Lap Top Motherboards

I need some guidance please. I just met a guy who fixes and re-sells laptops. I sold him the laptops I had for pretty good pricing. In talking with him, if he comes across a laptop where the motherboard does not work, right now he just throws them out. I mentioned I would by them from him by the pound, but the issue is he says he leaves the motherboard in the laptop itself, he doesn't want to waste his time taking it out. SO my question is: How would i price these? I can't use weight as the laptop weight would still be included. Should I charge by the motherboard, if so what should that be? Or should i charge an incomplete laptop price by the pound, say .25/lb? Any help would be appreciated as this guy goes through 100's of laptops a month. Thank You.

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Originally Posted by junksable

I need some guidance please. I just met a guy who fixes and re-sells laptops. I sold him the laptops I had for pretty good pricing. In talking with him, if he comes across a laptop where the motherboard does not work, right now he just throws them out. I mentioned I would by them from him by the pound, but the issue is he says he leaves the motherboard in the laptop itself, he doesn't want to waste his time taking it out. SO my question is: How would i price these? I can't use weight as the laptop weight would still be included. Should I charge by the motherboard, if so what should that be? Or should i charge an incomplete laptop price by the pound, say .25/lb? Any help would be appreciated as this guy goes through 100's of laptops a month. Thank You.

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Buyers here paying 70 to 80 cents for incomplete. One buyers complete allows some missing items.

Sorry to be pain ... you have to balance that against shipping costs though. It might work out better to break them down. That way you're shipping a value item & not the waste.

On pricing: Can't suggest what you should buy at but maybe take 40 - 50 motherboards and figure out what an average weight per piece would be ?

If you weigh up a single laptop motherboard there isn't a lot of weight there. ( laptops are generally designed to be lightweight so they're easy to carry around. )

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Originally Posted by Scrappah

Sorry to be pain ... you have to balance that against shipping costs though. It might work out better to break them down. That way you're shipping a value item & not the waste.

On pricing: Can't suggest what you should buy at but maybe take 40 - 50 motherboards and figure out what an average weight per piece would be ?

If you weigh up a single laptop motherboard there isn't a lot of weight there. ( laptops are generally designed to be lightweight so they're easy to carry around. )

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Unfortunately i have no boards to weigh, but a good idea. Maybe I can google the weight of a board unless someone already knows?

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Originally Posted by Scrappah

Sorry to be pain ... you have to balance that against shipping costs though. It might work out better to break them down. That way you're shipping a value item & not the waste.

On pricing: Can't suggest what you should buy at but maybe take 40 - 50 motherboards and figure out what an average weight per piece would be ?

If you weigh up a single laptop motherboard there isn't a lot of weight there. ( laptops are generally designed to be lightweight so they're easy to carry around. )

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If your shipping small boxes, then incomplete laptops may not be the way to go. I'm shipping pallets, so cost is a lot lower

sigh....ok laptops can range from 4-15 (really old) pounds...part of that weight is the battery an d you should not have to pay that for the battery...pull them off and offer to take them for free (li ion is worth .40-.90/lb last I checked). that means you will be paying $1-$3.75 each. You will have a motherboard, ram, CPU, hard drive, cd drive and possibly a wifi card in each (assuming they are whole) that are sellable. If you can boot them (and sometimes even if you cant test) the screen can be sold sometimes on Ebay...same with the plug in power supplies (not always), if not the power supplies are scrappable.

Motherboad can weigh 10oz to 1 lb...some a bit more on older ones...ewasted pays a premium on those (something like $3/lb)....now you have some ram, some high value cards/finger boards. You can pull the hard drive board off if an older hard drive and sell it for like $10/lb and then the HD itself as scrap...cr drive for .25/lb (all these figures are about what I get for smaller quantities).

There it is broken down....it can take some time for some to break down and you better have some eyeglass screwdrivers.

See if that make sense for your time to be doing.

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Originally Posted by junksable

I need some guidance please. I just met a guy who fixes and re-sells laptops. I sold him the laptops I had for pretty good pricing. In talking with him, if he comes across a laptop where the motherboard does not work, right now he just throws them out. I mentioned I would by them from him by the pound, but the issue is he says he leaves the motherboard in the laptop itself, he doesn't want to waste his time taking it out. SO my question is: How would i price these? I can't use weight as the laptop weight would still be included. Should I charge by the motherboard, if so what should that be? Or should i charge an incomplete laptop price by the pound, say .25/lb? Any help would be appreciated as this guy goes through 100's of laptops a month. Thank You.

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I'm assuming from your post that this guy is local to you.

If he is throwing the bad laptops away I would try to get them for free. Can't hurt to ask.

I'll admit laptops are some of the last things I want to break down but they aren't that hard.

I sold my laptop mother boards the other day and got 3 dollars a pound for them.

Thank you everyone! I think I now have a direction to go. Hope all have a good 4th, and God Bless America and all of our service men and women!!!!

Let us know how it goes. If you can get them for free, you can't really lose. I'd do what was suggested above- send in 25 laptops of each method to your buyer- 25 incomplete, and 25 motherboard only.

I had a few minutes and was curious so i grabbed an incomplete laptop and ran the numbers. My cost to ship in boxes is about .40/lb.

Incomplete laptop: 3.69 lbs @ .80/lb = 2.95

Shipping : 3.69 lbs @ .40/lb - 1.47

Net profit after expense: 1.48

Net profit per lb: .40 /lb

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Laptop motherboard: .30 lbs@ 3.80/lb 1.14

Shipping: .30 lbs@.40/lb .12

Net profit: ( per mobo) 1.02

Net profit per pound: 3.40
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There's a pretty big difference in net profit per pound between the two. It's all situational though. Shipping costs vary. You have to consider the time involved in breaking down the laptops. Also .... if you're shipping gaylords it might be better to expend as little time & effort with them as possible.

Save up ewaste till you can ship pallets. this cuts shipping roughly in half. laptops add weight to your load quickly, helping you to reach shipping weight faster.

My opinion is laptops are not worth stripping unless you are reselling parts, or are a computer tech that knows where all the screws are.

IF your are a computer tech that can efficiently disassemble laptops, you can make much more per hr repairing laptops that taking them apart for scrap.

It depends on your skills, value of your time, and if you have more profitable work you can do.

I do suggest taking a few apart just to see what its like.