Hey there, I've been lurking the forums for a while and finally decided to register a little while ago. I hail from the beautiful state of Vermont, where the hills are almost as plentiful as the snow :)
I'm not exactly new to scrapping, I've helped buddies of mine many times throughout the years with their (mostly ferrous) loads, scrapping old cars in particular, though that's not really my "thing." I'm more into the electronics and non-ferrous side of it, which can be hard to come by in these parts. VT has some pretty strict laws when it comes to E-waste in particular, for example it's illegal for scrapyards and dumps to accept Ewaste, and for institutions (colleges, recycling centers, etc) to sell or give me theirs. I can receive Ewaste from individuals, however. The state wants it all to themselves, they even charge citizens to dispose of PCs and monitors and such, so they get to double dip even :(
Anyways, a month or so ago I was helping my old man clean up his stash of goodies, several old PCs from the 90s and a bunch of PCI cards/RAM. He used to teach a computer hardware class at the community college, so he had a decent stash. It wasn't a ton, about 5 or 6 full PCs and a couple boxes of random stuff. In the process of dismantling and sorting all this stuff, it kind of inspired me to get back into working with computers. I used to be big into it when I was a teenager, but as I hit my 20s (I'm 28 now) and had to work a 9-5 job (carpentry mostly) it kind of faded.
So, here I am :) I'm going to make my first shipment of EWaste within the next week probably, I've yet to weigh what I've got but if I had to guess I have about 20 lbs of mobo, 10-12 lbs of finger cards, maybe 2 lbs RAM, various CPUs (including a couple double gold cap Pentiums :), and a few lbs of other boards I need to check up on. Not to mention a couple dozen hard drives, CD/Floppy, and a good 30+ lbs of wire and connectors.
I've definitely caught the scrapper bug, I find myself scanning sides of the roads everywhere I drive for free piles and yard sales, and asking everyone I know if they have junk PCs or electronics taking up space. My best score so far was a guy who owns an antique store that does house clears on the side, he had a bunch of "junk" outside his store for dirt cheap/free. Most of it was indeed junk, but after talking to him a bit he hooked me up with 3 complete towers, 5 satellite receivers, a box full of keyboards/mice/wire, and a gigantic monitor for $2 and a cigarette :) I didn't really want the monitor, but it was why I got the deal. "Take the monitor PLEASE and it's all yours for 2 bucks" was pretty much how it went.
I'm getting a big longwinded so I'll stop at this point, looking forward to learning as much as I can about the business and maybe even stepping it up above a hobby/side-job if I don't get tired of it, eventually. I've already gained a lot of knowledge from browsing the forums, thanks a lot! It's made a huge difference in how I view the whole scene. Hopefully I didn't show up too late, seems the "worthwhile" PCs are getting harder and harder to find. My dream is to find a nice 486 that still works, for pure nostalgia value. It's what I grew up with, and learned how to use a computer with. Plus it brings back a memory of when I lived on campus at a college as a tyke (yup, single parent program, was there from the ages 4-8), and I saw a MOUNTAIN of 386/486 computers just stacked up in a huge dumpster, probably a good 100 of them total. They had just upgraded, and were just tossing the whole lot! Now THAT would have been a nice score.
OK I'm done!
