Do NOT throw away plastic gears from printers copiers or faxes !!!

There are tons of plastic gears inside of printers, copiers and the like, and they are actually worth money.

A quick Ebay search revealed that plastic gears sell for $0.05 - $0.06 each if sold in lots of 50 or more ( 1 listing had over 1,000 sold lots - another one over 500 - many have over 75 sold lots ) !!!

Looking at the listings, certain gears can sell for even more ! Stepper gears are going for over $0.20 each if sold in lots !

Heck, even plastic "pulleys" are selling !

If you had the time, it would be possible to put together "plastic parts kits" that go for over $20 each

It looks like all these sets are new on ebay. 50 gears for $2-$4. I don't think to many are buy used gears plus it would take an hour to dismantle a printer to pull the gears to keep them intact. Thanks but ill stick to throwing the printers into the shred pile.

funny, I've always kept these for myself in the event that I'd want to use them for something. I always keep weird stuff like that in my "Backyard Engineering" bucket

The shafts would have to have some use as 'barstock' for home machinists too.

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Originally Posted by Tincankeith

It looks like all these sets are new on ebay. 50 gears for $2-$4. I don't think to many are buy used gears plus it would take an hour to dismantle a printer to pull the gears to keep them intact. Thanks but ill stick to throwing the printers into the shred pile.

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im with him on this one^^
its not worth it
we could all be doing more profitable things with our time.

the issue with it is the time involved...$4 - fees nets me right at $3.60 plus a bit on shipping...we will call it $4. Packaging and listing alone will take 15 min NOT including the pulling time....let's just say 30 min on a GOOD day total. That makes me a whopping $8/hr...even if we doubled it only $16/hr BEFORE expenses. Pretty hard to turn a profit on that unless you have VERY little overhead.

Just is not worth the time and EFFORT involved in pulling those **** things...I pull the easily resellables like paper drawers (depending on space and value), cartridge and boards...rest goes in the shred as printers are one of the lowest ROI in terms of time vs $$$ in electronics. Far more money to be made in just about ANY other electronic items except keyboards because of all the screws...it is almost comical how many they think they need to have on any of these printers (keyboards as well actually)....the engineer should be punched in the junk until he passes out that designed most of these.

I only save the gears that fall off while I'm taking them apart, I don't try to save them. I do usually try to save the belt if it only takes a few seconds