I'm working through a very similar scenario with my yard (in very slow motion- no deals yet).

My yard will not let me cherrypick the goodies and take them home for $0.20/lb. They're smarter than that.

My yard has the opportunity to sell whole machines to a local refinery/aggregator for $0.25/lb. If you assume most machines (except the puny little Dells) run about 25 pounds, each machine is worth $6.25 to the yard. How much are they worth to *you*? I dunno. Given my small volumes and shipping costs I've found it difficult to get much more than $7 or $8 per computer as pure scrap- you can get undoubtedly get more if you re-sell certain components or refurbish the machines themselves, but that adds at least another couple layers of complexity and time to the operation (and, in my case, the machines at the yard have been sitting out in the open getting rained on, peed on (at least that what they smelled like) and dust blown in them since their arrival. I'm none too sure of their re-sale value.

Say you can get $8 per and in your situation you can buy them for $5 ($0.20 x 25). That nets you $3. How fast can you take one of these apart? How much is your time worth? If you can strip 5 machines an hour, then $15/hr doesn't sound bad at all. If you have all the time in the world, then $3 is $3 and who cares?

Lastly, be careful what you buy from the yard- out of 10 machines I examined one had the motherboard and processor removed and one was completely gutted and re-filled with power supplies! As Erewen notes above, take your time and pick and chose what you want to take home!

good luck, and cheers,
tbg