You can check the buyers forum for prices. A lot of us use the same buyer (Don't know if I can mention him or not, but he's easy to find), and he puts his prices up.

I ran an analysis a couple of months ago and came up with this:

Older (Before Pentium 4) machines have about $15 worth of components (NOT including shipping fees)
Newer (Pent. 4 and later) are worth about $12 in parts.

I don't know your area, but out here, I don't pay for computers. I take them for free, but spend on newspaper ads. I'd try to get a few free ones first. Newspaper ads, Craigslist,...

You'll get a few. Take them apart, and send them in for scrap. Just count what you put in the box, and you'll get some pretty accurate numbers.



My $12-15 range seems to apply to almost any desktop I get, though.