school of hard knocks....

I’m still pretty much a newbie in wheeling and dealing for computer parts so still having some “school of hard knocks” experiences. A couple 2-3 weeks ago, had a decent score where the just the memory I brought back nearly tripled my money. I went rummaging yesterday and ended up with a computer parts score that was probably less than stunning.

I had been rummaging about 2 hours on Sat late morn/noon in the larger city of my metro. Over 2 hours and I start to reach my limit of dealing with rummages and traffic.

I came across a small rummage being run by 3 gals chowing down on a meat & cheese platter. There was what ended to be 6 pc towers and a box of assorted electronic stuff. The pcs all looked to be partials and they had $5 marked on each one. I told them I was interested but there was no way I could scrap these towers and make any money at $5 bucks a piece. The gal who had brought them knew nothing about electronics, the stuff was her husband’s, but she really didn’t want to take them home either. I gave her my name and phone number and said maybe she should call her husband. I bought the box of assorted electronics for $3 (they wanted 50 cents a piece on the stuff—see listed below) which they sort of hemmed and hawed about—I probably still paid too much.

I went to a few more rummages in the general area and about 15 minutes later get a call from her saying her husband was willing to sell all 6 (claimed 2 were complete) for $15. I should have countered with $12 but I was hot and tired and said yes.
Here’s what the stuff looked like when I got home:







The wifey was working at the hospital and hates seeing new computer towers stack up so I broke them down as fast as I could go (getting better at it) and here is the yield:

4 mother boards, I thought they were all small socket but it appears that 2 were low-grade large socket AMD 462s.
2 “game” boards or whatever those cards are to the right of the mobs.
3 DVD drives, 4 3.5 inch floppy drives
2 hard drives
4 power supplies
4 sets of ribbon
Took 2 lbs. of Al heat sinks off of mob & fans, probably another 2/3 lb. of Al from hds
62 lbs. of light steel without counting metal from ps and assorted drives.







Using ewasted’s price sheet as a guide and what my non-ferrous guy gives for Alum and #2 insulated, and steel at 2 cents a pound, I think I’m a buck or so over my cost. Any additional profit would be from the boards out of the hds, dvds, and floppy drives. Live and learn I guess, at least I probably didn’t go into the hole unless I get less than $3 for what was in the electronics box. That included:

Apex digital TV converter, an older Radio Shack digital am/fm weather tuner (maybe have some ebay value). Kodak easy share printer doc (sort of heavy for its size), D-Link DI-604 router, a Aiwa portable speaker, Radio Shack uhf/vhf indoor tv antenna, 2005 Radica Super Sonic Gold game control (maybe have some ebay value), RCA tv antenna, and ½ pound of assorted adapters/cords.

I will try to spend less cash for stuff next time!!!

Did you try to power on the towers before scrapping? Did you check the parts for resellable items? Even if you don't ebay, I sell a LOT of computer parts locally. Even power supplies and dvd burners have a market if you have the time...

Scrappah- My mileage when I'm rummaging for re-sale items or scrap is put down on my taxes as business expenses for my micro-business. I take whatever the IRS standard deduction is, last year I think it was 55 cents a mile. I'm like a Midwestern farmer (most of them) and discount my labor. Is there an opportunity cost lost? Sure. I could probably get a part-time job with my kid at the local bedroom town pizza place but I enjoy the flexibility of starting, quitting, and how time I want to work per "shift" from home on some hobby coin. Besides, there's the side "thrill" of never knowing what I'm going to find at a garage sale. Gives me a bit of fix for my sub-surface gambling streak.

ScrappinRed- No, I didn't power any of them on. I still have the power supplies intact so maybe I can try those as a group or something. I don't know how big your metro is (larger places obviously have more opportunities) but I don't think ordinary computer parts have great resale around here. I picked up a dozen+ cd.dvd drives from a guy in a small town that's on the way to my bro's places a winter or so ago. He had them listed for free for nearly a week until I took them. I sold a 5 1/4 inch floppy to a guy on ebay. The rest had no interest on there. I didn't try to sell them locally because they had been free but I'll never know. The 2 1/2 pounds of memory along with assorted boards and stuff I got recently from a guy on craigslist that had it up for 3 days or more. I guess he had 1 guy pick up some stuff but only 2 interested people ended up showing up. I did pick up a cool Scythe Ninja cpu cooler for free on craigslist the guy had up a couple of days along with some multi-media case. I ended up selling the cpu cooler to a guy in the UK on ebay, the only bidder. I'm not that into computers so not networked in with the local computing crowd. I'm sure they do some wheeling and dealing on their own.

diggydiggy- You have to have the space to sit on parts. If I had a garage or out building that the wifey never had to enter, sure, I might sit on some larger parts waiting for the right buyer. But I don't at this point so I choose more domestic tranquility than potential down the road profit...

Originally Posted by Scrappah

It it's something you have fun doing go for it ! (It's not always about the money.) You just never know, sometimes you're out there with the intention of doing one thing and it leads into something else. Life is full of all sorts of opportunities that you could never have anticipated. If you weren't out and about you might ever discover what might be waiting out there for you.

The computer parts are a bit iffy. Definitely wouldn't recommend sitting on them for very long because the technology is advancing so rapidly. The market is changing every few months. If you've got something on the shelf it's probably losing value with every month that passes.

For example: You would think that 4 gb DDR-3 12,800 memory chips would be in pretty good demand on the used parts market because they're fairly current. The thing is that one of the major retailers of memory is selling them new for a little less than what you would pay for them used on e-bay.

Top of the line core 2 E-8600 processors have dropped significantly in the last year because the trend for refurbs is to use a quad.

The top of the line core 2 Quad Q9650 has dropped by roughly 30% in the past month because it's being rendered obsolete by the newer i-series processors.

These are top of the line parts that you will probably never even see in the consumer grade towers that have been put out to pasture at the yard sales & flea markets.

Even the Windows 10 upgrade seems to be having an effect. A lot of people that were buying new computers only kept them for two or three years. When the next new operating system came out they went out and bought it because they wanted the latest features. With the free upgrade to ten there's no longer any reason to replace their computer and the availability of scrap is diminishing.

Again ... not complaining ...half the fun is in trying to stay ahead of the curve.

I'm actually having better luck lately with older parts. Not fancy, nothing vintage, just older working parts for people who want to keep their current machines. Basic 350-400 watt power supplies, IDE (yes IDE) dvd burners, PC2 1gb ram sticks, and low level pcix graphics cards. Not getting rich, but several buyers wanting to buy lots of parts at a time. Even had someone local buy all my usb keyboards and mice recently at decent prices. Problem was I had just scrapped about 50 of them.

It's hit or miss for sure, but personally here have just had a lot of people looking for basic, low level, working parts...