What happened to the buyers of electronic scrap? Where did they go?

Honestly .... there really isn't much money to be made scrapping. You maybe make a few dollars per hour after expenses. It's pretty labor intensive. None of the scrappers that i know and see on a regular basis are doing very well. You need something else as your primary income source. It might be Social Security or one of the entitlement programs. Maybe your prime gig is refurbishing computers or maybe you do youtube videos on how to scrap.The point is that it's really not about the work ethic. If you have the work ethic ... you could make much better money working at a fast food joint than you could at scrapping.

There's been a pretty big paradigm shift from small to large over the years. It's the industrial process and the economy of scale. The value is there in the material but you need to do it on a large scale in order to extract it profitably.



Us scrappers ... we're a dying breed. The forum here used to be much more active but there aren't many of us around anymore. There are more people leaving the trade than there are younger hands coming in to replace them.

It's sort of like the old time cobblers. If you lived in the 1960's ... you might remember that every town had at least one shoe repair shop. Things changed in the 1970's and footwear was made in factories overseas where the labor was cheap. Shoes became a disposable item. No more need for the shoe repair man anymore and they slowly faded away and were forgotten.

Anyhow ... i get that you are frustrated that you can't find a buyer in the Atlanta area. The best answer i could offer is that times have changed.

Thank you for your reply, hills, but it not a frustration thing with me in finding a buyer in Atlanta so much as understanding what is currently going on in the recycling industry concerning electronic scrap. I have been able to draw some good conclusions with the comments from you and others here on the forum.
I do agree with you that a lot of people have quit scrapping in recent years for better income some other way but that is changing also. The other ways of making better income are now under increasing duress with tariffs, government crackdown on waste, inflation and other pressures. You are right about a lot of items being disposable now but people are also getting fed up with that end result. Product quality has gotten too bad overall and people are now expecting better products. The recent increasing hostility toward Chinese products indicates that. I do believe that in the future people will return to scrapping as metal prices continue to increase. No. 1 scrap copper hit $4.06 in my area today. That's a new record. I appreciate your comments again. I'll continue to be the optimist.