Made my first buy at a scrapyard today

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08-26-2017, 03:49 PM
JJinLV

Made my first buy at a scrapyard today

No yards in Las Vegas buy e-waste apart from motherboards. But they still end up with quite a bit. So asked at my regular yard a week and a half ago if they had stuff for sale. Lo and behold they have a lot. Told me to check back this weekend. So I went today expecting to buy whatever was available but, without prompting, the guy told me to go through and pick what I wanted and we'd make a price. I was pleasantly surprised by that! Happy to take microwave, tv, and oven boards when scrapping myself or when free but would be very reluctant to pay for them as I'd lose money from the shipping unless in truly massive volumes. The yard got them at slightly over tin price (they paid between .04-05/lb). After setting aside a pile that ended up being 91lbs, offered double cast iron price. They accepted it but I'd forgotten how low cast is out here. I meant to offer about .20/lb so left an extra $5 at the window when I paid for a total of $18.95 and a dozen donuts for what follows below. Please forgive the pictures. Hastily semi-organized into piles in the back of my truck in a scorching sun.

A few sticks of RAM, one little hard drive, some boards from video poker machines, couple of CPUs and more.

https://i.imgur.com/3uqtcT9.jpg

Some wireless cards and more

https://i.imgur.com/2TNmYAD.jpg

No idea how to grade it. This was a "well that's neat" buy

https://i.imgur.com/ShNuVSW.jpg

Some logic boards from video poker machines and more

https://i.imgur.com/bLmhIVN.jpg

Not sure about the boards with the Intel chip on them. There's about 8 of them and they look like motherboards lite.

https://i.imgur.com/2q1VM4J.jpg

A big stack of these which look like the side boards from poker machines but am not positive

https://i.imgur.com/FZuewyw.jpg

And finally the motherlode, a nice pile of motherboards. At a quick glance a few had RAM and about half had CPUs. Several are older.

https://i.imgur.com/mVlXm3j.jpg

Except for unintentionally lowballing I think I did pretty well but let me know if I didn't please. These will go out with a shipment hovering at around 1 ton next week to ewasted. Next time am gonna offer a little more for nicer boards and try and make the math work to take the low-grade boards too. I know they'd prefer to sell to me first if I can take it all off their hands but am not sure I have the capacity yet to take on the quantity necessary to make the numbers work. But the big news from this was that the yard fields a lot of calls every week from businesses wanting to get rid of their IT trash and old computers. The yard, like all locally, doesn't buy them. So they're gonna start referring folks to me! I am pretty hyped about that. So this has been a good Saturday for me so far and I'm gonna go do some laps in the pool to celebrate!
08-26-2017, 04:28 PM
Sirscrapalot

I've learned a couple things from your recent posts JJ...

You find some neat stuff.

An Vegas is dusty.

It's like here...except I've got sandbar sand, an you've got landlocked sand. ;)

Until you live at the beach or in the desert, you will never understand the feeling of finding sand....every freaking where.

EVERYWHERE!

Sirscrapalot - EVERYWHERE!
08-26-2017, 04:59 PM
JJinLV

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirscrapalot

I've learned a couple things from your recent posts JJ...

You find some neat stuff.

An Vegas is dusty.

It's like here...except I've got sandbar sand, an you've got landlocked sand. ;)

Until you live at the beach or in the desert, you will never understand the feeling of finding sand....every freaking where.

EVERYWHERE!

Sirscrapalot - EVERYWHERE!

You're not kidding! I think there's a sandbar forming in my pool!
08-26-2017, 07:56 PM
Maverickhawk

Great post! Thanks for the pictures. Not a lot of casinos around here, but you have me thinking of more doors to check on.
08-26-2017, 08:17 PM
armygreywolf

Vegas is definitely dusty. When we went to CES in January, going out to get our rental was pretty windy and much like Iraq...dusty. I also drove around the day after arrival and located all the scrap yards. You've got a gold mine on your hands for sure, especially with all the scrapped out digital signage. We should definitely talk when you get your hands on a big load.
08-26-2017, 09:17 PM
CapitalRecovery

I learned some thing from this post
What happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas. It get shipped to OHIOOOOO.
Nice job.
08-26-2017, 09:18 PM
Sirscrapalot

I'll take my sand and tourists/tourons over Iraq sand an bullets. ;)

AGW is now a member of the "I can ***** about sand" club. He gets our pain.

Sirscrapalot - Fan of the ArmyGreyWolf
08-26-2017, 09:45 PM
JJinLV

Quote:

Originally Posted by CapitalRecovery

I learned some thing from this post
What happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas. It get shipped to OHIOOOOO.
Nice job.

Lolololololol!
08-26-2017, 10:08 PM
Sirscrapalot

My happy goat worked. Capital is busting jokes!

baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahrifffic.

;)

Sorry for the derail JJ.

I once tried to buy boards from a local yard here. Dude informed me, him an his partner make $3,000(each) a year off them an he wasn't going to sell them to me....

I didn't point out the fact thats pennies compared to what he should be making as a yard paying crappy prices. If your a hobbyist or part-timer...I'm sure thats some good extra pocket change. As a yard tho...I would hope you'd be making 3 or 4x that amount. If not WAY more. I as a one man op do much better then that, an I lack the resources of a yard.

Sometimes you lead the horse to water...an watch it still die of thirst.

Sirscrapalot - Jocularity, jocularity! - Father Mulcahy from M*A*S*H*
08-27-2017, 12:51 AM
eesakiwi

That bottom photo, in the bottom right hand corner there's a Motherboard with a horizontal Purple cylinder with a touch of Green on one end, attached to the board by soldered wires, its about the size of a AA battery.

Its a Battery.... Its a Lithium battery and it might be a solid Lithium/Thionyl Chloride long life battery. (So if you cut it open it may reek of Sulphur and react a bit and get maybe quite hot.
Then, if it gets wet, it may react even more, giving off bubbles and smells and it might even spark and catch fire with pretty Purple/Red flames)

You have to take these off before shipping as its 'Hazardous Goods'.
They look like any other component and its a good example of one for yous to see in its natural habitat.

Nice finds too.
08-27-2017, 04:19 AM
gorven

That was a great purchase and as far as low grade boards it would depend on the volume they had. Get enough weight and price per lb on shipping goes down. Only board that you have picture that is questionable is the LED board alot of times there is little to know value would ask before you ship.
08-27-2017, 04:28 AM
msmoorad

happy for u. just keep them pics coming.
its motivating.
08-27-2017, 10:21 AM
JJinLV

Quote:

Originally Posted by eesakiwi

That bottom photo, in the bottom right hand corner there's a Motherboard with a horizontal Purple cylinder with a touch of Green on one end, attached to the board by soldered wires, its about the size of a AA battery.

Its a Battery.... Its a Lithium battery and it might be a solid Lithium/Thionyl Chloride long life battery. (So if you cut it open it may reek of Sulphur and react a bit and get maybe quite hot.
Then, if it gets wet, it may react even more, giving off bubbles and smells and it might even spark and catch fire with pretty Purple/Red flames)

You have to take these off before shipping as its 'Hazardous Goods'.
They look like any other component and its a good example of one for yous to see in its natural habitat.

Nice finds too.

Thanks for this!
08-27-2017, 10:30 AM
JJinLV

Quote:

Originally Posted by gorven

That was a great purchase and as far as low grade boards it would depend on the volume they had. Get enough weight and price per lb on shipping goes down. Only board that you have picture that is questionable is the LED board alot of times there is little to know value would ask before you ship.

Yeah it didn't look particularly great, wasn't very populated. But it did lool 'neat'. And at the prices we were talking could afford to be wrong about it.

And for sure about the volume. There were about 9lbs of lower grade boards left in that one bin. When buying can't expect to earn more than .22/lb for low grade boards so figure have to get the shipping below .10/lb before it makes sense. I don't currently have the storage space that I could accumulate that kind of volume. Now I don't know exactly what kind of volume would mean that price but I know it would take up a lot of space lol!
08-27-2017, 06:55 PM
CapitalRecovery

Ok so I have a question, when buying computer scrap what would be a fare price? If I was being a middle man to ewasted?
08-27-2017, 07:18 PM
mthomasdev

Quote:

Originally Posted by CapitalRecovery

Ok so I have a question, when buying computer scrap what would be a fare price? If I was being a middle man to ewasted?

Only you can answer that. We don't know your shipping costs or any other costs for that matter.
08-27-2017, 07:19 PM
JJinLV

Quote:

Originally Posted by CapitalRecovery

Ok so I have a question, when buying computer scrap what would be a fare price? If I was being a middle man to ewasted?

Not an expert but that would depend on your goals. Is your goal maximization of profit, mutual benefit, non-economic related at all? My goal is just to get by. So I try to calculate shipping and the amount labor needed to prepare then come up with a price from that. I'm super novice at this though so the limited experience doesn't offer much.