Ewaste?? Was it the next big thing? - Page 4

I'd look into the Part Time Scrapper option, or....



Selling the motherboards on eBay as a CPU + Motherboard bundle. I've been able to fetch $40 for some Core 2 Duo combos. That was a few months ago, but I'd look.

I'm personally greedy. I never want to scrap a dual core machine. PTS would pay more than scrap (Do you have RAM or HDDs you could send to offset costs?), and eBay may offer more on the parts than you'd think.

I don't scrap, though. I got a lot of about 100 generic Core 2 Duo towers in about 2 years ago. They're worthless on eBay, but I have been selling them locally. I have about 15 left. Much better than scrap

Plus, I now have room in the basement for more stuff!

Originally Posted by armygreywolf

Electromagnetic radiation is highly dependent on impedance, source frequency, temperature and materials composition so yes as far as PMs are concerned there is a VERY specific socket standard.

And while I don't doubt i series boards return even less metals, let me be kind of a devil's advocate here... SIPI has been taken on aggressively by other nationwide companies and let's have a moment of honesty here...I'm not real likely to believe anything SIPI says as complete truth because it's in their business interests to buy as low as possible. The i series boards could be filled with electrolytics and guess what there's two flatpacks (particularly the northbridge and two BGAs on there that tell me the board will never be "worthless". THat is excluding a land grid array with an engineering standard for it's composition and electocoatings. Even if grinding and refining cost lets say 60 cents on the pound (which it does not in a large operation). you will never ever lose money on a motherboard unless your competition is outbuying you. I also want to point out that the board has 6 to 11 layers of copper trace accounting for up to 30% of the overall "bare board" weight, do the math on that and even if you had to trash every part of the motherboard it's still going to have value.

The info regarding the i series boards come from a yard owner who does refining. I am not very inclined to trust Sipi either as my associates get butt pillaged if they don't send a representative to monitor their material in processing. However the 30% copper by weight in the board is a loss unless you have sub $ 0.80/lb processing charge in your refinery contract which is very generous and I'm jealous if you do lol. Reason being you usually only get paid 95% on your total copper plus an additional charge per Troy oz. on top of this you don't get comex spot price but about 0.20-0.30 below comex per pound. Doing all this math you'll see your paying more to have the copper processed than its ultimate value on the 1/3 of a pound or so per motherboard. I see the future heading towards depopulating motherboards and aggregating the valuable chips and refining the blank "smelter" boards out of country where operations actually do pay for them where as in the US no one will refine them. The copper is however necessary to create a "dore" which is a copper bar that contains X amount of precious metals, if there isn't enough copper the refinery gets you again because they will add copper to the mix to complete your "dore" at the charges I described before. If I remember correctly you have an interesting deal with a refinery where they give you metal back and not a bank account. All the refineries in the east side of the U.S. That I'd talk to would charge extra to give you back metals. If not for you then again, I am very jealous.

I used Geib Refining Corp in Rhode Island and they had about 10 settlement options including metal return. This was around 10 years ago and I had them do 3 gaylords of telcom wire spring relay contacts and it was mostly palladium. I just had them send me a check so I don't know the terms on the metal return option.

Mmarro89 all I can say is "WHEW" and thanks.Thanks for reminding me of how little I know about E-waste still! I'll keep educating myself.

"butt pillaged" has me checking my backside routinely today and hoping that thought fades!

I'd list the processor model, too. It's probably the E7500.

In the listing wizard, I'd also add it in the "Motherboards and CPUs" combo section. eBay will let you have it in both places for the same listing Do not make a separate listing- you could oversell yourself

I also like to mention that it's been tested by "Our trained computer technicians". It's a little bit of bragging, but it seems to work well.

Other than that, I'd just wait and see what happens. The OptiPlex 380 should be a common enough model where people want parts. The 745/755 are the more desirable ones, though.

If you have multiples, I'd do a Dutch auction for a couple. I did that with three laptops. The man bought them all, and then asked if I had more. You never know.

The 380 is newer, but the 745 is 360 larger. That's like two 380s almost, right?

People have just settled on the 745/755 it seems.

People are strange....

Optiplex motherboards are a hard sell on ebay. these machines are so plentiful and cheap, it is usually easier/cheaper to just get a whole new computer. Parts from the mass produced business class models do not move well for me either. More interchangeable stuff like RAM and CPU's do well.

I'd be inclined to offer the system as a whole, without an OS or HDD. This one sold for $130 Dell Optiplex 380 Desktop 2 93GHz Core 2 Duo 4GB RAM Windows 7 COA No Hard Drive | eBay

Most won't do that well, but you have the desirable processor. Most of the ones that sold for less had a lesser CPU. I'd make a dutch auction, and sell them that way. If you sold them for say $70 plus shipping (Buy It Now), I bet you'd sell them. It's better than scrap.


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Auburn E-Waste is right. There are OptiPlexes everywhere. Nobody around here bothers to fix them. As a whole, though, they can do well on eBay. Anything else won't sell for the money an OptiPlex will (Except Macs).

Originally Posted by miked

I agree with that statement and we all got to read the term "butt pillaged" which was a highlight for my morning. Mike

Haha thank you gentleman, make you sure pass along due credit when you use one of my finer pieces of vocab.

Originally Posted by mikeinreco

Well I sold one Mboard so far.........The reason why I didn't sell whole units was they were missing memory.....I had around 10 of them and made 5 with 4 gb and easily sold them on CL........The rest were left with no memory........Around 30 bucks on ebay for the memory these needed........I had already easily made profit on these units and I hate paying for this crap twice (once when I buy the lot then once for more parts)........I usually just make as many as I can then scrap the rest.......The price of small socket boards is so low the $10 I cleared on Ebay (after expenses) was much better..........Granted a small victory but it can be done

Ebays been kicking scraps ass lately.

I got ya mike . a truck load of ebay "junk" is worth more than a truckload of steel now