First nice sized computer score.

A month ago or better there was an add on Craig's list for a bunch of laptops and towers. I spoke with the guy and was to meet up with him that weekend. I could never get back ahold of him and I just dropped it.

A few days ago, I was checking Craig's list again and a search brought up his old add. I sent off an e-mail and aasked him if he still had the computers. He did, I went and got them, and I paid him $100 for 11 towers and 50 laptops (no hard drives or cords).

tearing them down now. I just finished with the towers and have over 18 pounds of motherboards from them as well as the ram, the cpus, drives and all of the power supplies weigh 3 1/2 pounds each.

While I was tearing down, the neighbor lady brought me another tower. Sweet!

Now to work on the laptops. They are beat to heck and hoping they tear down easy. They are all from the police force.

I know laptops are a pain to disect, but there is an advantage to having 50 of the exact same laptop. By the third one I had it down to under 5 minutes each. Each mother board on these weighs in at just under 1/2 a pound so I will end up with just over 20 more pounds of motherboards.

There was one oddball in there that I fretted with for a good 15 minutes to get it to give up it's goods, glad that one is over.

There is also one panasonic toughbook. I looked on E-bay and these are sellong at $20 or much greater each for repair missing RAM, hard drive, etc. I will probably sell that one for sure.

Now to find my buyer for lithium ion batteries.

its not a CF-51 toughbook by any chance? if it is pm me i need some parts for that model

Well, the one that says toughbook on the top of it is a 28, however, many of the rest of this pile are 51's. They do not say toughbook on them. Did I mess up tearing them apart? I only ripped apart 20 of them so far and have about 30 of them left.

Go ahead and answer me here on that. I will send you a PM with my e-mail

good score, how did the scrappers miss that ad? my luck I would of had 40 replies,,

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Originally Posted by Mechanic688

good score, how did the scrappers miss that ad? my luck I would of had 40 replies,,

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He was holding out for more than scrap value. He was wanting $20 each for the towers when I first talked to him.

Great score, it's good to know it's out there.

OK, here is the deal. I finally got to some that have not all been mangled. The ones I had torn apart up til now had the panel holding down the monitor ripped off. I finally got to some of these that are more complete and these are all toughbooks. I am saving the most complete ones to sell as they are going for parts on E-bay for a darn good price.

Nice score Parrothead.

parrothead you have an email.

Would you say that there's more than $5 worth of stuff in a laptop? I had about 10 I was gonna ship to Easy as-is, but I wanted to make the most money off of them

enjoyed reading about your fine score parrothead. congrats.

No there is not more than $5 in a laptop, unless you get the right chip. My laptops that I got all had green board no metal CPUs in them. 20 or so a pound, but takes a bunch of them to make a pound. These motherboards came in at about a half a pound and the batteries were a solid pound each. I was able to cover my cost and get an extra dollar or so on each laptop. I stand hard on $1 per laptop, and if it is one that is a pain to get apart, then I make very little per hour. I ended up with a half dozen or so that will bring a good dollar.

For the most part, go with easy on those I think. Lpatops are a pain and I got lucky with the batch that I had.

Check on E-bay for the model. Some bring good money. Most don't. The model I ended up with goes for about $40 each complete untested with no cords, memory, hard drive, etc.

This may be for 2 reasons. 1. This may be one of those models that is very easy to upgrade and keep running. 2. The units I am selling all have a windows XP Pro sticker on them. Not sure which reason, but don't care.

Back to the $5 question. 1/2 pound motherboard, small hard drive, small (very) RAM. Definately get with easy on those.

P.S. I just grabbed 3 very old early 90s IBM thinkpads today basically for free from a Craig's list add along with a docking station and some extra stuff. The guy was looking to trade and had a list of things he needed. One was a hedge trimmer. I had one that I bought at a garage sale years ago for $3 and have no need for. I ended up with about $10 worth of scrap after a half hours time for the trade.

I check the computer section on Craig'slist regularly and I will type in the word parts after getting into that section. It has paid off 3 timed now in the last month.

Thanks for the CL search idea. I will give it a try here, Mike.

parrothead, what models were the Thinkpads? They usually sell on ebay decently well from my experience.

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Originally Posted by ScrapBootstrap

parrothead, what models were the Thinkpads? They usually sell on ebay decently well from my experience.

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I looked them up and it was a no sale thing.

I have been an e-bay seller for years and always look up stuff as best as possible. Thanks though, I always appreciate a head's up and is good for other members to see as well.

No doubt. Same here, seller since 1998 when the item numbers were 4/5 digits long. When I come across items with lower demand to the ebay community, I will create a lot with some "good" stuff and some "junk". The bidder will focus on what they want out of the lot (the good) and the "junk" (in this case your Thinkpads) may bring some profit greater than the time/scrap value.