Green Motherboards VS. Colored "Chinese" Motherboards

**BohemianLush** · 10-15-2012, 03:23 PM

Thanks for the responses thus far. The reason this question arose is because I was wondering how one of my buyers can afford to pay the same price for all motherboards when virtually every other buyer differentiates between the two. Some of their prices for boards are higher and some are a little lower than other buyers, but for all intensive purposes they all pay the same to a company like mine doing our kind of volume. How do you think that my buyer can still pay such a premium for colored motherboards and come out on top? I'll preface by saying that my buyer is a HUGE worldwide company and e-waste probably doesn't make up half of one percent of their company.

**AuburnEwaste** · 10-15-2012, 03:59 PM

Originally Posted by BohemianLush

How do you think that my buyer can still pay such a premium for colored motherboards and come out on top?

You will not likely get an answer on this, but you hit the nail on the head. It doesn't add up.

**Bear** · 10-15-2012, 04:05 PM

Originally Posted by AuburnEwaste

You will not likely get an answer on this, but you hit the nail on the head. It doesn't add up.

I believe you'll find a number of buyers who list different pricing, 1-green boards, 2- rainbows? and 3 mixed

**PartTimeScrapper** · 10-16-2012, 06:31 AM

Originally Posted by BohemianLush

Thanks for the responses thus far. The reason this question arose is because I was wondering how one of my buyers can afford to pay the same price for all motherboards when virtually every other buyer differentiates between the two. Some of their prices for boards are higher and some are a little lower than other buyers, but for all intensive purposes they all pay the same to a company like mine doing our kind of volume. How do you think that my buyer can still pay such a premium for colored motherboards and come out on top? I'll preface by saying that my buyer is a HUGE worldwide company and e-waste probably doesn't make up half of one percent of their company.

I believe you answered your own question with your original post.

Some of their prices on other commodities are a bit lower, but I figured I can make that up in motherboards.

They are making it up on the other stuff.

**BohemianLush** · 10-17-2012, 08:27 AM

Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

I believe you answered your own question with your original post.

Some of their prices on other commodities are a bit lower, but I figured I can make that up in motherboards.

They are making it up on the other stuff.

Maybe I wasn't clear in the original post...I did a cost analysis. We are coming out waaaaay ahead. When I said they are paying less for some commodities I meant that they are $0.30 lower on finger boards than some other quotes I got. However, we can mix our gold RAM, silver RAM and RAMBUS all together and they pay me $17 a lb.!!! So that alone would offset a miniscule $0.30 a lb.

To be clear we have 10,000 lbs. just in motherboards that we are sorting. If you figure that half are colored and half are green. The rough average that other companies quoted me for green MB's was $4.50 and for colored it was $2.00. That means there is a $2.50 difference in price x 5,000 lbs.= an extra $12,500 we will make off this truckload.

My buyer recycles everything...including plastics. Do you think that the plastic/ferrous/nonferrous content on the board is value that most buyers don't factor in or capitalize on? And if so does it have enough value to justify that price gap?

And just to reiterate...this is a reputable company that I am dealing with, and I have established a good relationship/report with my buyer. Just thought that I would throw that out there before people think that I am some schmuck getting scammed because I actually believe that there is someone out there that would pay $17 a lb. for gold/silver RAM mixed together.

**BohemianLush** · 10-17-2012, 08:44 AM

And it has occurred to me that this company is probably reselling/reusing some of these commodities. For those of y'all that resell some of this stuff...do you really get that much more than scrap value? I guess I can see you could in some ways. We came across a dozen or so video/sound cards still in the box that I looked up and retail for several hundred dollars. However, at this point we aren't looking to start a retail store to sell this stuff. And if we did I would send it to KZBell to sell on consignment!

**PartTimeScrapper** · 10-17-2012, 11:42 AM

Ill give you 2 examples of better than scrap value that you can make right now since we are in the same town. It takes on average 23 sticks of ram to make a pound. I pay $2 for each 1gb stick of ram that would be $46 a pound. Granted thats if they each check out good. Second hard drives. Any hard drive 80gb or more I will pay between $1.50 and $10.00 each. The average hard drive weighs 1.25 pounds and I think the most any buyer on the forum pays for them is $1.10 per pound. So scrap value on whole hard drive is $1.37 on average.