Hello From Nee Hampshire

2 months of e waste scrapping and YouTube videos mixed with lots of research. I barely put the word out and my garage is stacked with computers and monitors, electric motors of all sizes, cables, circuit boards of most grades and copper. Lots of copper. I’ve been on a hunt for my niche now for a while now. I’m 28. I enjoy organizing and sorting. (Could never think of a career that involves organizing that I enjoy). I got into electronics through my job with soldering and repairs and fell in love with scrap and raw materials.

Now for these last two months I’ve been stacking up all sorted materials as best as I can without having made one run to the yard. I found every yard in my area. I called for some prices. I checked out their web sites. and I’m almost ready for my first sale. I have some questions.

1) Can I sell my plastic scrap?
2) What should I do with monitor filters?
3) Are monitor power boards the same as power supplies?
4) Can my snipped cable ends go for dirty brass?
5) Any advice on grading PCB’s. And what yards usually pay for them.
(I just ordered a scale online)


Thank you!

Welcome to the forum from Las Vegas! In order:

1. With sufficient quantity of certain types, yes. You can easily sell ABS and PET-1 and PET-2 types of plastic if you have a truckload quantity of ABS or a bale of PET. Otherwise it's a challenge in most places to sell plastic in relatively small quantities.
2. Trash
3. No but they are the same grade as the board inside the power supply.
4. Depends on your local yard. More likely they'll buy them as low-grade breakage. If it's a gold connector you can save them up and ship them to a buyer for a good price (right around $1ish last I checked)
5. Check out the info pdf you were sent as well as older threads here about grading boards. Plenty of details there. You can always post a picture and ask. Lots of yards just buy them as steel or low grade breakage. Some only have motherboard prices and others pay something roughly competitive with buyers here on the forum. Practice varies wildly between yards even in the same company.

Welcome from Montreal. JJinLV did a great job answering all your questions. The only thing I would add is the yard I sell cable to would buy cable end plugs as aluminum breakage. Not sure what aluminum they see in them, but the price difference is too small with shred price. I just break / remove the brass contacts (and some copper sometimes) using two sets of pliers and throw the balance (the plastic case) on the shred heap.

"Aluminum breakage" is an industry category that more or less means 'shreddable material with a value between compressors and electric motors'. It can mean dirty motors, transmissions and whatever else. The fewer low grade categories a yard has, for example, "power tools" or "ceiling fans" or "garbage disposals", the more expansive the low grade aluminum breakage category tends to be.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JJinLV

Welcome to the forum from Las Vegas! In order:

1. With sufficient quantity of certain types, yes. You can easily sell ABS and PET-1 and PET-2 types of plastic if you have a truckload quantity of ABS or a bale of PET. Otherwise it's a challenge in most places to sell plastic in relatively small quantities.
2. Trash
3. No but they are the same grade as the board inside the power supply.
4. Depends on your local yard. More likely they'll buy them as low-grade breakage. If it's a gold connector you can save them up and ship them to a buyer for a good price (right around $1ish last I checked)
5. Check out the info pdf you were sent as well as older threads here about grading boards. Plenty of details there. You can always post a picture and ask. Lots of yards just buy them as steel or low grade breakage. Some only have motherboard prices and others pay something roughly competitive with buyers here on the forum. Practice varies wildly between yards even in the same company.

---

Thank you for all that. It helps. I’ve found companies that buy plastic. Now I’m starting to think a shredder would be a good idea. I believe buyers prefer shred plastic in bales, but I still need to dive deeper to learn. The shredder would probably save me on the back end of business. The trash. We will see.

I’m going to check out the older threads and that pdf you mentioned. Again thanks for the help!

This is great information. Thank you very much!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by JJinLV

"Aluminum breakage" is an industry category that more or less means 'shreddable material with a value between compressors and electric motors'. It can mean dirty motors, transmissions and whatever else. The fewer low grade categories a yard has, for example, "power tools" or "ceiling fans" or "garbage disposals", the more expansive the low grade aluminum breakage category tends to be.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CopperMiner

Welcome from Montreal. JJinLV did a great job answering all your questions. The only thing I would add is the yard I sell cable to would buy cable end plugs as aluminum breakage. Not sure what aluminum they see in them, but the price difference is too small with shred price. I just break / remove the brass contacts (and some copper sometimes) using two sets of pliers and throw the balance (the plastic case) on the shred heap.

---

Thank you! I watched a video where the guy boiled all his plug ends to soften the rubber and pulled all the brass pieces out with pliers. The copper came out with every one. He claimed it was worth it. You decide. I may try it some day. Lol

"Worth it" implies for economic or personal growth reasons. It's definitely not worth boiling plug ends from an economic perspective - always makes more sense to spend the time sourcing new scrap than cleaning little stuff. And I don't know off-hand what would be more personally edifying than boiling small pieces of rubber to remove even smaller pieces of brass but I'm pretty sure the answer would be: everything