Help I need Advice from Professionals!

Although the help i need i will have to wait for now. Just kidding! Anyhow, I am collecting e waste for a fundraiser for my little sisters synchronized ice skating team and I have been busting my hump running around everywhere picking up donations from people on CL, jumping out of my car whenever i happen to see a free tv or the likes out on the curb, and walking into random local businesses and making new friends. I just found out yesterday that the team is only going to get $0.05/lb for it. A little discouraged, i started thinking i am sure that most of this stuff is worth more than that! This money is supposed to help get them to the National Competition in Boston MA this year and it's on the opposite side of the US from us! Can anyone or everyone give me their opinion on if it would be worth it to dismantle some of these items and go else where or should i just suck it up and deal because it would be more trouble than help. Here is a brief list of what i have collected: 11 towers, 13 flat screen monitors/tvs. 12 old monitors/tvs, 5 fax machines, 3 big copiers, some game consoles, 3 or 4 laptops, 3 satelite boxes, and i'm sure a few other things here and there. What should I do? Please help!

To start with you are getting ripped off for the most part.

Read some of the info in this electronic recycling section, but to start with, diassemble all of the towers and seperate the parts. When you are left with the carcass, it will go for somewhere around 10 cents a pound at your local steel recycling center.

If you find the buyer's section towards the top of the forum you will find some vendors that buy e-waste that participate on this forum. They all come highly recomended. It is well worth the shipping price to get this stuff to them. We are talking dollars per pound rather than cents on many of these items.

Since you are doing this to raise some money for the kids, just keep asking away in this thread, but please do some reading of some of the other threads.

The flat screen monitors are good, but stear clear of the old CRT, they may be a huge hastle for you.

If I end up having to ship the parts off do you think it will still be worth it? I have yet to see anyone that is even in the same state as i am let alone located near me. I will save the CRTs for the event then and let them deal with them. Thanks again!!

best thing to do is go in the yellow pages and look for metal recycling company's or google that with you area code.

Take a look at this link. This is boardsort. I am not recomending selling to boardsort, but it is a good reference. I actually recomend selling these parts to a forum member.

http://boardsort.com/payout.php

Here is some great reading and an intro on computer scrapping and identification. http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/showt...identification

I will check back for questions from you later.

Originally Posted by Julie

If I end up having to ship the parts off do you think it will still be worth it? I have yet to see anyone that is even in the same state as i am let alone located near me. I will save the CRTs for the event then and let them deal with them. Thanks again!!

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it only takes a few minutes to tear down a tower.

Julie, what part of CA are you in? There might be members on this forum that are close enough to help you out.

for what you are trying to do, you need to maximize , time space, and effort and get the maximum return. that said. If it were me I would concintrate on computers and satalite components. towers and boxes in particular. they will produce the bigist percentage of quick selable scrap, and the most profitable. Tvs monitors and other like items are much less profitable, a bigger mess, harder to scrap, and produce residual scrap that is neither profitable nor easy to get rid of.

if you were to send a note home with all the kids about what you are doing, and ask for old computer towers and satalite boxes you will be amaised at how many there are in the closet, the garage and attic.

every one here will be glad to help you break them down for maximum profit. and rapid return of $.

if you need other ideas for this type fundraiser PM me. glad to help.

Just a thought. You might want to flea-market/yard sale the heavy monitors and TV's as there is only about 4-6 bucks worth of scrap metal in them and you could probably get more if they are working. Even at $5 bucks a pop, you've saved tearing them down and shipping them. As for the game systems, sell them on ebay as "for parts" or "used", should bring you higher than scrap value. Try craigslist for the laptops first, maybe as a lot. Rip apart the computers and the other cable boxes, bunch them together and send them to one of our buyers here.

I am not a "professional", nor do I have much to add. Just wanted to say I am glad you came to us to determine how to maximize your profits, versus cashing in then coming on here and learning/telling us how hard you got reamed. No one likes to see others lose money. You are in good hands here. Good luck.


Btw, if you have someone that will pay you .5/lb for tv's, do that. Break the rest down.

Game consoles might net you more money through Gazelle.com if they are not too old and they are functional. It only takes a minute or two on their site and you will know if it is worth dealing with them. Gazelle.com will pay for shipping. Good luck.

Thanks for that web site makes sense why people are drilling certain CL ads so hard

Originally Posted by Kris Kringle

I wouldn't say all the E-Waste buyers on the Forum come recommended. Some have only one or 2 posts and has never been back to the Forum.

You have EasyRecycle, ComputerScrapper, PartTimeScrapper, EWasted that are the ones so far that has Feed Back from Forum Members.

Yes. I stand corrected. I should have said to look for the ones that come recommended. Thank you.

Also, some may still have those computers for fear of identity theft. Offer to remove the hard drive and return it to them. That solves that. Even better if you can pull the board of the back of the hard drive before returning as they fetch $10 a pound or so.

Just another member here who may not have as much insight to offer as some of the more experienced, but you're in the right place. I'm glad you took the time to introduce before posting you at least do some homework. ;-) j/k. If you decide to break down pc towers, i'd advise to invest in a torx screw driver with multiple sizes. I know for a fact that they sell them at lowe's...or any other home improvement store...and cheap. Second, keep a magnet handy...you can get some really good ones from the hard drive...and third, i saw someone post about game console. Maybe i missed it or maybe they were just speculating, but if you have happened upon these you can sell them on ebay. Good luck!

Welcome Julie. Well, we've given you a lot of homework ! I hope you don't feel overwhelmed. I've been on the forum almost a year and I feel like I've been back to college. I look forward to hearing about your progress.

I just took apart 12 monitors and made $45 and if you collected the high grade boards, memory sticks, processors, check out boardsort.com or other companies like them and Im sure you will make way more than .05 lbs that's what low grade boards go for maybe a little more.

Hello and Thank you all for your responses! I am working at getting the permission to try using an alternate method than the event for the computer towers and the satellite boxes. It's too late in the game to disrupt the whole event but that wasn't my intention. I have been asking a the person that i report to for this all morning for the opportunity to at least try this route just for the items above (unless there are any others that i should try to include...). I offered to swap out the computers for other electronics that can be used in the event so that way my plan won't take away from the amount that is raised should it happen to fail. I just have faith that it is worth a try. I think that she will be ok with the swap option so i am going to take a look at the links that parrothead posted earlier (thanks again by the way) until i am able to figure out what i am really working with. I proposed it as a sort of challenge as well- the event doesn't pay off until 8 weeks after it happens and i told my superior to give me that time to see what i could do. I am really supposed to be actually working right now so I will check in again as soon as I can. Thank you all very much again!!