What I got at local yard, vs what I could have got through an online buyer

I had to clear up space in my garage, and found a place that advertises that they take/specialize in e-scrap. I have been mailing off most high-value and small-ish to board sort so I will use them for my price comparison. Also this is the only place within an hour or so of me that takes E-scrap that I have found. I know for some things like the ram and finger cards I would have been MUCH better off shipping it off, but for things like the mother boards and other items, I am not sure if the price difference would have been negated by shipping had I shipped. Just giving some prices I got locally!

https://i.imgur.com/tbqR3Mc.jpg

It seems pretty straightforward.

You know your per pound shipping costs to Boardsort. Deduct that number from what they're paying to get your net profit. Compare that to what you are getting locally.

Just a hypothetical example:

You're getting .12/lb for a power supply w/o wires from Boardsort. Say shipping costs are .60/lb. It would be costing you .48/lb for the privilege of selling to them. You would be better off to sell the PSU's locally and make a gross profit of .07 per pound.

For whatever it's worth, i tend to do as you do. Ship the higher value stuff and keep the low value stuff local.

The only way i can see to ship the low value items would be to ship by the pallet load and get your cost waay down. Even then ... the numbers might not work.

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Originally Posted by hills

It seems pretty straightforward.

You know your per pound shipping costs to Boardsort. Deduct that number from what they're paying to get your net profit. Compare that to what you are getting locally.

Just a hypothetical example:

You're getting .12/lb for a power supply w/o wires from Boardsort. Say shipping costs are .60/lb. It would be costing you .48/lb for the privilege of selling to them. You would be better off to sell the PSU's locally and make a gross profit of .07 per pound.

For whatever it's worth, i tend to do as you do. Ship the higher value stuff and keep the low value stuff local.

The only way i can see to ship the low value items would be to ship by the pallet load and get your cost waay down. Even then ... the numbers might not work.

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Yep, thats why I was going to this local place to see what things might be worth just taking here instead of mailing off.

The RAM and the finger cards are for sure better to mail off as I can fit a bunch of them in a flat rate box and send it off. The motherboards seem like I would make sense to mail them off, but I would have to save up and keep around enough to get a pallet load to justify/make shipping them a better price. I was kinda hoping that the local place would have prices much closer to the online places prices for motherboards, but they are nowhere close.... oh well... thats how it goes sometimes

I try to refrain from recommending one buyer over another here on the forum.

That said:

I've been pretty happy with Ewasted. They arrange shipping through FedEx and deduct the cost from your payout. It's a very smooth process.

I'm just a small timer so my loads aren't that big. Generally three 68lb boxes of mixed items.

Locally, they only pay .30/lb for " Computer Greenboards ". It works out better for me to ship low grade motherboards to Ewasted.

It might be different in your case though. Your locals are paying a lot better. I suspect that they might be consolidators. You know ... gather them up and then ship by the gaylord / pallet load ?

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Originally Posted by hills

I try to refrain from recommending one buyer over another here on the forum.

That said:

I've been pretty happy with Ewasted. They arrange shipping through FedEx and deduct the cost from your payout. It's a very smooth process.

I'm just a small timer so my loads aren't that big. Generally three 68lb boxes of mixed items.

Locally, they only pay .30/lb for " Computer Greenboards ". It works out better for me to ship low grade motherboards to Ewasted.

It might be different in your case though. Your locals are paying a lot better. I suspect that they might be consolidators. You know ... gather them up and then ship by the gaylord / pallet load ?

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I am 100% sure that is what they are doing. I just am trying to figure out at what point, selling the motherboards unsorted, for $0.75/lb local is better than me sorting and sending to E-wasted or boardsort, or any online place where the prices are much higher. There is probably a point at which the higher prices make sense for me to ship but with the quanities I have it is most likly better to just take it locally since I dont think Ill ever get a whole pallet load.... or if I did it wouldnt be for a long time.

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Originally Posted by kss

I am 100% sure that is what they are doing. I just am trying to figure out at what point, selling the motherboards unsorted, for $0.75/lb local is better than me sorting and sending to E-wasted or boardsort, or any online place where the prices are much higher. There is probably a point at which the higher prices make sense for me to ship but with the quanities I have it is most likly better to just take it locally since I dont think Ill ever get a whole pallet load.... or if I did it wouldnt be for a long time.

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ewasted gets a discount on shipping. the key is to ship 69lb boxes. i have also heard that ram and cpus are worth craming into a flat rate box

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Originally Posted by MattInTheHat

ewasted gets a discount on shipping. the key is to ship 69lb boxes. i have also heard that ram and cpus are worth craming into a flat rate box

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I had over 69lbs of mother boards for sure, but the problem is that the flat-rate boxes (that are allowed to ship 69lbs for a set price) are not big enough to fit 69lbs of mother boards. I could probably only fit like... 5 motherboards into the largest flatrate box they have, and that would only be like... 2lbs maybe. If there is someway that I can send 69lbs for a flat rate, in a MASSIVE box to hold 69lbs of motherboards, I would 100% love to know about that. unfortunately, ram and CPUs seem to be the only things that seem like they are worth shipping because I can pack a ton of them (by weight and $ amount) into a flat rate box. Everything else is unfeasible to ship at the quantities that I always have

i shipped 69lbs for like $30. not sure what it costs now. i used home depot moving boxes

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Originally Posted by MattInTheHat

i shipped 69lbs for like $30. not sure what it costs now. i used home depot moving boxes

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Last I looked into it, shipping a box that size (about 20x20) was like $80 to ship. Maybe I will have to take another look and get some more quotes on shipping. Maybe it is more feasible than I thought. Thanks!

Edit: Just checked on usps and a 69lb 20x20x20 box would be $66 to ship. Fedex might be cheaper, and fedex with a discount probably cheaper still. But it is less expensive than I remember it seems. so thats good.

Get a quote through ewasted. He has a website on his thread The best part is they deduct it from what they pay you, so you aren't out of pocket up front

My way of doing this from further away than you(I live in coastal North Carolina and ship to Ewasted in northern Ohio) has been save up enough for a pallet and get comparatively cheap shipping.

One of our members has a service to arrange shipping. Ewasted has been able to arrange it for me in the past.

So decreasing the shipping costs can make a significant change to your profit.

I was never a big player in this scraping business, my largest shipment was two pallets of about 1100 lbs gross but usually shipped only one pallet at a time. Its been a couple of years now but I may have even gotten under $0.20/lb for shipping.

Do yourself a favor and look over all our member buyers here on the forum. Be very mindful that there is current feedback before you comment to dealing with them. On the first page the buyer will tell you how best to contact them, it does very from buyer to buyer. 73, Mike

A pallet full of e-waste takes less time to accumulate than you might expect if you have a couple of decent clients. Being able to palletize and ship freight does *wonders* for your returns

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Originally Posted by JJinLV

A pallet full of e-waste takes less time to accumulate than you might expect if you have a couple of decent clients. Being able to palletize and ship freight does *wonders* for your returns

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Yea I wish I did. Unfortunately I dont have any "regular" or repeat clients. I mostly have people doing a house or basement clean out and get maybe 20 or so computers a month. It would take me a while to get together enough for a pallet but I do know that the pallet is the best and most economical way to ship in bulk. I hope one day to have enough stuff to warrant a pallet! To be fair, I havent looked very hard for a client base yet. Just a few craigslist ads so far, as this is still a hobby for me at this point. But maximizing profits is all part of the fun.

Please remember computers are not the only thing that have circuit boards........

Check out U P S' new Simple Rates. Here's the link.

The Brownies are looking to compete with USPS Flat Rate and so they created a new shipping product. Weights/dims are limited but you should be able to get a 12" cube (or its equivalent) under 50# to anywhere in the lower 48 for about $20 (using Ground, of course).

I have been meaning to try it but most of what I do either goes Media Mail or freight, at this point. If someone else has used it, please comment.

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Originally Posted by mikeinreco

Please remember computers are not the only thing that have circuit boards........

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Yea I pick up vcrs, dvd players, stereos, etc. But what I was getting at was that most of the time its an individual, and a one-time pick up. Most businesses arent getting rid of a whole bunch of electronics super frequently. I also havent reached out to or tried to find any buisiness either, so..... But I get what you are saying.

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Originally Posted by Breakage

Check out U P S' new Simple Rates. Here's the link.

The Brownies are looking to compete with USPS Flat Rate and so they created a new shipping product. Weights/dims are limited but you should be able to get a 12" cube (or its equivalent) under 50# to anywhere in the lower 48 for about $20 (using Ground, of course).

I have been meaning to try it but most of what I do either goes Media Mail or freight, at this point. If someone else has used it, please comment.

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oh yea, that is like a brand new thing they are offering. 12x12x12 might fit.... maybe 10-15 motherboards maybe? So, assuming each was about a lb, and $2/lb average, that seems like it would just about break even unfortunately (assuming I could fit 10 mobos in a 12x12x12 box, the box is $20 to ship, and I could get $2/lb on mobos)

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Originally Posted by JJinLV

A pallet full of e-waste takes less time to accumulate than you might expect if you have a couple of decent clients. Being able to palletize and ship freight does *wonders* for your returns

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Coming back to this thread.... y'all are right. It didnt take that long to have enough for a pallet lol. Doing a pallet to ewasted after a trip im going on this week. Still deciding on if some stuff should/shouldnt go on the pallet. itll all depend.


Things still on the fence about sending on the pallet are harddrives w/o boards, ac adapters w/wire, psus w/o wire, disk/cd/dvd/floppy drive. But all my boards are for sure going.

To me Ewaste seems like a little secret club.........I only see very few people hauling electronics.....When I go to the yard my shred looks bad (ewaste remnants are messy lots of plastic/metal mix) but I don't worry about that........In the back of my mind I know that I will make 100's if not $1000's off the stuff I took apart........Let the others struggle to haul the heavy stuff while I rake in the profits.......I'd say if you have a local buyer for the stuff you mentioned sell it local.....A/C adapters I cut the wire and throw transformer in the shred.......CD/DVD/Floppy drive gets taken apart if green board if brown usually shred........At this point hard drives without boards have just been going in shred for me although I may go back to taking them apart again as I saw cast prices went up some........Either way it won't make much difference what you throw on the pallet as the boards will make up for most of the lower priced items

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mikeinreco

To me Ewaste seems like a little secret club.........I only see very few people hauling electronics.....When I go to the yard my shred looks bad (ewaste remnants are messy lots of plastic/metal mix) but I don't worry about that........In the back of my mind I know that I will make 100's if not $1000's off the stuff I took apart........Let the others struggle to haul the heavy stuff while I rake in the profits.......I'd say if you have a local buyer for the stuff you mentioned sell it local.....A/C adapters I cut the wire and throw transformer in the shred.......CD/DVD/Floppy drive gets taken apart if green board if brown usually shred........At this point hard drives without boards have just been going in shred for me although I may go back to taking them apart again as I saw cast prices went up some........Either way it won't make much difference what you throw on the pallet as the boards will make up for most of the lower priced items

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I agree. I of course dont have it all figured out yet but I feel like im getting there.....

Im not sure how pallet shipping works. Is it by weight? or size? Or both? For example, if I can fit the power supplies on the pallets, and it adds 200lbs, but is close to the same size, is it charged the same? IF so then obviously I would send it along. Thats why I am still evaluating how that all works to decide.

Harddrives I take the boards off of. cd/floppy/dvd Drives I do not feel like dealing with to take apart. I do have a buyer of the items I mentioned local, but it is only at slightly higher than shred prices, $0.07/lb for
harddrives w/o boards,
ac adapters w/wire,
psus w/o wire,
disk/cd/dvd/floppy drive

So while I could get double triple or more sending them away, if it COSTS more to add them onto the pallet of boards, then it obviously doesnt make sense.

Pallet is determined by weight and size.......(mainly weight but one time I got charged for an oversize pallet).........Just play with it I guess as far as DVD drives those have to be some of the most simple items to do.......The boards go for close to $4/lb and usually only 4 screws involved

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mikeinreco

Pallet is determined by weight and size.......(mainly weight but one time I got charged for an oversize pallet).........Just play with it I guess as far as DVD drives those have to be some of the most simple items to do.......The boards go for close to $4/lb and usually only 4 screws involved

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Hmm might have to look into them then. I do harddrives since the boards are at like $10/lb.... But I did some drives and I remember them being frustrating.... And not trying them again deciding they weren't worth it. I may have just had some particularly troublesome ones. I have about 300lbs of disk/floppy drives so may give it another shot!

COPIED and PASTED from Ewasted buyers thread

$3.75 CD/DVD Boards (please remove ribbon wire and brown board if attached)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mikeinreco

COPIED and PASTED from Ewasted buyers thread

$3.75 CD/DVD Boards (please remove ribbon wire and brown board if attached)

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Oh yea I've seen the prices. I have his buy thread printed out in my garage. I know they are $4/lb.... I was just frustrated enough with them the first time around for me to say " this isn't worth $4/lb to me to do these".... If you're saying it's only 4 screws then I must have had some weird drives. I remember having to take off multiple layers of stuff, multiple types of bits (mixed size torx and Phillips) to get to the board. A lot more than 4 screws. But if some are 4 screws and that's all, I can always do the quickones, shred pile (or ship) the rest

DVD drives are pretty easy. You can often do them with two screws. Take the two off on the bottom, closest to the data connector. Pry the metal panel back, yank the board out, and seal it back up for shred. Super fast and easy to do. The yield may not be the nicest compared to some things, and will never be close to MTSV items, but they're fast and easy. I like to do mine on those cold winter days when you don't want to go outside, and just want to watch the football game. You can process a LOT of DVD drives really fast

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kss

Coming back to this thread.... y'all are right. It didnt take that long to have enough for a pallet lol. Doing a pallet to ewasted after a trip im going on this week. Still deciding on if some stuff should/shouldnt go on the pallet. itll all depend.


Things still on the fence about sending on the pallet are harddrives w/o boards, ac adapters w/wire, psus w/o wire, disk/cd/dvd/floppy drive. But all my boards are for sure going.

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It's like hills said above. Do the math once you have your shipping quotes and if you'll make more sending to your buyer do that. If not sell locally.

"this isn't worth $4/lb to me to do these"

I think some of you are looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it's me.

An example would be Saturday. I had some computers in the garage and I went out and pulled the ram and processors. I brought the good ones in and checked the buyers list. WoooHooo, I made $175 in an hour.......no I didn't because I'm not done. I still have to finish the computers and then add everything up. It won't add up to $175 an hour but it dang sure won't be $4 an hour.

Quit grabbing all the good stuff and selling it first. It sucks when you let the power supplies and cd drives pile up.

Just my 2 cents.

I'll second what everyone else is saying about the cd/dvd drives. Couldn't be any easier, though i will admit that the circuit boards seem to be getting awfully small these days. The older tape drives (pre y2k ?) can be challenging but you don't see them very often nowadays.

It's generally not that hard to do a full teardown of HDD's. I save those for when i have some dead time. They're a pleasant distraction when i've got a few minutes to kill. It's purely speculative, but there could come a time when the neodymium magnets have some value. I read somewhere that neodymium was close to 300.00$/lb back in the early days. China saw the opportunity and ramped up production. The prices gradually fell to what they are today. China had the market cornered on rare earths now. Prices could go back up again if there were ever a disruption in the supply chain. Something like a war or a pandemic ?

Anyhow, they've got most of the technical problems with recycling neodymium sorted out now. The magnets don't take up much space in the shop so i just squirrel them away for a rainy day when they might be needed.

It's just my thing, but i prefer to ship high value items and not ship the lower value items. It's just a game, but it's fun to figure out ways of increasing your average net profit per pound. Just a couple of hypothetical examples:

A pallet of Ram:

Ram pays 14.50 / lb

Shipping cost .20 / lb.

Net profit per lb is 14.30 / lb. ( Shipping costs are negligible in this case. )

A pallet of power supplies:

Power supplies pay .25 /lb

Shipping cost .20 /lb

Net profit is .05 / lb ( Shipping is a significant expense in this case !)

In the real world ... you're shipping mixed loads so it all averages out.

Does it make sense that the lower value items thrown into a load tend to pull down your average net profit per pound on a load ?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jimicrk

"this isn't worth $4/lb to me to do these"

I think some of you are looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it's me.

An example would be Saturday. I had some computers in the garage and I went out and pulled the ram and processors. I brought the good ones in and checked the buyers list. WoooHooo, I made $175 in an hour.......no I didn't because I'm not done. I still have to finish the computers and then add everything up. It won't add up to $175 an hour but it dang sure won't be $4 an hour.

Quit grabbing all the good stuff and selling it first. It sucks when you let the power supplies and cd drives pile up.

Just my 2 cents.

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I dont care too much about the profit and money, it is just a benifit of me doing this. I do this as a hobby and for fun. I do like trying to maximize profit as part of the hobby, but not at the expense of enjoyment. I didnt have fun tearing apart the CD drives before, even if the boards were worth $1000/lb (ok, then I might regardless of "fun"). As I am taking stuff apart, sometimes in the middle of it I will say "f" this thing Im tired of messing with it and throw it into the shred pile. I know I leave money on the table sometimes, but if it stops being fun then I'll stop doing it all-together.

I will give them another shot though for sure, since I must have been wrong in my original assement of the drives since everyone here says they are not hard lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hills

I'll second what everyone else is saying about the cd/dvd drives. Couldn't be any easier, though i will admit that the circuit boards seem to be getting awfully small these days. The older tape drives (pre y2k ?) can be challenging but you don't see them very often nowadays.

It's generally not that hard to do a full teardown of HDD's. I save those for when i have some dead time. They're a pleasant distraction when i've got a few minutes to kill. It's purely speculative, but there could come a time when the neodymium magnets have some value. I read somewhere that neodymium was close to 300.00$/lb back in the early days. China saw the opportunity and ramped up production. The prices gradually fell to what they are today. China had the market cornered on rare earths now. Prices could go back up again if there were ever a disruption in the supply chain. Something like a war or a pandemic ?

Anyhow, they've got most of the technical problems with recycling neodymium sorted out now. The magnets don't take up much space in the shop so i just squirrel them away for a rainy day when they might be needed.

It's just my thing, but i prefer to ship high value items and not ship the lower value items. It's just a game, but it's fun to figure out ways of increasing your average net profit per pound. Just a couple of hypothetical examples:

A pallet of Ram:

Ram pays 14.50 / lb

Shipping cost .20 / lb.

Net profit per lb is 14.30 / lb. ( Shipping costs are negligible in this case. )

A pallet of power supplies:

Power supplies pay .25 /lb

Shipping cost .20 /lb

Net profit is .05 / lb ( Shipping is a significant expense in this case !)

In the real world ... you're shipping mixed loads so it all averages out.

Does it make sense that the lower value items thrown into a load tend to pull down your average net profit per pound on a load ?

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Yep 100% makes sense. You gave the example of $0.20/lb shipping cost. I just need to find what that actually ends up being (per lb) to determine which items are/are not worth it to ship. My guess is most of the lower value doesnt make sense to ship, especially if I have a local buyer for some of the stuff (even at lower prices, the lower price would still be better than the higher price minus shipping, all will be found out soon when I get some actual numbers in the coming weeks)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kss

I dont care too much about the profit and money, it is just a benifit of me doing this. I do this as a hobby and for fun. I didnt have fun tearing apart the CD drives before, even if the boards were worth $1000/lb (ok, then I might regardless of "fun"). As I am taking stuff apart, sometimes in the middle of it I will say "f" this thing Im tired of messing with it and throw it into the shred pile. I know I leave money on the table sometimes, but if it stops being fun then I'll stop doing it all-together.

I will give them another shot though for sure.

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If it's okay i'll borrow / steal the sig line from one of the other members.

" Anyone who says scrapping isn't hard work ain't doin' it right. "


Lol ... more true words were never spoken. I'm learning that more and more as i go along. The old man was right.

You might look at it this way. It's a lot of time and energy invested to earn the skill of doing the CD/DVD breakdown. It gets much easier once you've mastered the skill. You can bang the work out like nobody's business.

It's like that with everything isn't it ? Bigger companies invest millions into research & development just to acquire the method of making a better mousetrap. The payoff comes after they've done the work. Some projects are a dead end so you learn what doesn't work. Some projects have a payoff. Either way you gain.

I know i'm going through this with the new electric wire stripping machine that came in a few weeks ago. There's a certain learning curve. It will take awhile to work out the best methods for my particular shop. Next step after mastering the skill will be to source more material but that's a ways off right now. I'm still in the R&D phase.

Personally, i enjoy the R&D part the most. I like the challenge of solving problems & figuring out the most efficient way of doing a job. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hills

If it's okay i'll borrow / steal the sig line from one of the other members.

" Anyone who says scrapping isn't hard work ain't doin' it right. "


Lol ... more true words were never spoken. I'm learning that more and more as i go along. The old man was right.

You might look at it this way. It's a lot of time and energy invested to earn the skill of doing the CD/DVD breakdown. It gets much easier once you've mastered the skill. You can bang the work out like nobody's business.

It's like that with everything isn't it ? Bigger companies invest millions into research & development just to acquire the method of making a better mousetrap. The payoff comes after they've done the work. Some projects are a dead end so you learn what doesn't work. Some projects have a payoff. Either way you gain.

I know i'm going through this with the new electric wire stripping machine that came in a few weeks ago. There's a certain learning curve. It will take awhile to work out the best methods for my particular shop. Next step after mastering the skill will be to source more material but that's a ways off right now. I'm still in the R&D phase.

Personally, i enjoy the R&D part the most. I like the challenge of solving problems & figuring out the most efficient way of doing a job. :)

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All very true. I have mistakenly written off the drives since I didnt want to put in the effort. I will give them a second try for sure.

As always .... respects to you bro. It's your shop your choice. Heaven knows, i've tried my best with power supplies but they just don't work in my situation. Still ... folks in other situations are making money with em'.

Just please ... don't try chasing the little gold reader eyes in the cd/dvd units. Don't know how many hours i wasted salvaging those darn things. Turned out that there wasn't a readily available market for them.

Ohh well , live and learn i guess. :)