit.

E.g. I found 3 memory sticks in one PC that i could prob get $12-18 on ebay with free shipping. But really not worth my time doing that.

Also a CPU selling for $13ish w/ free shipping.

Anyhow.... my question is, how would you suggest I handle this?
Just break everything down and sell it by the lbs and let someone else reap the $$?
And just sell the real good stuff individually?

I sell a LOT on ebay, but my minimums are $20 for smalls and $40 for bigger stuff.

It seems counterproductive to add $10-20 items to the mix. But again, it also seems wasteful to just toss those mixed level items in the lbs boxes?

Also I need to say, I am not a very patient person. I won't spend umpteen hours on research to make a few extra bucks.I really am looking at this as a little hobby, cash making opportunity.

Thanks in advance for any input.

Martin

Unless you can test stuff, I wouldn't sell anything on E-Bay and list it as working. Your best bet is to learn what some of the buyers on here pay for more than scrap value items and ship to them. They will test them and pay accordingly. Yes, you could make more yourself, but do you have the time and equipment to test.

For the re-sellable stuff we have several buyers right here, who can take them untested and they test and pay you based on the working items. This would mostly apply to RAM, CPU and maybe hard drives.
All you need to do is ID the resellable stuff and once you have enough, ship them all in one box. Take a look in the buyers section. Everything else can be sold as scrap by weight. This way is quick and simple and you don't leave too much money on the table.

On the one hand .... there's a pretty steep learning curve and the landscape changes every 3- 6 months as new computer technologies hit the market. You'll do better if you work hard at new learning.

On the other hand .... You start to see the patterns after you've done a few hundred. It won't take very long to size up the machine and decide if it should go straight to breakdown or be considered for better than scrap. Hands on experience is a good teacher.

Not trying to make trouble or anything but how knowledgeable is he about computers ? Is there any chance that he would be culling out the few keepers and sending the straight to scrap items to you ? If that's the case .. then ebay won't be a consideration.

It's like most everything else. You only get out of it what you are willing to put into it. Macs and laptops will drive you nuts if you're not a patient person. Probably better to send them in as either whole or incomplete units and get what you can out of them.

One good thing .... you might be getting enough volume to make shipping by gaylord feasible. That would save you a ton on shipping costs.

APH,

Do you have a local buyer for the scrap or shipping all to out of town buyer?

Here is my approach to laptops. Check eBay completed listings for the models you have. Include the words “parts” or “repair” with the model number. If similar units are selling at a price you deem worthwhile, place in keep pile. If price is too low, remove any more than scrap items for a forum buyer and add the rest to the scrap pile (I don’t disassemble laptops).

You need to acquire a few laptop power supplies. I can do a lot with 6 or so. Try powering on the laptops and make notes on post its so all laptops are documented. Make/model, cpu/speed, ram, power/or not, screen condition, other damages or missing peices. Units that power on, try to get to the bios page (one button during start up) it will give you the specs and the buyers like this picture. Even laptops that don’t power on can have value, people need covers, body peices, whatever. I remove hard drives but include the caddies.

I use flat rate boxes, but that’s because shipping is high for me. You may have to ask at the post office, the large flat rate game board box works well. If you get multiple of the same or similar laptops, pair them in one box to reduce shipping per item. Items sold as for parts or repair can not be returned. Just document well to avoid feedback issues.

Now you are selling laptops with basic specs/functionality and making way more than scrap without extensive refurbishing. You make more money, but the buyer can still make money too.

Are they complete computers?

Don't forget to check the computers for Bitcoins.

Originally Posted by sledge

I pay my "CurbCo" guys $2 per on desktops and laptops and always make profit.. even at scrap. I'd take him up on his offer.

Figure a non-cracked Laptop screen brings you $1.50 at scrap. Not too hard to pull out another .50 cents to break even.

I could give you all the answers.. but where is the fun in that? $2 is fine.. take the time to do some reading here and after a while you'll know how to maximize a computer for its full profit potential.

It's situational though. Let's assume worst case and shipping is .80 / lb

Average screen weight at 1.25 lbs

1.50 ( scrap value ) minus 1.00 ( shipping ) gives you a net profit of .50 a screen. Maybe scratch out another .50 with a motherboard for a total of one dollar.

Buy price was 2.00 $ Return on scrap was 1.00$ Net loss on every unit is -1.00$

That doesn't figure in the time to carefully break down the laptop and wrap the screen in packing material for shipping.

It's hard when you're doing straight e-waste because the margins can be so thin. If you make any profit at all .... it's generally in nickels,dimes, and quarters. Once in awhile you make a buck or two with a good find.

Sledge:

I've been doing the e-waste for about four or five years as well but the learning curve was different for me. It started out as troubleshooting, repairing, and building PC's in the 1990's as a hobby. It's just something that's fun & relaxing for me. I got into the e-waste end of it as a way of making a little extra money. That way the hobby pays for itself and isn't taking anything away from the family budget.

It's not common, but i run across a few keepers here and there. Others are trashed, but have good salvageable parts inside like ram & processors. Put it all together and you can come up with something saleable with little or no money invested.

ie: Had a reasonably good core i5 laptop come in that wouldn't boot up. The only problem was that it had built up a static charge across the mainboard. It ran just fine once the static was discharged. Used some scrap ram from another machine and brought it up to 8gb. It wasn't a problem to flip it for 95.00 $ to a local buyer.

Just did a nice Dell tower for 160.00 a couple of weeks ago. It's all doable. Not hard work and not a lot of time.

Straight e-waste is a lot more like work for me. There are quite a few times where i make more on a flip & sell than i net from a 65 lb box of e-waste. You know the game ... you've got to go through quite a bit of material to make up enough to fill a box.

That's why they keep saying here that better than scrap is generally your best option. Lotsa ways of doing that.

As for shipping : That's all situational. Mine generally run .40 - .60 cents per pound. Others on the forum live further away and have had to pay .80 cents a pound. Pallet shipping runs roughly .20 cents a pound ? USPS and some of the other shippers can actually be quite a bit more than .80 cents a pound. It varies.

It's all a numbers game. Keep careful track of your time and expenses just like you would with any other business and do the math.

After awhile ...it becomes obvious what things work best in your own particular circumstance.

Please ... don't take it the wrong way. I was just trying to pose a hypothetical example of how you could come on the wrong side of it when you're just starting out. It doesn't help that the landscape keeps changing every three to six months. It's hard to stay current.

Most of the Core 2 machines with DDR 2 memory are obsolete now. They've been displaced by seven generations of the core i series that are running DDR3. Even some of the DDR 3 memory is becoming obsolete because so many of the new machines coming out are DDR 4.

A good rule of thumb for HDD's is about 500 GB and above. It's due to a couple of factors. A lot of customers are looking for 1 TB and above. The data transfer rates of the newer drives are about double that of the previous generation. The performance difference is noticeable. Match a current processor with competent memory and a decent HDD and you've got something.

I know i've gotten burned on parts by keeping them on the shelf too long. Obsolete ram is only about .30 per stick and scrap laptop HDD's are all but worthless. ( Got a whole shelf full of em'.)

The big bad boogie here is that most folks are going to the smaller devices. The things like the tablets and smaller hand held devices are displacing the laptops just as the laptops displaced the towers & desktops awhile back.

Can't say that i'm crazy about the trend because in order to stay current i would have to adapt to working on the micro devices. The problem is that they're too small to work on and have little scrap value.

Anyway ... the log term prospects for computer e-waste aren't all that good. We will probably start to see it gradually wind down in another 3 - 5 years. Best to stay a few steps ahead of the new wave of change and adapt accordingly.