Why Is E-Waste Business So Expensive [[ Warning Rant ]]

Ever since joining this forum, I have read various things on the E-Waste regarding prices, regulations, and so forth.
After doing extensive research ( months ), attempting to contact the buyers on this forum ( and many other places ), and looking up prices for scrap AND collector values ... I am frustrated as #### at the cost of doing business !!!
Unless I live in New Jersey, or "limited" places in California or Florida, I'm SOL.
The cheapest ( the cheapest quote for 100# ) from 5 different delivery services is $1.50 per pound from were I am located to the closest business I have found that buys E-Junk .
No one will reimburse shipping expenses unless I ship very high value items.
The only way I can make any profit is grinding everything up, than illegally dissolving the gold using chemicals.

Selling on Ebay is not even worth while. Just for the hay of it, I stripped down 4 pc towers I dug out of the local dumpster .
At current prices:
The monolithic capacitors were worth $0.30
RAM was worth $0.60
Motors @ 0.12 / LB at local yard ... giving me roughly $0.20
Gold fingers came to about $0.18
4 stripped mother boards - unsellable
4 stripped cd / dvd drive boards - unsellable
5 stripped HDD boards - unsellable
HDD platters - $0.75
4 processors - $2.00

The total I would have made: $4.03

*** Now if I sold directly a buyer ... after shipping costs

4 motherboards - $1.60
Cd / Dvd boards (negative) 0.30
5 HDD boards - $2.11
RAM - $0.50
4 processors $0.16

This brings my total to $4.07

eWaste: you have to save them up before you try to sell them. Take your scrap steel & non-ferrous to the yard for quick $$$. Save up the eWaste until you get enough to ship a box.
Me: I wait until I have about 1,000 lbs of boards. You can save up a smaller box.
Stripping boards is not worth the bother. Sell them whole.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RLS0812

Ever since joining this forum, I have read various things on the E-Waste regarding prices, regulations, and so forth.
After doing extensive research ( months ), attempting to contact the buyers on this forum ( and many other places ), and looking up prices for scrap AND collector values ... I am frustrated as #### at the cost of doing business !!!
Unless I live in New Jersey, or "limited" places in California or Florida, I'm SOL.
The cheapest ( the cheapest quote for 100# ) from 5 different delivery services is $1.50 per pound from were I am located to the closest business I have found that buys E-Junk .
No one will reimburse shipping expenses unless I ship very high value items.
The only way I can make any profit is grinding everything up, than illegally dissolving the gold using chemicals.

Selling on Ebay is not even worth while. Just for the hay of it, I stripped down 4 pc towers I dug out of the local dumpster .
At current prices:
The monolithic capacitors were worth $0.30
RAM was worth $0.60
Motors @ 0.12 / LB at local yard ... giving me roughly $0.20
Gold fingers came to about $0.18
4 stripped mother boards - unsellable
4 stripped cd / dvd drive boards - unsellable
5 stripped HDD boards - unsellable
HDD platters - $0.75
4 processors - $2.00

The total I would have made: $4.03

*** Now if I sold directly a buyer ... after shipping costs

4 motherboards - $1.60
Cd / Dvd boards (negative) 0.30
5 HDD boards - $2.11
RAM - $0.50
4 processors $0.16

This brings my total to $4.07

---

HUH?........You are not going to make money with 4 towers.........I ship 65 lb boxes and it cost me around .40/lb that included boxes and tape.....

This is the downside of this forum. It makes E-waste looks like easy money when reading posts. GOLD!. But it is far from it. You can only make "good" money if you can get a steady supply, and go all in. So, if your only getting just a few, stockpile it till you have a load.

The only way I can make any profit is grinding everything up, than illegally dissolving the gold using chemicals

Full article at Scrap Metal Forum: http://www.scrapmetalforum.com/gener...#ixzz3HqGBzdVl

Please explain this statement. I refine some ewaste and as far as I know I am not in violation of any laws. Maybe the way you would do it would be. And no ones "grinds up " anything and dissolves the gold. Please get your facts straight . And if you think you can grind up a bunch of material and throw acid on it to get your gold you are in for a world of hurt, not to mention a visit to the hospital or morgue.

The down side is that there is plenty of information here that people refuse to read before getting gold fever. How much gold does the OP think is in a computer? Pounds, ounces, grams ??? It takes 10-11 pounds of ram to yield one pound of ram fingers which yields 1-2 grams of gold depending on how good and how honest the refiner is. With that info how much gold do people really think is in a computer?

the way the prices are droppin i think i'm going back to my regular non ferrous scrap...unless you get computers free

Didn't Gustavus grind up computer parts and dissolve the whole mess in acid? Seem to remember his thread from 'way back...

Jon.

I thought there was an ounce of gold in every PC.

Seriously though, if you think you're going to get rich in ewaste it's probably not going to happen. I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm sure there are people here who are doing very well in the business but they are probably dealing with thousands of pounds or tons of ewaste. If I were you I would slow down and let scrapping be something you do a few hours a day/week. Keep looking for PC's and save the boards. Sell any metal, aluminum or wire that comes from the PC's but save the boards and keep reading. I have been scrapping for a long time but started scrapping computers and telecom equipment about 2 years ago. I had 1800 pounds of circuit boards before I was able to identify and properly sort boards, know what to remove and what not to remove and to find buyers. I still have a lot to learn.

reminds me of a call i got today
lady saw my ad in local Facebook group about scrap

shes got 2-3 towers-old stuff
shes asking how much will i pay her

i explained that its not worth my while to pay for such a small amount of stuff
if she had a few 100 kg's of stuff, then maybe
she said she will get back to me...

people think of what they paid for the computers & expect to get something based on that value

I recycle metal...some days it's precious and some days it's ferrous...the days in between it's good ole steel.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sawmilleng

Didn't Gustavus grind up computer parts and dissolve the whole mess in acid? Seem to remember his thread from 'way back...

Jon.

---

Yes and no.... Gus was mechanically removing all parts from the boards. Then ball milling down to a fine powder. He would then use a home made centrifuge and waste oil to force the heavier precious metals to the sides and the lighter metals would fall out. He then recovered the pm's and chemically refine them. He was one of the smartest people this board has ever had as a member. I do miss his posts.

yes..thats the thing..people pay hundreds of dollars for a new computer and you offer even 5 bucks they feel ripped off

This is my answer and solution to the OP. Like you said you are far away from any e-waste buyer, well that means to me that there is little or no compatation, just for your information most of us are far away from buyers so it's not like bringing aluminum cans to the local scrap yard. I think that you are going about this in the wrong way, I am not a refiner you stated in your post that you took off this and took off that from the boards that is something that I do not do, I am a recycler/ scraper not a refiner.just like all other aspects of recycling you have to have material on a steady basis the more material you have the higher prices you can get. Now with out being harsh realy dude you went dumpster diving found four towers what are you thinking you are gold mining? If you want to make some money, number one you have to go into full time, now once you comit you have to have a plan the number one thing I myself do is get material, I call all places that have scrap on a steady basis and find out what if any thing they want to sell that's right sell I buy most of my material that's the secret. You have you pay to get if you do not pay you will always find four towers in the trash, and like you have found out already you are not going any place but backwards. Now I am not saying to over pay for the goods but you must figure what you can pay, there is no secret formala to this, and myself I have just got into e-waste end of the business a short time ago, but this is what I will share with you, get twenty towers scrap out the power supply's, wires, heat sinks, hard drives, floppy's and cd,s drives and the tin/ shread of course pull all the boards, CPU chips, finger cards, and every thing else that is gold or silver plated.now after you weigh up all the scrap you can sell localy that does not pay to ship divide it by twenty that's the magic number, it could be three, four,dollars now you recoup most of your investment, now start loading the boxs or gay lords and when full ship them with a forum transportation member to a forum buyer.buy it recycle it sell it that's the way that works for mr.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by petehart

yes..thats the thing..people pay hundreds of dollars for a new computer and you offer even 5 bucks they feel ripped off

---

Forget individuals by from computer repair shops scrap yards and business upgrading there systems when a person calls and tells us they want to sell there computer we tell them put it in craigs or something we pay scrap value not centamental value.

I picked up from a school today. I have to get the rest tomorrow. I moved about 150 computer towers. The librarian that I met with was surprised that each computer wasn't "worth at least $50". She thought that was the gold value.

Now, some of those will be refurbished. That's where the better money is.

When I ship E-Waste, I send as much as I can. I'm waiting to ship a pallet of stuff this time. 4 PCs for free is cool. But, shipping will eat you whole. There's a man on the Buyer's thread that offers freight brokering (Can't mention his name specifically here, but you'll find him). Read through the post. When you ship a whole pallet, the costs are A LOT less.

Just my $0.02

Yeah, Gustavus was one interesting guy. With a brain as agile and fertile as a bunch of us put together! And he carried out his ideas to see if they worked or not, plus being generous with feeding back the results to us.

Its a pity he signed off of here. I never did figure out why, but I guess something here PO'ed him big time. Hopefully time will heal if thats what the issue was...

Jon.

Unless I live in New Jersey, or "limited" places in California or Florida, I'm SOL.
??????????? I must be in one of those "LIMITED" places in California. I don't think your SOL, just need to do more "Extensive Research". I'm going out to the shop and tear the $hit out of something and "Research it". LOL.

The problem with it being made to be easy isn't this forum. We state it a lot this is not easy work or for those who won't go out there an get the items. If you come here an think this is easy, your not reading the forums. Or your reading other ones. The problem from my view of things is as BC said...people see they can make money off ewaste but fail to read the details like..you need weight to make money. I've said this in many of my posts when someone refers to telling to much about ewaste. Unless your dealing with a yard or another scrapper, most people won't take the time to save up even the minimum amount needed to make a profit. The Lazy factor far out weighs the "I want to make money an be successful" factor when it comes to the average person.

Just like any business you need to put time an effort into it. research would have shown that most of us who ship things out do so with a decent amount of weight. You should be aiming for 60lb boxes at lest before shipping anything. Some folks wait till they have more like Spin with 1000lbs, I know one of our members waits till he has 30,000lbs. Proper research would have been reading a ton of threads from the ewaste side of the forum, an if it had been done so..there are several threads that mention the magic weight to ship.

I think it was olddude who used the phrase first (if not, to bad, Your getting credit anyhow for it) "If you think scrapping(ewaste in this case) is easy, your doing it wrong."

You will bleed, curse, lose money, make money, bleed more, curse more, repeat as needed. lol.

It's great work, but it's just that...work. When you think it's getting easy it's time to go get more business.

An I ain't trying to be harsh but again..I don't excel at dancing around things, or sugarcoating the realities of the business. If you can't figure out how to make it work after studying the hell out the forums an all it's posts, I don't know what to tell you.

I wish ya luck tho, an much patience. ;)

Sirscrapalot - Keeping it real, Yo.

Can you make money in e-scrap? I'm a firm believer in "If there is a will there's a way". If you think your going to make a living scrapping 4 computers, or 4lbs of cans your mistaken. Scrap in general is a volume market not a margin market. Also, I'm pretty sure you don't have to live on the coast if you want to become a profitable "insert any business here".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RLS0812

Ever since joining this forum, I have read various things on the E-Waste regarding prices, regulations, and so forth.
After doing extensive research ( months ), attempting to contact the buyers on this forum ( and many other places ), and looking up prices for scrap AND collector values ... I am frustrated as #### at the cost of doing business !!!
Unless I live in New Jersey, or "limited" places in California or Florida, I'm SOL.
The cheapest ( the cheapest quote for 100# ) from 5 different delivery services is $1.50 per pound from were I am located to the closest business I have found that buys E-Junk .
No one will reimburse shipping expenses unless I ship very high value items.
The only way I can make any profit is grinding everything up, than illegally dissolving the gold using chemicals.

Selling on Ebay is not even worth while. Just for the hay of it, I stripped down 4 pc towers I dug out of the local dumpster .
At current prices:
The monolithic capacitors were worth $0.30
RAM was worth $0.60
Motors @ 0.12 / LB at local yard ... giving me roughly $0.20
Gold fingers came to about $0.18
4 stripped mother boards - unsellable
4 stripped cd / dvd drive boards - unsellable
5 stripped HDD boards - unsellable
HDD platters - $0.75
4 processors - $2.00

The total I would have made: $4.03

*** Now if I sold directly a buyer ... after shipping costs

4 motherboards - $1.60
Cd / Dvd boards (negative) 0.30
5 HDD boards - $2.11
RAM - $0.50
4 processors $0.16

This brings my total to $4.07

---

ewaste is the byproduct of scrapping computers

eg,
if u get 4 towers
what u sell for scrap immediately, are the bare towers after u have removed the boards & other stuff inside.
and that too, if u take in just 4 towers, u might not even cover your fuel.
just like how u would add the empty towers to your shred pile until u have enough. in the same way,
when u have ACCUMULATED ENOUGH -APPROX 100LBS then ONLY should u think about selling your ewaste

u cant go looking to sell whatever boards, RAM etc u pulled out of just 4 computers & expect to make money
thats crazy

what have u been reading?
have u ever read the many pieces of advice others have taken time to post?

too many LAZY people come here & expect to make easy money just cos they joined Scrap Metal Forum

I agree
It is MUCH too difficult
Send all your eWaste to me
I will fall on the sword for you

I'm still technically a "hobbyist" at this stage, still a LOT to learn (but getting that education on SMF). Anyway, to the OP: I get my material haphazardly but I'm always looking & asking. I've acquired a lot of stuff just by asking - sometimes that's all it takes. 4 towers in one "score" is a good starting point. You can tear them down in minutes, and then just start sorting. I started with (& still use) a few 5 gallon buckets and a box or two. Strip, separate, throw in the bucket / box. Wait for the next "score". After awhile, the buckets and/or boxes are full. I don't ship gaylords at a time, I'm a 50-65 lb box at a time guy right now. But I can tell you this: I'm shipping from Georgia to Ohio. My last two checks (after shipping costs) were $155 and $110. Now, that might not seem like a lot to any "pro", but for me, it's fine and I'm learning new things all the time. And once you spread the word (& always take an opportunity to spread the word), you may be surprised how much material you end up with. You will see hundreds of posts about this. It's a volume thing and you get volume by being aggressive. Ultimately, you may decided it's (ewaste) is not for you, but always keep in mind there are other ways to profit on this stuff besides strictly srapping.

Again, I think your original issue was largely with the cost of shipping. Look again at options (buyers) on this site - you may be surprised. If I can spend $+/- $25 to get a check back for $100+, that is a fair tradeoff for me (especially at my hobby level).

All Well said. Don't know where you are that cost $1.50 for shipping. you need a little more study here on the forum. It's all been said. Ill say it again, "If you want to be successful in E scrap go big or go home." By that I mean you have to buy 100, 200 or 500 computers or servers at a time. There is not an ounce of gold in a computer as some really believe but, there IS more gold in a ton (2000lbs)of computers then there is in a ton of rock from most gold mines.

You have to study and work hard and probably starve for a time to do E waste. Reality shows and most you tube vids are crap and no where near reality. It takes education (here) dedication and hard work.

Like a gold miner (most are Geologists) they know you don't just go out in the back yard and start digging for gold they (most of them) spend years of study followed by years of searching and back breaking work to find their first speck of gold. Most never find it. E waste is the same.

I played poker for a (living) in Los Vegas for about 5 years back in the day. I had a friend who was a security guard at the Tropicana. but his real job was looking for a lost gold mine near the cal/Neva boarder It took him over 20 years of hard work, and diligent study, but he found it and is now a multi Millionaire. If you ever get to the cal /neva boarder look to the north from the highway and you will see it half way up the mt range near Searchlight behind the cal /Neva casino.

Just like that its all here you just have to search, dig, and work hard for it. Its just a matter of how bad you want it. Just sayin.

P.S. About home refining, I do some. DO NOT GO TO YOU TUBE AND THINK YOU WILL REFINE. IT WILL KILL YOU AND, PROBABLY YOUR FAMILY AND NEIGHBORS. mcw.

Speaking on shipping prices...I'm on a freaking sandbar as far east as you can get, AN 2 Miles out in the ocean an my rates aren't even that bad.

Me thinks you need to do more reading and studying of SMF members posts.

Sirscrapalot - Go go scrapper arm.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by olddude

All Well said. Don't know where you are that cost $1.50 for shipping. you need a little more study here on the forum. It's all been said. Ill say it again, "If you want to be successful in E scrap go big or go home." By that I mean you have to buy 100, 200 or 500 computers or servers at a time. There is not an ounce of gold in a computer as some really believe but, there IS more gold in a ton (2000lbs)of computers then there is in a ton of rock from most gold mines.

You have to study and work hard and probably starve for a time to do E waste. Reality shows and most you tube vids are crap and no where near reality. It takes education (here) dedication and hard work.

Like a gold miner (most are Geologists) they know you don't just go out in the back yard and start digging for gold they (most of them) spend years of study followed by years of searching and back breaking work to find their first speck of gold. Most never find it. E waste is the same.

I played poker for a (living) in Los Vegas for about 5 years back in the day. I had a friend who was a security guard at the Tropicana. but his real job was looking for a lost gold mine near the cal/Neva boarder I took him overt 20 years of hard work, and diligent study, but he found it and is now a multi Millionaire. I you ever get to the cal /neva boarder look to the north from the highway and you will see it half way up the mt range near Searchlight behind the cal /Neva casino.

Just like that its all here you just have to search, dig, and work hard for it. Its just a matter of how bad you want it. Just sayin.

P.S. About home refining, I do some. DO NOT GO TO YOU TUBE AND THINK YOU WILL REFINE. IT WILL KILL YOU AND, PROBABLY YOUR FAMILY AND NEIGHBORS. mcw.

---

Playing poker for a living..... man, there was a post on here sometime fairly recently about getting up an SMF convention or something similar... how cool would it be to hear these types of stories and meet folks like this all engaged in a common business / cause / passion? From what *I* gather, we (as a group) have a lot of great stories to tell. I guess a location would be a problem considering we're all over the country, but maybe a "rolling" meeting place each year. We could have seminars on various topics. Maybe even get some sponsors "up the line" since we feed them .... material, anyway. I bet we could hold a successful annual "convention". Maybe success is measured by covering your costs, but I think that is feasible.

Anyway... sorry to get off topic. Just thought professional poker playing was cool. We've got a ton of stories and life experiences on here.

All of the above posts have some good info. sounds like the OP still has a lot of research to do. Speaking of shipping costs, again it is a volume thing. I consider myself a small time scrapper, mainly into ewaste, but I would never consider shipping less than about 2 gaylords (2000-2500 lbs). Anything less just costs too much per lb. I am in western Canada and need to ship cross country, shipping 2 gaylords at a time my shipping costs are about 25 cents per lb. Also I don't ship anything worth less than about $1/lb, those items are all sold locally.

1.50 # to ship??? Maybe someone should tell him it doesn't need to be shipped Fedex overnight.

No responses to this thread and no additonal input to the forum by the member who started this thread. Mike

Maybe his rant's over and realizes we're all right? Sounded like he wanted to make quick cash and there's no quick cash in scrapping/e-waste recycling.

im not for sure were you did your research but less than 10mins on here should have given you most answers to your problems and shown you how to make good money with some hard work and all the prices and contact info for some really good buyers not to mention lesions on selling on ebay cause a quick flat rate box filled with these items would have at least make you $20 after expenses

Please don't stop. I am having a great time learning ewaste info at someone elses' expense. Sounds to me like ewaste would almost better be rendered as shred.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by 1956

This is my answer and solution to the OP. Like you said you are far away from any e-waste buyer, well that means to me that there is little or no compatation, just for your information most of us are far away from buyers so it's not like bringing aluminum cans to the local scrap yard. I think that you are going about this in the wrong way, I am not a refiner you stated in your post that you took off this and took off that from the boards that is something that I do not do, I am a recycler/ scraper not a refiner.just like all other aspects of recycling you have to have material on a steady basis the more material you have the higher prices you can get. Now with out being harsh realy dude you went dumpster diving found four towers what are you thinking you are gold mining? If you want to make some money, number one you have to go into full time, now once you comit you have to have a plan the number one thing I myself do is get material, I call all places that have scrap on a steady basis and find out what if any thing they want to sell that's right sell I buy most of my material that's the secret. You have you pay to get if you do not pay you will always find four towers in the trash, and like you have found out already you are not going any place but backwards. Now I am not saying to over pay for the goods but you must figure what you can pay, there is no secret formala to this, and myself I have just got into e-waste end of the business a short time ago, but this is what I will share with you, get twenty towers scrap out the power supply's, wires, heat sinks, hard drives, floppy's and cd,s drives and the tin/ shread of course pull all the boards, CPU chips, finger cards, and every thing else that is gold or silver plated.now after you weigh up all the scrap you can sell localy that does not pay to ship divide it by twenty that's the magic number, it could be three, four,dollars now you recoup most of your investment, now start loading the boxs or gay lords and when full ship them with a forum transportation member to a forum buyer.buy it recycle it sell it that's the way that works for mr.

---

BOOM... exactly!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by scrapping

Can you make money in e-scrap? I'm a firm believer in "If there is a will there's a way".

---

Yes, you can make money with e-scrap. It has now put my daughter through 5.5 years of college. (she had a few grants and two small gov loans, but those ran out real fast) I have recycled over 25,000 cell phones and hundreds of tower computers. I have no overhead so to speak. I live in an apartment and work in my patio. The phones ship whole (less batteries) and I tear down the computers. I pull all greenboards and do nothing to them except pull heat sinks, RAM and CPU. (those get sold separately)

All cells and greenboards get shipped to a recycler in Florida. RLSO listen up! Ed picks up 100% of the shipping charge and I am in CA. I try to ship at least 40-60 lbs per carton.

I do not know if I can mention Ed's company here so if any one is interested send me a message.

Now for what I pay. I always pay 50¢ per cell. There have been times I paid $1 but then I could see it was an iphone that I could resell on feeBay. For computers I pay $1.50 for towers and $1.00 for laptops. If someone balks at my offer I walk. Just since summer I have sold two laptops for around $100 each and I am working on three more right now that should also sell for $80-120.

I have a supplier of cells. This is where I get the majority of the phones. I just bought 540 last Saturday. Most were old flip or slider and the rest were completely trashed.

For the better phones and all my computers I hit 30-40 yard sales every saturday. I also buy brass, copper, aluminum and antiques at these yard sales.

And if you want to sell any computer boards, don't be stripping them. If you want to strip something, go get a couple of TV's (vcr's, stereo's, etc.) and strip down their boards. When you strip the computer boards you have taken most of the value off, they will only buy them as low-grade.
Most local yards won't pay what electronics are worth. They are offering a service of taking your worthless electronic junk for .02 - .10 cents a lb.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by logansryche

Maybe his rant's over and realizes we're all right? Sounded like he wanted to make quick cash and there's no quick cash in scrapping/e-waste recycling.

---

Well I hope for his sake he's still here reading every ones comments. There's a lots of good information here on this thread and tons more on the rest of the forum.

I don't know why people cant seem to find a yard that buys e-scrap. Almost every decent sized yard in the upper Midwest buys in some shape or form. The prices might not always be great, but the buyers are there. I think most people are just to lazy to make a few phone calls nowadays.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeffy

I don't know why people cant seem to find a yard that buys e-scrap. Almost every decent sized yard in the upper Midwest buys in some shape or form. The prices might not always be great, but the buyers are there. I think most people are just to lazy to make a few phone calls nowadays.

---

It's not like that where I live. Not many yards around here know what escrap is. One yard where I sell copper buys circuit boards for 10 cents a pound. That's where I sell my low grade boards. I do have one yard an hour away that buys my good boards and they have good prices but that's about it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeffy

I don't know why people cant seem to find a yard that buys e-scrap. Almost every decent sized yard in the upper Midwest buys in some shape or form. The prices might not always be great, but the buyers are there. I think most people are just to lazy to make a few phone calls nowadays.

---

If you are selling to a scrap yard in wisconsin you are leaving money on the table.