Hi guys,
If you haven't seen any of my other posts yet, my intro thread is here: http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/intro...rom-maine.html and I have made a few other threads since joining.
I have only been scrapping around a month or so - trying to learn what type of business that I want to run. After doing my first few loads and making some profit, spending a lot of time researching the many different types of scrapping options here on the forums, watching as many videos as possible, and talking to several knowledgeable people including Mick - and assessing my situation, I've decided to focus and specialize on e-waste. There are several reasons for this, including; I don't have the funds to get a trailer, the location to store it, I live on the 3rd floor of an apartment building, no consistent assistance for heavy things, freon removal becomes an issue, and a few other reasons that push me away from wanting to do big stuff.
I recently got a 10x15 locker, so I can use that for temporary storage and housing of my electronics as I receive them and prepare to sell/haul them. This is working well already, as I have it nearly full with the stuff I've gotten from my 9-5 job. (Pics are going to be below.) I am in the process of making flyers to post everywhere and business cards to be able to hand out.
The reason I'm posting this thread is specifically to get thoughts an opinions from people who focus primarily on e-waste. My thoughts are, as of now, not to accept TVs. At least temporarily, the problem of disposing them, and the fact there's an unlimited amount of them (not an unlimited amount of storage), and minimal ROI for time compared to other electronics is also a big reason. If anyone else reading this is in a situation similar to me, do you do this also? Or, is charging at least a small amount something that some people do?
The reason this is a challenge is because I want to advertise on my flyers for free haul away of the electronics. I don't want to specify that I charge on some stuff. Not sure what to do here.
My plan for my flyers is to use the ones that you can rip off at the bottom. Those seem very important since people want to do as little as possible. (like writing down a phone number.) I need to see if business cards charge you more (I've seen the cheap Avery method from Walmart stated here) to imprint on the back location. If so, I might just include the things that I'l pick up on the front. I plan on having "Ayotte's Electronic Recycling" with a recycling logo, my contact info, and then "List of items I recycle on the back"if there isn't an additional charge.
Starting me off on the right foot - I have an arrangement with a "trash guy" for the self storage I recently got with. He removes/collects stuff when people move out/dont pay their fees. He's going to give me all the electronics I want.
In addition to this, me and my bud got the IT/Finance department to sign off on giving us a bunch of the electronics in our "Graveyard".
This is the first batch.
This is the rest of what I got.
All of these are coming (hopefully) soon, but the IT department wouldn't let me take them until they have removed all of the hard drives. Sucks that I can't get them full, but I'm still extremely grateful and appreciative to eventually have my hands on the rest. There's another 10 or so older towers that aren't pictured here.
Does anyone know what these three are? I can't quite tell, and we were told to only take monitors/printers at this time, so I couldn't touch them.
Pretty awesome, huh?
The last thing that's up in the Graveyard are all these phones. Do you think this is a little jackpot, or are these very little profit?
I understand this has been discussed before, but I can't find a general consensus about a) do you spend the time to remove this extra to get the copper, and b) what you find the easiest most reliable way. I'm sorry if I missed a link and if someone will sarcastically provide one for me!
I cannot get this thing apart for the life of me. Am I missing something? Or this is a hammer-job?
Initially I didn't understand why keyboards were sought after. After reading a bunch of threads here, I did find that the plastic sheet is coated with silver. With that being said, do you keep these in a pile all to their own?
In addition to that, I have a few other things that I wanted to make sure I was doing correctly.
DVD drives are always worth taking apart (quickly) for the boards, correct? Their boards are high grade.
CDS and floppys are my choice whether or not to pull apart? It seems like these would be better left to sell as whole.
On the ends of the copper wire ribbons, do I take off the attachment and bin these? My research leans to yes.
I'm still trying to learn about the different grades of boards. Initially I thought all mobos are green, and high, but I see that some are brown. A little confused here.
Thank you for your time reading this. I'm very sorry if some of my questions have obvious answers. I try to use the search function recently, but some key words are very difficult because of their overuse.
I'm really excited to start my business up. I believe I may even have a buyer for all of my boards, locally, too.
Thanks again,
-James
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