Originally Posted by
ACCR
Looking at other threads we noticed a debate going on with hard drives and whether or not it is practical to remove the boards from them vs. selling the drive with board still attached. So out of curiosity we decided to do a breakdown of CD Drives as to whether or not it is worth it to remove the boards. We decided to use 60 CD Drives as our example. At .20/lb. for drives with the board still attached the only practical way to benefit from that number is if one has a few hundred pounds of them and brings them directly to us as any shipping costs from that amount will leave a seller deep in the red. The total weight for the 60 drives was 88.90 pounds and at .20/lb. that total value is $17.78. With a guess shipping would be closer to $50 with that type of weight. After we removed the boards we ended up with 4.29 pounds of CD Board. At $5.00/lb. the boards alone have a value of $21.45. One can then take the remaining 84.61 pounds of gutted CD Drives to their local scrap yard where they can dump them off as shred steel which should be give or take around .10/lb. with current market conditions. To mail 4.29 pounds of board will be a lot cheaper than almost 90 pounds of drives especially if they are already working on a box with other items to ship out. Also depending on where one is located regional shipping with USPS has some very cost effective options. Does anybody have any similar experiences they are willing to share?