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Hi, for the all but two, actually nobody knows who I am because of my username. I’m the dismantler, (Tristan) and I make a few vids about electronics. Anyway I’m a kid who got in scrap then into escrap. I’m currently buying from another kid, who repairs stuff, mainly laptops. I buy his junk laptops that are usually missing ram, hard drive or battery. Anyway, I’m wondering a fair price to pay him for the mixed laptops. I always remove the motherboard and battery then toss the rest in shred. I’m in WA state so I can’t drive to boardsort and I’m not going to mail a bunch of laptops. So should I run a test to see how many pounds of laptop boards I get from 100 or 10 pounds of laptops? Has someone already done a test? Thanks, Tristan

Immascrapper,

It all depends upon what you’re getting for the materials you’re pulling from the laptops.

You mention many of them could be missing hard drives, RAM, DVD/ROM drives etc.

With the above two criteria in mind, it makes it difficult for anyone on here to tell you what you should be paying for someone else’s dismantled ewaste.

With Boardsort paying $4.50lb for laptop motherboards, $22lb for gold fingered RAM, and us not knowing what you’re getting in WA. It’s probably a question you may have to figure out on you own perhaps.

If yer in to urban gold mining, there’s the following.

Not sure what you’re doing with the rest of the materials. There are typically small gold pin connectors, gold pin ribbon cables and one to two small gold connectors on the WiFi and Bluetooth PCBDs as well.

The small hard drives have misc metals in them as well. Some folks chuck ‘em in shred, others open them up to glean what’s inside.

DVD/CD/ROM drives will have a small laser diode inside with a smattering (wee) bit of gold as well.

All very minuscule, but it’s there.

The displays also have a circuit board inside. Thin and very light, but it’s there for the taking.

There’s also the heat sinks, while small and not much weight, they add up. Copper, copper/aluminum and aluminum are bringing good prices these days.

Again, only you know what you’re able to get for your ewaste. Unless of course you’re processing them for gold, tantalum, silver etc.

Me personally, knowing many of the laptops are not complete as you say, I’d be offering very little for them since I extract whatever I can from them in a reasonable amount of time. Missing items as you mentioned kill any will on my part to pay much if anything at all for them.

While I’ve looked into buying from auction, ewaste. Further study has turned me off from that. I haven’t paid for any of my scrap, don’t intend to start.

Enjoy,

RFIII

So I personally sell the MB’s to boardsort, and the rest I deal with my self. I used to bother with the screen board but now I don’t. I don’t usually scrap the CD roms, so those go in shred, and the hard drive, I take the board and sell the rest as a hard drive with no board. I just sell everything except the motherboard as what I can. Normal scrapper stuff. I did a test. I scrapped 20 pounds of laptops and got around $10 in MB’s, and around $5 in other mixed scrap. So I’m paying him $0.25 a pound for mixed junk laptops. That is because of the time it takes and the shipping to boardsort.

For the full size desktop ones, I have found it is worth it to pop out the boards from the older CD/DVD drives. They have a bigger board so it takes a fewer drives to get a decent amount of weight in boards. The newer ones with the really tiny boards are not really worth it. When you get good at pulling them apart, you can do them really fast. Laptop CD/DVD drives are not worth pulling apart it for me. Neither are the laptop hard drives, I remove the board and hit it with a hammer until I can hear the glass platters shattered. Then into the irony aluminum they go.

Immascrapper,

I overlooked or misread where you said you weren’t going to send laptops to Boardsort. I get what you mean now. No whole laptops to BS, laptop motherboards you do send to Boardsort.

Sorry ‘bout the confusion.

Sounds like you’ve got er nailed down! Good deal!

We have a few mom and pop PC/laptop repair places nearby. I should drop in and see what I can work out. We’ll see!

I know our local Goodwill wanted me to pay $75 a piece for broken flatscreen TVs. Insane.

Instead they palletize them up and pay someone to collect their broken electronic waste. Oh well...

Lol I wouldn’t pick up flatscreens for free! Let alone pay $75 for them

I don’t know why, can’t exactly put my finger on it, but I like the old flat screen TVs.

My favorites are Pioneer and Samsung.

They typically have some good high peripheral boards in them. They almost always have the thin ribbon cables with nice gold on the fingers.

I know there isn’t much gold on them. So far, I’ve collected 53.31gms of the lil things though. Wonder how they’ll process out?

The steel back panels which are typically sheet metal, I save for sheet metal projects. And since they’re nicely perforated in areas, I use those around the barn to cover holes I drilled in wood for ventilation. The lil holes keep out the vermin and snakes, only allowing smaller insects in which the ducks enjoy eating.

The aluminum panel with the glass goes to the local scrap yard as shred.

But no, I don’t pay for them!

Always enjoyed this forum. Interesting to hear everyone’s take on how and why they scrap this and that as well as to why they prefer not to scrap certain things.

Enjoy,

RFIII

I use one of the smaller TV backs as a cover for my homemade coal forge, which is made out of an old 12 inch wheel drum and furnace exhaust blower.

Nice!

I have a 55gal steel drum, burn barrel in our backyard. I took one of those perforated, steel back panels from a 60” flat screen TV and put it under the burn barrel. Then put bricks between the burn barrel and back panel.

The air gap between the burn barrel and back panel combined with the upturned sides of the back panel keeps the high heat from the burn barrel from excessively drying out and burning my lawn. The upturned sides of the back panel traps any hot coals and ash, thus preventing lil grass fires from migrating out from the burn barrel. And since the back panel is perforated, it doesn’t trap and hold water.

Repurposing, good stuff!

I use 2 stacked dryer drums as a brush burning barrel, burns stuff as fast as you can put it in. They sit on top of 4 or 5 bricks so I can get a strong updraft.

Immascrapper, sorry for hijacking your thread.