Sample Phones

Originally Posted by shendog

I find a lot of phones at garage sales. I know they are all different in size and weight, but wanted to get a general rule of what it may be worth to pay for them. About how many do you need to make a pound? I paid 50 cents each for 2 today.

I'm fairly new to scrapping but am learning alot from reading posts here at SMF and through personal experience. I usually don't pay more than $.25-$.50 a piece for the phones unless they work. Working phones, I'll post on CL or a local Yard Sale group on Facebook for $20-30. I'll ask the person selling the phone for the phone chargers if they have them (small copper or transformer bonus), and hope the phones all have batteries, (Lithium Ion batteries are running around $1.10 ATM). Getting phones with the SD cards is a good bonus also (gold plating). Cell phones are smaller and easier to manage than Computers and Laptops. I like going to the local Flea Markets (we have 5 Flea Markets within 20 miles of my house) because someone always has cell phones. Today, I picked up 10 phones at one local Flea Market all came with batteries, 2 had cell phone household chargers and 2 had SD cards for $5. I invested $6.99 on Amazon (free shipping) a couple of weeks ago for one of those kits that has all the bits to take different types of cell phones apart. The boards inside of the phones are usually heavily gold plated and the phones all have keyboard mylars with Silver. It takes about 5-7 phones with batteries to make a pound. It depends on the phone. Motorola I680's, for example, are heavier because they're made more rugged for construction workers while Nokia, Samsung, Kyocera, LG phones are lighter. The older non flip-phones ( the ones that look like your household cordless telephone) are, of course, heavier than your newer smartphones, etc. Alot of variables but 5-7 phones with batteries to make a pound seems to be the average, I've found.