I've been doing scrapping as a "hobby" for about 1.5 years now and for the last 8-9 months focusing almost exclusively on e-scrap. While reading various threads I realized that many other people went through similar "I used to do X but I don't do this anymore" or "I did not realize that Y is valuable but now I do" evolution. Not sure if we had this type of tread here before but I think it might be valuable for new members to learn about this from more experienced folks to save some time and aggravation.
Anyway, a bit of my history, in a more or less chronological order:
- Started scrapping by collecting hundreds of alum cans and other scrap from wooded areas near my day job, which have accumulated there for probably 1000 years (yes, I got paid for this scrap, but sometimes I felt like screaming when I saw how much stuff got dumped in the woods!!!)
- Did TVs and CRT monitors for awhile before realizing that they are not worth my time and back pain. Now I just clip the video cable.
- At some point realized that computers are a lot more valuable than, say, other household electronics so started focusing on that
- Used to take apart desktop power supplies until I realized that (i) scrap output is too low and (ii) dust output is way too high
- Used to diligently cut off all connectors from all cables and throwing the connectors into the shred pile before realizing there's gold in some of them and I don't have to cut off the others before I take my insulated wire to a local scrap yard
- Had done a lot of collecting of old computers via Freecycle WANTED ads. Still do a bit of that but has been able to acquire a couple of clients which give me a lot at once, instead of driving around from one location to another picking up one or two desktops. Still, the freecycle thing was valuable since some of the contacts came from there. Others from the Items Wanted section of CL.
- Used to collect vacuum cleaners etc from dumpsters and curbs. Rarely do it now since I can't easily dispose of what I don't need, which is 90% of a vacuum.
- Still undecided on whether I'm better of selling bigger harddrives on eBay versus simply scrapping them. Just sold about 10 of them, one of which had to be refunded since it was not fully functional on arrival, even though I packed it real well and stuck "fragile" labels all over the package. Since probably the older is the drive the more likely it is to have a problem of some sort, dealing with these "bad apples" maybe too much hassle. Or not -- can't quite figure out yet, not enough selling history.
- Still trying to figure out a good balance between scrapping and work/quality family life/kids' activities/other hobbies/rest of my life...
