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!!!