best way to price servers?

How do you guys come up with what you pay per server. The very few I have dealt with I just open them up and add up what I see, then make an offer. Is there a better way or any general rules. I have avoided them in auctions because I cant open them up. Also I would like to start going after some of the larger tech companies in my area and would like to be more comfortable in pricing them before contacting them.

Someone posted on here that they were buying them for 10 bucks each.

This question has been asked a couple of times. It this case things have changed over the last year.

1. servers like computers are using cheeper methods and materials.

2. The internet has taught warehouse men and others in charge of excess servers there is easy value in servers. The easy parts are being stripped in many cases, memory , CPUs heat sinks and finger cards.
so be very careful if your paying for them. The scrap value of the servers we get from two large corp has dropped over 50% over the last year.

The easier they are to get into the more that will be missing. That would be Dells (all models) HPs U1 thru U4, Sun all models. IBM, Citrix, Cisco are a little harder to get to so chances are they are mostly un touched.

Our profit per server 2 years ago was about .59 per lb this year less then .25.

Thanks guys for the responses.

depends on whether you are just going to scrap them or if you plan on selling parts, or refurbing. also depends on your competition. You can turn almost any server into $25 just in scrap if you know what you're looking at. You can also turn a lot of them into 200+ if you know the sellable parts. If you want a dead set scrap based price, base it off of size. and whether it's a rack mount server or a stand alone. Usually the only variable is whether or not the hard drives are in there still or not, most places pull them before they sell a server.

sight unseen servers for me are pretty cut and dry if i am purchasing them.

rack mount 1U (19" wide x 1.75" tall, depth varies from 22" - 34") I would offer $8
rack mount 2U (19" wide x 3.5" tall, depth 22"-36") I would offer $11 (major difference here is if the hard drives are in, you will find about 8, instead of 2-4 in a 1U, as well as beefier heat sinks and more fans, boards are generally the same size and not really a factor with RAM or processors

stand alone compact case (looks like a plain jane desktop's bigger brother) - $7-$9
stand alone standard case (looks like the same brother on steroids) - $10-$12

the prices can go up from there based on your confidence in resale value, but it's a good place to start if you cannot take a look at anything but the casing.