How's my prices?

So I'm basically going to buy from scrapyards with these prices.

$2.00 Motherboards Mixed Socket (Large and Small Socket)
$1.30 Small Socket Foreign Boards
$2.10 Finger Board Trimmed/Devalued
$3.30 Finger Boards
$3.30 Dual Socket Server Boards - Large Socket
$2.30 Dual Socket Server Boards - Small Socket
$2.00 to 5.00+ Telecom (Paid on Sort)
$2.16 CD/DVD Boards

HIGH VALUE PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARDS 350
PRICE/LB MATERIAL
$4.00 RAMBUS (Memory with METAL Enclosure)
$6.86 Hard Drive Boards
$7.10 Cell Phone Boards CLEAN (please remove excess Plastic, Steel, Aluminum and Battery)
$10.20 Gold Memory
$5.10 Silver/Tin Memory
$40.00 Gold Fingers (Pricing is for quality cut trim. Little to no Green, otherwise deduction)
$8.25 Slot Processor

OTHER PRECIOUS METAL ITEMS
PRICE/LB MATERIAL
$0.80 Gold Connectors
$3.50 Cell Phones w/o battery



CPUs (Must be Sorted)
PRICE/LB MATERIAL
$77.00 Intel 386 and 486
$56.00 Motorola
$56.00 Pentium Pro Gold Caps
$30.00 Cyrix/IBM/VIA Gold Cap
$22.00 Pentium Ceramic
$19.00 AMD Ceramic Clean (without Al. Cap)
$20.00 Black Fiber CPU
$10.00 Green/Brown Fiber without Heatsink
$4.48 Green Fiber with Heatsink - Pins
$3.15 Green Fiber with Heatsink - Pinless

COMPUTER/SERVER PARTS
PRICE/LB MATERIAL
$0.60 Hard Drives Complete
$0.30 Hard Drives w/o Boards
$0.20 Power Supply w/ Wire
$0.18 Power Supply w/o Wire
$0.10 Mixed Floppy/CD/DVD Drives

OTHER ITEMS
PRICE/LB MATERIAL
$0.60 Laptops Complete
$0.55 Incomplete laptops (Must have Motherboard)
$0.18 AC Adapter w/ Wire
$0.10 AC Adapter w/o Wire
$0.50 Mixed Computer Wire
$3.00 [per UNIT] Whole DESKTOP LCD, Complete With Base - No screen bleeding, gouges, Cracks, Cut cables

Some differences are 30% some 10% and some just from the top of my head. Will I make money on this? I have some yards interested. Are my prices too low or too high?

Rick, Are you shipping or hand delivering because at a 10% profit margin, then add shipping, you're cutting it close.

Why not start at 40-50% of a buyer's pricing and leave yourself some wiggle room? The value is still there for the yard, unless they're selling to a refiner. and it give you some room to offer "Bonuses" to large volume sellers. Not to mention it minimizes you initial out of pocket cash...

just my opinion....(and I've been buying local and shipping to ewasted for about 2 years)......Your prices are a little to high...........Remember your costs....shipping, boxes, tape, gas, storage....etc.............the best way to learn is to make mistakes but when buying from yards you must really inspect the material as they don't know or don't care and will mix good with bad..........If you want any advice you can feel free to PM me and I'll let you know from my mistakes etc..........You also must compensate for the fact that most yards will not take time to remove batteries, small heatsinks etc and this can get time consuming when sorting gaylords bought at yards.........

To add to already great advise, I find it much easier to raise prices rather than reduce them later(another vote for lower pricing). Mike.

{Why not start at 40-50% of a buyer's pricing and leave yourself some wiggle room?}Then if/when they say well I already get $xx.xx for this this and this, but everything else looks good, you've locked in a lot of material at a cheaper price, and you still have room to negotiate on the rest. You can look like a nice guy and offer to take a hit on the other items, to secure their business, all the well knowing how much room you have. Plus it gives you more wiggle room to NOT have to lower your agreed prices if Gold keeps dropping. You can lock in a set price for say 120-180 days at a time.

{The value is still there for the yard, unless they're selling to a refiner. and it give you some room to offer "Bonuses" to large volume sellers. Not to mention it minimizes you initial out of pocket cash...} If your yards are selling to a refiner, then they're cutting out the middleman, and you probably don't have a chance in buying from them anyways. For those yards that don't have someone to buy electronic scrap, and you're going to be their sole supplier...buy offering initially lower buy prices, you enable yourself to say "It's March and we're offering $xx.xx instead of $xx.xx on these 3 items this month". Or We're giving an extra 10% in April for EarthDay. Or more $$ to simply take donuts to your yards as a thank you. PLUS you can buy more for less cash out of pocket making you more money!

I fear you are setting a bad trend or price precedent with those prices. Yard owners are by and large a hard nosed bunch and have their own hot line community system, they know and talk to each other on a day to day basis, just like we do.

I have dealt with yards trying to buy e scrap. most times it is a no go. When it does happen all of the above is true.

example been dealing with one yard for 2 years. they are stuck on $1 per lb for gaylords of mixed mother boards no finger cards ram or hd boards they know the value and where to sell them for premium price. The boards are mixed with .10 low grade boards. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around paying $1 for .10 worth of boards.

they estimate 30% low grade so it is probably closer to 40 or 50% . I've done the math.
The average Gaylord is 600 lbs mixed boards. at 60% medium and hi grade you sre looking at 360 lb of med and Hi grade and 240 lbs of problem low grade. You then have to check every board for al cu ect, and I gurantee you will have to rework every board. There will be no CPUs, they know what those are too.

I pay $600 for the Gaylord deduct 240 lbs for low grade I know have 360 Hi and med grade. I hasve the cost of transporting them to my facility. say min $50 per box. In stead of $1 per lb my good boards now cost me $1.2520 +.14 per lb for transportation bringing it to $1.39.

Now I have the work to do sooo, unless you do it all your self your looking at labor cost which is ? an unknown. I don't like unknown or hidden costs. If you are going to do it your self you are looking at a week per box. and your boards are not worth $2.40 half or more will be mid grade or foreign boards. so that brings you down to around $2 per lb. Shipping cost Min .20 now your down to $1.80 for boards you pay $2 for and there will be other hidden costs that always crop un, broken tools, wore out gloves etc. Now you are only loosing about .50 per lb, plus a he** of a lot of work.

You want to be at a price where you can just buy not have to mess with them and be + .50 per lb.

I once bought a Gaylord of boards in a small town yard for $2 when MBs were bringing near $4 per lb. When I got there a week later to pick them up the owner had mixed in low grade and I noticed the CPUs and finger cards in a box behind his desk in the office.

Simply look at what has already happened in the market. Un educated (in the business) people (the general public) in 2 years have caused a shift in the market from paying to have e-scrap hauled off to a level here they want $10 for a junk comp worth 8to $12 per in scrap.

Please think long and hard and get every angle figured out before you jump out there with that kind of price. We will all pay the price for a big mistake. Just my .02 based on experience and history.

I don't know a single scrapyard with that many board categories, so unless you plan on spending about 5 hours each time sorting the material in front of them... and educating them in the process again on how to cut you out, you might want a simplified pricelist

Matt and Rick, use the "kiss" method. The yards have enough to keep track of without another 15-18 grades of ewaste also.
The kiss method is "keep it simple stupid". I just bought about 70 lb of "low grade" for .10lb.which my yard was happy to get rid of.
I cherry pick out the xformers, heat sinks, and any misc. wires and copper bearing items. I'm going to sell them for .18lb not to mention a half dozen cell phone boards, a hard drive and a half dozen double green boards worth ?? maybe .50-1.00lb. all mixed in with what I bought. My sheet I hand out to regulars is only about 5 items long, and the detailed one (for computer stores) is 18 items.

Kind of like Forrest Gump with the box of chocolates, never know what your gonna get. I'd buy those low grade all day long at that price if their not already cherry picked.

Here's some "cherries" down in the bottom of the barrel of low grade I acquired.

pretty good topic.........When I buy from a yard it is usually just dumb luck.......I see computers laying around and of course I ask........Closed mouth does not get fed........Last month bought approx $225 worth of processors/ram for around $130.........all because I opened my mouth and the lady behind the counter brought out a bucket.......Left a card but of course no call back (I know they have tons of ewaste in the back).........Will probably haul a load through there and see whats shaking when I have time........OH WELL GOOD LUCK

Originally Posted by happyisthealero

Olddude is right read everything he has said analyze it think about it and re-read it again and again. I don't pay for e-scrap motherboards unless it is already broken down and in large amounts like 50-100lbs. I don't pay for anything else processors, ram, low-mid grade, printers etc... Mainly because I don't feel like costing it out, and dealing with oz and grams at this point.

Do yourself a favor and just start by accepting e-waste then see where you feel comfortable with buying what items and where to set the prices at. In other words, your time, labor, and expenses. Time is a huge factor, I already work full time 50-60 a week and enjoy running my business on the side, just something to think about before you jump into yours have a back up plan. Labor what are you worth? I started out at thinking I was worth 10$ an hour. Your wage will grow depending on how much you and how hard you want to work for that dollar, and when you work for yourself and you have nothing else going on besides what your doing now. I would work really hard going out to business's talking with them about what you can do and offer them,advertise!!! When you reach the point where your paying yourself $20.00an hour then it is time to hire someone else to break it all down, and you can continue on advertise your business to make more money Expenses will come equipment isn't cheap. I will be working on purchasing large equipment in the future.


I dont think I covered everything there is to know, I kind of lost focus my daughter is distracting me by running around the house...

I understand why you don't buy processors etc but the profit margin on these items is much higher.......For example to make it simple unless someone is real particular or educated in ewaste I lump all green processors into one pile and all gold caps into another..........everyone deals with mboards so prices are much more competitive......I make more off finger cards, telcom, and processors than I do anything else

ScraperRick I buy tens of thousands of pounds from scrap yards each month. Your prices are spot on ...What a lot of the guys that commented on here don't realize is that this is a long term relationship your looking to develop. Why do we assume that scrap yard owners are willing to just blindly trust your prices?We sure as hell check their prices and make sure they are giving us every last penny they can.
If your not shipping out 65 lb parcels for your loads and using Gaylord box loads in semis and ltl carriers then you need volume to get your cost to ship down to 2-4 cents a lb. You need volume to do this and the scrap yards are a steady source of it each month, so you can work off of a tight margin and make it up on volume and freight cost.
Everyday a new one of us opens up a e waste business and the competition for the same amount of accounts get tighter. Why would you leave yourself vulnerable to a competitor to come in and blow your price out of the water?
I am starting to expand upward into the North Florida and Panhandle area due to some fortunate opportunities I have developed. I already have trailer loads coming in from Jacksonville and Panama City and customers driving from areas in between. I can buy from them because my margin formula I have developed over the last year and half has worked. Im in the process of having a presence in Tennessee(not your area Mikeinreco)
I disagree that its easier to raise prices than lower them. To me its easier to just give a proper price based on volume.Trust me, its not hard to lower a price when the market demands it. Every yard in all aspects of scrap do it every day

In summary good prices Rick, if you have a good relationship with your yards it would be very hard for someone like me to come in and convince them to change for just a few cents more.
PS: your price list is just a template of another buyer's .. If it was mine I would respectfully ask you to develop your own style of one to some extent but then again im a jerk sometimes lol
Hope this added a different view of things

PPS:I need to add that I have developed a relationship with all these yards where I can get there mixed boxes and sort them and pay them properly for each item. You can do that when you have strong prices on each item. I do not buy as a mixed load price and never will. But have never had to walk away from a deal because they insisted it be bought that way.

Originally Posted by URBANERECYCLING

ScraperRick I buy tens of thousands of pounds from scrap yards each month. Your prices are spot on ...What a lot of the guys that commented on here don't realize is that this is a long term relationship your looking to develop. Why do we assume that scrap yard owners are willing to just blindly trust your prices?We sure as hell check their prices and make sure they are giving us every last penny they can.
If your not shipping out 65 lb parcels for your loads and using Gaylord box loads in semis and ltl carriers then you need volume to get your cost to ship down to 2-4 cents a lb. You need volume to do this and the scrap yards are a steady source of it each month, so you can work off of a tight margin and make it up on volume and freight cost.
Everyday a new one of us opens up a e waste business and the competition for the same amount of accounts get tighter. Why would you leave yourself vulnerable to a competitor to come in and blow your price out of the water?
I am starting to expand upward into the North Florida and Panhandle area due to some fortunate opportunities I have developed. I already have trailer loads coming in from Jacksonville and Panama City and customers driving from areas in between. I can buy from them because my margin formula I have developed over the last year and half has worked. Im in the process of having a presence in Tennessee(not your area Mikeinreco)
I disagree that its easier to raise prices than lower them. To me its easier to just give a proper price based on volume.Trust me, its not hard to lower a price when the market demands it. Every yard in all aspects of scrap do it every day

In summary good prices Rick, if you have a good relationship with your yards it would be very hard for someone like me to come in and convince them to change for just a few cents more.
PS: your price list is just a template of .. If it was mine I would respectfully ask you to develop your own style of one to some extent but then again im a jerk sometimes lol
Hope this added a different view of things

You had me nervous!!!!........I'm just a squirrel trying to get a nut....Your like Wal-Mart coming in taking over my maw and paw store (LOL)....just messing with you man