Whirlwind Deal Fell Into My Lap

It started Thursday with a phone call asking if I still buy old electronics. He also mentioned where he was calling from and I recognized the company name. We chatted for a bit and turns out he has some electronics and some other scrap. (I won't mention the name of the company as I am hoping to be a regular e-scrap buyer from them.)

We talked some pricing and then he told me he needed it all gone by Saturday. I was biting my teeth and chomping my nails for about 5 hours until I could get away from work and meet up with him and check out the 2 locations. By then I was in panic mode based on some of the things he was telling me about quantities. I was going to need to get a storage shed and no way I could haul all of it in one day by myself, so I ended up cutting a buddy in on the deal as he has a truck and trailor, and lots of computer background as well.

After meeting with the guy and seeing everything, we ended up on a price of $600. $4 each for towers that could really pass for servers. Quantity 110. $160 for a few loads of steel and aluminum. When all was said and done we added $100 for about a gaylord full of cables and wires including some number 6 copper in the bunch. It was about 8 boxes from small to large with the largest 2 weighing over 100 pounds each.



Now it is Friday. I am just anxious as all get out waiting to get out of work and get ready for the next day. I have half a trailor full of steel and am picking up more right after work. I need to get this all loaded in the trailor and ready for a quick run to the yard to make an empty trailor for the days work. Just for the heck of it, I passed by the place asked if I could grab one of the towers and check it out to better prepare myself for the next day. He let me do that.

I could not wait. I started breaking it down in the parking lot at work. It had 2 copper heat sinks that I had to get at and weigh. I removed them and took them into maintenance and quickly figured out the best way to relieve them of their steel inserts. It was a snap. Each heat sink weighs.....drumroll please............1 pound 14 ounces of bare bright copper for a total of 3 pounds 12 ounces or 3.75 pounds of copper. cha ching! quick math gives me roughly $1000 of copper. I then see that all of the RAM is 1 gig DDR. I know that I have sold 1 gig DDR on Ebay for no less than $10 each and there are 8 of them. I get home and break the whole thing down and scrap value including a 25 pound carcass, a 2.5 pound dual socket motherboard,5 ounces of RAM, and 4 pound power supply(may have forgotten something) scraps out at $25 each unit. I know we are gold now, especially if they all have RAM.

Ended up with a toothache and could not sleep all night. Got up and was at the steel yard at 7:40 only to find out that they do not open until 8. Then cashed out and got a ticket for 6 stinking cents per pound. It dropped from 8.5 2 weeks prior and from 10 2 weeks prior to that. Everyone was grumbling.

Oh, I forgot to mention that after meeting with the guy, we were able to hit the one location today and the other location with the steel next weekend. With that news I scrapped the plans for the storage unit and we were going to process these towers fast and get a load of carcasses to the yard for space.

With 2 trucks and trailors, we were able to do it with just 2 trips and a bunch of stacks in the garage. We decided to throw caution to the wind and go with the plan of breaking down enough to get a load to run to the steel yard, then assess the value of the remaining units and see if they are working and what kind of value they may have beyond scrap. We open them up and only had 2 or 3 without RAM. sweet! We ended up finding 2 different kinds of copper heat sinks. That scared me until I stripped one of the newer type and it was 1 pound 13.5 ounces so we are basically the same on the copper value.

Just got a text from my partner on this deal that the first one he fired up ran perfectly so we will now assess a price on them before scrapping them. We are going to list some at $200 with specs to see if we get a bite, otherwise will not take less that $105 as that is scrap value plus $10 each RAM.

Anybody want to buy 800 sticks of RAM for a discounted $7,000?

So happy, so tired. Keep at it and your whale will come your way as well.

Oh, I had assumed that he found me on Craig's list, but when we were pulling out with the last load I wanted to make sure where he had gotten my number from. He said he had googled it. Then I said, "oh, it must have been my ad on the scrap metal forum." and he said "Yep, that is where it was."

Sweet!!!

Congrats Parrothead!

man i want that lol nice work. FL seems to be picking up on ewaste calls finally.

WOW! What a busy 2 days. After firing up some of these machines. we figured that they would sell for around 80 to 100 dollars each. We can do better by scrapping them at $25 each and taking our time with the RAM at 8 sticks per unit for another $80. So, we currently have about 80 of the units stripped and have been hauling carcasses for crappy steel prices. Tomorrow will be our first non ferrous load with copper heatsinks and insulated wire that should get us our initial investment back. We will be saving a working unit for each of us and commence to selling all"better than scrap value stuff" on e-bay and Craig's list very shortly. And of course all of the motherboards and what not will get sold as well soon after the final stripping.

Here is just one of the highlights that we found in the boxes and boxes of cables. There were some DMI to HDMI. Brand new in the package. I remember buying one at Radio shack a few months ago because I could not wait. It was $13. There was one available on e-bay for 7.99 free shipping, but could not wait. They are now $5 free shipping on e-bay. Well we have 350 of them so I figure we can get a buck a piece for them in lots of 50. That is the plan anyway. Lots of more interesting stuff yet to go through. Stuff that is Cisco brand new in the static free package. Have not even begun to really look into everything yet.

Going to be a wild week or 2.

Very Nice

Well, today we paid for the load with copper and insulated wire. bare bright from the heat sinks was $739 and another $117 in insulated wire. We still have most of the carcasses, 250 pounds of dual socket boards, lots of stuff to sell on e-bay and a few loads of steel and aluminum to get. Will keep updating as we go on.

Still more copper and wire to move, but we are taking a couple day break now that we have our money back.

Originally Posted by scrap1025

Cisco stuff may be $$. What do you have?

Just some little pieces here and there. have not really gone through it yet. Real job is getting in the way.

Originally Posted by DropYoTop

what ddr is the 1gb? i need about 4 of them

Will work on stuff this weekend more and get back with you on all the specs of it.

Well, today we paid for the load with copper and insulated wire. bare bright from the heat sinks was $739 and another $117 in insulated wire.

I guess I'm missing out, I don't remove the bare bright from my heatsinks,,,

badum, bum! rimshot.

About $200 in steel with crappy prices. Every bit of the load is now picked up. We strtipped a bunch of cubicle pieces and ended up with way more aluminum than I thought.

Nice clean extruded at 60 cents a pound today. $375 Sweet. Will keep updating the numbers as they come in. E-bay sales will hopefully start getting listed Sunday at some point.

Originally Posted by scrap1025

Cisco stuff may be $$. What do you have?

Be careful with cisco equipment. Most you can not reset unless you can console into the device. If the previous owner has any custom settings such as vlans or qos tagging ect it might not work for your customer. The only way to reset cisco equipment is to console in and reset it but you must know the enable password. if you dont you are SOL.

Just ran into that today.