Eye Opener about Scrappers

[linuxman]

I run a computer business, and have for a very long time. I decided to clean out my repair room last week, and basically dump everything that wasn't new enough to be of any use. Consequently I had quite a bit of stuff on tables out on the front porch.

During the course of the next couple of days as I was adding stuff to give away, I had three different scrappers come by and begin grabbing stacks of items and putting them in their truck. I asked them to stop because I had some people coming out who might have a legitimate use for some of the stuff.

To shorten up this story, I had some guys out Saturday, and after they took everything they might use or give to someone else, I had some things left that I took to the local recycle place today.

Here are the prices I received.

Computer boards, any kind, Mainboards, video cards, modems, etc. - $0.50 per pound.

Hard drives, floppy drives, cd-rom drives - $0.10 per pound.

Insulated phone wire, insulated cat 5 wire - $0.95 per pound.

Computer power supplies, and they lumped my two Birdview receivers, and two Primestar receivers - $0.02 per pound.

I didn't have any, but a sign said $0.60 per pound for aluminum cans.

I put this out here, because I know several of you have collected old analog receivers, primestar receivers and others along the way, and some didn't even work.

If I had taken my old receivers apart, the Main boards would have brought $0.50 per pound instead of the two cents a pound I got.

The price paid for aluminum is also the reason aluminum dishes are now being grabbed up by scrappers. They can pull off the aluminum and sell it separately, and then sell the steel for about $0.07 per pound.

I had no idea they would buy computer boards and drives like that. I don't know how many pounds I have thrown or given away over the years. I probably gave away 100 pounds of the stuff between what the scrappers got, and what I gave away on Saturday.

Just thought some of you might like to know.

Fred

 

[swampman]

Thats kind of a sad story Fred. To think these parts which at one time were once part of something special, (gotta love those old pc's of yesteryear), are now reduced to a value of "price per pound".

 

[linuxman]

It was sad.

Some of the parts were new in the box for IBM XT's and PC's. The previous owner of my company had bought them for inventory, and I inherited them when I bought the company 10 years ago, but now they were seriously outdated, and I haven't had a call for any of them in 7 or 8 years.

Others were newer, but we are still talking 486, pentium, PII, PIII, and ISA parts. Too old to keep. Now just scrap.

Fred

 

[Tron]

I saw a documentary on Discovery HD recently that showed how gold is being mined from old motherboards and PCs at an incredible rate. There is apparently a notable amount of gold in most electronic components.

 

[mastermesh]

Don't ever throw away your old printer cartridges either... I found one of those cartridge recycle places that started cropping up all over the place a couple years ago... they paid me 3 bucks per cartridge for each of my old z52 lexmark cartridges! When I had them do that a couple months ago, I had a stockpile of old cartridges since I keep the old ones in ziplock so that I can get as much out of them as possible... When just doing little web printing, and not image printing, I usually turn down the printer settings to use as little ink as possible... once the cartridges start going dry and you see white spots show up on prints, I up the printer settings dpi to the highest possible resolution so that it's spitting out two to three times as much ink as normal per inch... that'll usually get me an extra 100-300 pages of print out of them...

 

[stogie5150]

I am getting to the point that I throw NOTHING away. Never know when you might be able to trade it for something, or sell it for scrap. My wife always calls me a packrat until the day I bring it to the scrap yard, show her the cash,and then take her to the casino....

 

[mastermesh]

I am getting to the point that I throw NOTHING away. Never know when you might be able to trade it for something, or sell it for scrap. My wife always calls me a packrat until the day I bring it to the scrap yard, show her the cash,and then take her to the casino....

Welcome to my world! Actually, if I take my wife to the local cussing-hole (Casino) it's only to go to buffet since I'm the gambler, not her... Although, lately, I've started changing my ways, and now use the money that normally would go in to one arm bandits in playing Entropia Universe. Payouts aren't as great, but you don't lose the money as quickly either... and with some strategy, you can actually come out ahead if you put your mind to it. That's useful since the local casino is only about than 5 blocks from our house, used to be really dangerous on the weekends when she has to work and I'm at home by myself...