Hard drive boards from the scrapyard

Hi all! Was buying boards at a local yard yesterday and saw about 100 dented or punched hard drives in a bin. To the yard they were dirty aluminum and the price they offered for them 22¢/lb. That's a totally fair price but doesn't leave any room for the shipping cost to e-waste buyers all the way from here. So buying whole hard drives to sell as is seems out of the realm of possibility when the yards are buying them at dirty aluminum prices. They need to make a profit and the math just doesn't work for me to redistribute them and make a couple of bucks. So finished buying everything else (including about 10lbs of finger boards at 75¢/lb!) then asked the yard buyer if I could come back today and find a quiet spot and pop the boards off and buy them for $4/lb. He double-checked to make sure I actually said $4/lb lol - remember Las Vegas scrapyards really don't mess with e-waste at all - and then agreed.

So I came back this morning with my screwdriver and spent a little under two hours taking the boards off. Ended up with eight lbs which with the higher-end buyers means about $64-75 depending on where you go. Even taking into the cost a Flat Rate Medium Priority Mail I could go right to the post office and make a nice little profit. The yard kept something like 98% of the dirty aluminum mass and made a few bucks. I got what I wanted and made around $20/hr for a couple of hours work. Happy with this result! There is another local yard with a bin with about 3-400 hard drives. Gonna see if they're down for it as well.