what am I missing ?

I have brought this up before, but just cant wrap my mind arround the answer. on the auction sites, surplus computers are now averaging well over $20 ea. something just dosent seem right here. I can barely eak out $12 per comp gross rev. Now I know I have been told many of those computers are refurbished and sent to other countries, but there again that just dosent make sence to me, when you can buy new computers for $250 +. you buy 200 computers for $5000 + 10% ship them to wherever you are referb them pay for that then ship them to wherever and pay for that. what am I missing here ?most of them are missing hard drives at the very least.

Same here...I'm seeing the same thing with newer towers. Was looking at some Dell Optiplex units at a school district sale. By the piece, no guarantees but loaded with win 2000...They're all close to $20 each, if not more by the time the sale ends. On ebay they're selling for about $20 in lots of 25 or 50, so who's buying?

Are they being refurbished and resold overseas?

What's that saying....there's a sucker born every minute.

Sadly they're showing up everywhere. On eBay, online auctions, local auctions, etc.

ya I know I was really just venting. rough week , trying to put this big computer thing together is getting to me I guess. sry.

Originally Posted by IdahoScrapper

What's that saying....there's a sucker born every minute.

Sadly they're showing up everywhere. On eBay, online auctions, local auctions, etc.

Some sucker, told me that "The chips are worth their weight in Gold".....

Originally Posted by ComputerScrapper

I think it is the same reason that buyers on eBay tend to way over pay for electronic scrap....They are simply uninformed and believe that they are going to make a huge profit from stuff that is actually causing them to lose money. I have watched many of the surplus auctions and found people to be paying completely stupid prices for most things, including Pentium 4 towers which are not great when it comes to value.

Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

Most any pentium 4 of higher machine can be sold for about $50 to $100 bucks if its working. Just what I have seen in my local market.

It drives me crazy at auctions trying to decide whether the guy bidding against me is a moron, or has the inside line!

I'm seeing the same thing too here in DC.

I was talking to the guy who manages the warehouse for the surplus site and told him I was getting into electronics recycling.

He told me I had some stiff competition because there is one guy who buys up everything in the area. He owns some kind of shipping company and told me that he ships it directly out of country. He picks up in an 18 wheeler and sends it directly to the docks.

His winning bids are ranging between $20-$40 a piece on towers without harddrives.

I'm pretty sure he has a solid buyer. It's the DC Gov surplus auctions that he's always bidding on and you know that the GOV is always going to have electronics being updated.