So...looking back...

I've been meaning to type this up for awhile...

I may or may not be the one who original said "What are YOU going to do when the computers run out?".

I got laughed at.

How's that working for you folks now?



I've been watching silver lately. Where is everyone at who bought at 40's?

I really want to call out certain people. But I won't

Except the guy in Iowa. He hasn't posted forever. Where are you?

IF the computers ever run out I'll find another way to make money on the side.

I have been buying more computers and servers than I can process working full time on them. When they run out I'll still have a bunch to scrap.

Have people been having a hard time finding computers to scrap?

Originally Posted by 520

I have been buying more computers and servers than I can process working full time on them. When they run out I'll still have a bunch to scrap.

Have people been having a hard time finding computers to scrap?

I haven't had a hard time finding computers. You just have to know where to look.

In the middle of processing a load of 30000lbs of towers and servers. When full truckloads of computers stop coming in will be in touch. Until then....lol

Originally Posted by JJinLV

In the middle of processing a load of 30,000lbs of towers and servers.

Where on earth do you acquire THAT much?! The largest computer lot auctions up here are 50 - 200 units, mostly junk school units.

For me personally, it's not possible to make a business out of E-scrap. There are not enough sources. Most of the E-junk I do manage to get is lower end items no one else wants to touch, and is not worth the time to break down. *looks at pile* Not much in the way of old stuff.
Does anyone have the information on a cheap and efficient way to recover copper from junk boards ? I'm betting that is going to be the next 'big thing' once most of the gold is gone.

tbh haven't been tracking recovery on towers with any detail lately but will perhaps do a little recovery this week and see how the math is holding up. Did notice a few weeks back that the newer-ish CD/DVD drives with the very small SATA boards don't justify a buy price much over iron and have been finding lots of them in towers. It's not exactly the same as the small socket colored mobos but is yet another example of how miniaturization is changing ewaste returns and lowering the value of towers. Still find them to be *very* much worth the time to pursue, especially since I spend a fair amount of time working towards greater than scrap value recovery from them.

Originally Posted by RLS0812

Where on earth do you acquire THAT much?! The largest computer lot auctions up here are 50 - 200 units, mostly junk school units.

For me personally, it's not possible to make a business out of E-scrap. There are not enough sources. Most of the E-junk I do manage to get is lower end items no one else wants to touch, and is not worth the time to break down. *looks at pile* Not much in the way of old stuff.
Does anyone have the information on a cheap and efficient way to recover copper from junk boards ? I'm betting that is going to be the next 'big thing' once most of the gold is gone.

Lots of places accumulate it in large quantities, especially trash removal firms/dumps, some scrapyards, large school districts and more. Am guessing (but not sure) that accumulating that quantity would be less likely outside of a city.

Originally Posted by RLS0812

Where on earth do you acquire THAT much?! The largest computer lot auctions up here are 50 - 200 units, mostly junk school units.

For me personally, it's not possible to make a business out of E-scrap. There are not enough sources. Most of the E-junk I do manage to get is lower end items no one else wants to touch, and is not worth the time to break down. *looks at pile* Not much in the way of old stuff.
Does anyone have the information on a cheap and efficient way to recover copper from junk boards ? I'm betting that is going to be the next 'big thing' once most of the gold is gone.

I was looking at 20 pallet lots of towers and servers no more than 150 miles from you. There was 15+ lots of 20 pallets in each lot being sold.

Originally Posted by JJinLV

tbh haven't been tracking recovery on towers with any detail lately but will perhaps do a little recovery this week and see how the math is holding up. Did notice a few weeks back that the newer-ish CD/DVD drives with the very small SATA boards don't justify a buy price much over iron and have been finding lots of them in towers. It's not exactly the same as the small socket colored mobos but is yet another example of how miniaturization is changing ewaste returns and lowering the value of towers. Still find them to be *very* much worth the time to pursue, especially since I spend a fair amount of time working towards greater than scrap value recovery from them.

I just got a few hundred towers this week with those CD/DVD drives you're talking about. Kinda bummed because recently I have been lucking out with getting a lot of older drives with decent sized boards. Won't even waste my time pulling the boards on these ones.

Originally Posted by 520

I just got a few hundred towers this week with those CD/DVD drives you're talking about. Kinda bummed because recently I have been lucking out with getting a lot of older drives with decent sized boards. Won't even waste my time pulling the boards on these ones.

If it's in a tower am scrapping will still do it for sure. Including removing the drive from the tower we're only talking maybe 15 seconds at the slow end. But buying already removed drives (which have even lower labor costs, looking at maybe 3-5 seconds per drive) for much higher than iron will eventually be untenable bc of the massive decrease in board size which also affects the price of towers. The upshot is that they're more likely to work and selling tested drives is easy enough.

There's been a significant drop in available towers in this area. They've dropped off by 75% compared to three years ago.

If you think about it ... there's a certain time lag between the time that they were bought new and the time that they reach end of life and enter the waste stream.

There's also been a growth & evolution in computer technology. The manufacturers have been under constant pressure to do more with less and they've gotten very good at it !

What we're seeing now ... in terms of smaller cd/dvd boards & smaller HDD boards is a reflection of changes they put into place 10 - 15 years ago. The value recovered from a scrap tower will continue to diminish as time wears on.

The next wave of change back then was the transition from towers to laptops. They have significantly less recovery value.

The next wave after that was the transition from laptops to tablets & hand held devices. They have little or no recovery value.

Complex ideas .... but it's not hard to see where this is headed. Just map out the different waves of change that occurred in the past and think forward to when these products will enter the waste stream.

That will be the future of ewaste.

Another way you could map it out is by pc operating system. There was a large wave of XP's in years past. That transitioned into win Vista. That's what i see more commonly these days.

A lot of the Win 7's and above are still in service.

The whole free upgrade to Win 10 kept a lot of the older machines in service so that's created a pause in towers entering the waste stream.

There was a fairly significant shift from towers to laptops in the Vista years.

Tablets & handhelds became popular in Win 8 and beyond ?

Because I live about 30 minutes outside of downtown Atlanta, it makes finding larger loads of e-waste harder. I know there are major companies around me that have contracts with schools and corporate offices to remove their scrap. I get most of my stuff on the home-front. That being from residential pick-ups and some small businesses. Yesterday at work I had someone drop off 4 towers that were very old. One of them had a dual large socket motherboard and 4 hard drives. I haven't yet looking into the other ones, but I know they are all large socket and have hard drives. Wish I could get more loads like that more often!

I found 2 towers in the trash last week

I ran across an interesting dual socket a couple of weeks ago. It was dated sometime around 1999 just as they were doing the transition from large socket to Pentium slot processors.

This motherboard was set up with a Pentium 3 slot but it had an accommodation for a large socket. You could use either one.

Just a curiosity from the past.