Possible Better E-Waste Prices on Ebay

[foobar]

I've found lately that you can get better prices on some E-Waste through selling it on Ebay, even after paying the Ebay fees and shipping costs. This works best for small heavy items, such as CPU's.

Let me give an actual example:
I filled up a large flat rate box with 59 pounds of painless CPU's. Current buyers would pay about 4.50 a pound for these. That would be $265.50 for a local drop off and 250 if mailed. I sold the same box for $370 on Ebay with free shipping. It cost roughly $15 to ship, and I had 15% in fees between Ebay and PayPal. That's a price of $300 net on the box, or an increase of $35-$50 depending on whether you ship or drive in your items.

I almost have a large flat rate box full of green fiber CPUs with the caps and pins (mostly socket 478). I'm estimating it's going to come in at 50 pounds, and will bring an at least an additional $75 by selling to Ebay.



I realize not everyone may have these kinds of quantities for CPU's. However, for smaller items I think it's worth doing some numbers to see make sure you get the most for your money.

[KzScrapper]

Yes, quite a few folks on here have discovered that.

[unitsngold]

The light went on. Just one of many ways to maximize your profits.

[AuburnEwaste]

I have had decent luck selling cpu's on ebay, however the person who bought those is hoping to cover the extra cost by finding working units in your lot. I would caution you to not expect that good a return on other styles of cpu. Most of the time you will probably get slightly more than if shipping to an ewaste buyer and cover your shipping cost.

[matador]

Agreed. Most people want to turn salvage stuff into working stuff. When a Pentium 4 can be bought on eBay for less than $3 for tested/warrantied one anyways, I don't really know why they want to take the risk. They can't be using that many more Pentium 4s, can they???

Who knows?

[ryanw]

You can get some surprising prices for things on ebay. I just sold about 7 lbs LCD boards for about $9/lb...amazing.

[Phantoms001]

I have thought about it and almost listed 15# of RAM on ebay, but you are taking a big risk. You will find some members turn sour on Ebay when they get cheated. It happens.

You say you send me 59# of CPUs, I say its not as described and only weighs 39#. I get 20# of CPUs and my money back. Nothing you are going to be able to do. Ebay will side with the buyer.

You are making a few dollars more but I sleep much better at night sending it to a buyer here. I usually try to stay away from large $$$ items on ebay and only list what I can afford to lose if you run into a scam.

[Sirscrapalot]

An excellent resource, despite my personal views on them.

As others posted above, you'll find quite a few folks resell there. Whether it's for you or not only time can decide. As with other things, study up on it via the forum here an such an then see how it works for you. You may find you love it like some, deal with it like others, or just plain all around hate it like some folks. Then you have folks like me, who did well enough, got annoyed with changes, red tape, fee's, etc an decided to stop using them. Time will see which group you fall into.

Good luck with it, an again despite my personal views, I hope to hear it was successful for you.

Sirscrapalot - Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend. - Theophrastus

[foobar]

I don't know, all styles of cpus go for more per pound than ewaste buyers. I can't say why people buy at that price. Maybe for others they pull the pins and sell those at a profit. I look at sold listings to find a trend inorice per pound, and do the math to find the breakeven price where I would make just as much as selling directly. I think the math is going to work for more than one lot. and if no one bids, then I can always sell it elsewhere

[webuyselltradestuff]

Actually Matador there are a TON of regular P4's still out there...I get them CONSISTENTLY from business machines (ie they are rarely replaced as they just don't need alot of horsepower to work just fine). I have about 50 form the last batch I did that are 3-3.4ghz (ie JUST slow enough not to be able to be sent to one of our buyers on here for testing and more than scrap $$). I did check Ebay yesterday and I CAN get more than scrap for these...especially since I will say "these are UNTESTED (so not warranties) BUT pulled from machines that were in production due to company upgrades". AGAIN I WILL NOT off any warranty NOR returns to insulate myself from a return, but should get more than scrap...probably 2x-3x since current scrap value has these are .21 EACH minus shipping...but I should get $.50-$1 each, not pay shipping and I have a business acct so about 10% in fees.

You can REALLY sell most lower end scrap ewaste items for more than scrap on there from my research. I part out all my server stuff and will be selling my older Xeon's (again not tested but pulled from production) for a couple $$ each.

Again EACH to their own as many do not like Ebay...I just have a hate/hate relationship with them....I know what I am getting BUT I USE them like a champ...I have my policies posted on every listing. I have had to go to bat on a couple of cases on non working cell phones, but I have won so far because of my policies, descriptions AND knowing this one little fact....if you send someone something like a broken cell or laptop for instance and they TAKE IT APART (which they have to do to examine it)...DOING THAT makes the item ineligible for buyer protection (was told that by an Ebay rep on a cell phone dispute)....SO for anyone having that issue, ask in your response if they took the item apart...or when you speak with Ebay mention that...hey didn't they take the item apart? I can't be held to guarantee something they could have damaged. You win, no bad feedback. I do that to keep the people out that just want to buy and try to return...then they get blocked from my auctions. Either way, I have won with that but YMMV. I also post VERY conspicuously in my listings I am showing you ACTUAL pics and full description base don what I know and that NO WARRANTIES or RETURNS will be accepted on parts items.

Good luck and happy selling!

[parrothead]

Keep in mind that when selling on e-bay that packages over $250 require a signature. Just a tip that many don't know. Pretty cheap I believe.

[matador]

Actually Matador there are a TON of regular P4's still out there...I get them CONSISTENTLY from business machines. I have about 50 form the last batch. I did check Ebay yesterday and I CAN get more than scrap for these.

That's what I find interesting. I have the same circumstances (Mostly). I have about 50-100 P4 systems ready for me to process. I wonder who is buying these? Everybody seems to have TONS of them.

Are yours the LGA 775 Pentium 4 or the PGA 478 ones???

I must say that I'm impressed by the eBay Terms and Conditions that you posted in the other thread. Do you mind if I use it as inspiration to redo parts of mine?

eBay is one strange nut to crack!

[webuyselltradestuff]

Matador - sure feel free to use/modify the terms I have.

Mine most of min e are actually the pinless LGA 775. Granted I have some of each, but I have been seeing more of the 775's. I think they sell for about .75-$1 each form what I remember on Ebay in bulk lots which is cool as it takes about 21 I think to make a pound....so instead of scrap at $4.50-5/lb...you should be able to sell ones pulled from production machines but maybe not tested for $10-15/lb I am betting....I am putting my lot up this weekend along with some pinned Xeon's from some production servers (so they should test fine). We will see how they do I guess....anything over $9-10/lb makes setting them aside worth it I guess...ie another bin LOL

[matador]

Thanks on the terms! I'll be re-writing mine this week.

I got it- I was thinking that you were talking about the older 478 style P4s. I can actually see people using the 775s. I can still sell OptiPlex GX620s, and a lot of them had the P4 chips (Some had the Pent. D chips).

Now, as for a socket 478 being usable, that's another issue entirely. I'm starting to get more 775s than 478s, but the 478s are still coming in bulk. We're a poorer area, so a lot of people are just replacing their XP machines, and a lot of those XP machines are the older ones.

Socket 462 forever! Right???

[webuyselltradestuff]

Matador - Yep I was a rabid AMD fan back in the day....they had the better chips...but ones the dual cores came and beyond (granted Intel also really did some illegal stuff to keep them out of the market), Intel's chips just outpaced them by leaps an bounds. I currently run an i7-3770K Ivy Bridge Quad-Core 3.5GHz w/ 8mb cache....not a bad chip since I custom built my machine (has really some KILLER hardware in it).

Yeah I actually have been seeing both versions, but the pinned ones are a PITA...cone you bend a pin, no guarantee it will test...and I tend to pull them quickly...but might start pulling a bit more carefully....depends on what my research shows. You just have to be so careful with pinned chips unless you have the plastic chip holders....and I am getting xeon's in my servers at least...but those are from a hospital and some other businesses. Consumer machines definitely are still XP/vista mainly (the scrap ones)...but I am betting we will see the 1ast set of win7 machines pretty soon.

[Fubar701]

I personally dont like selling scrap items on ebay but... I did a local school pickup last week, one item was a apple mac Book 13.3" sold it as parts or repair on ebay for $250. I like selling whole systems on ebay rather than scrap parts. and honestly if it is listed as parts or repair and you get signature delivery, ebay almost always sides with the seller in these auctions.