I'd very much like to read that!

Thanks for reminding me. I have long since moved on and forgotten.

It’s back on my soon list.

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This post is awesome!!! I laughed, I cried, what a rollercoaster!!! So now my two cents. I have been doing the recycle/refurbish/resale thing for a few months now. In the beginning I took a few bruises but I learn fast! With resources like Boardsort, and many others, I am now making a better living than I was working a full time job. I LOVE IT! And I feel like I am doing something important! Not everything works for everybody. You have to find out what works for you. Watch what you pay for. ALWAYS take the frees! And ya, I'm one of those guys that drive 400 miles to make pick-ups but it's worth it. Thank you Boardsort for all your help!!!

Always, always always. I grabbed my SawsAll last week and took it to a set of free fake brass lamps. Expecting pressed iron powder weights inside, like normal, I still always check. I got 2lb lead blocks. A value difference of 42č per lb!

Happy to be on a roll I grabbed a bunch of desk tape dispensers. Cracked the plastic off. Ram a titanium drill through the sandy base.
No roll for me. Guess they just filled the base with loose sand, poured in some glue and let it dry. What a mess. Indoor beach on the bench. Floor. Table in my poor drill.
Just poor, sand. Everywhere.
:(

Always take the frees!
They were selling a desk for $10. They dumped everything into a box with no care. Wrote free on it.
I handed the lady $5 for a box of used toner cartridges, that I’ll $10 each for, and grabbed the free box.

A few “stainless” candle stick holders turned out to be silver! 925!
Someone decided to glue felt to the base. But it was marked.

Oh, and StarFox! CIB. And a handful of other games.
Made me quite happy.
Couple of gold nib fountain pens. A gold (18kt) ball point.

https://www.pricecharting.com/game/nint ... or-resale#

I also got more rusty paper clips than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life.

But for me, the real treat was another working external parallel (printer) port CD-ROM drive!
Those are hard to come by in good condition!
Always take the frees!

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THIS

For the most part I only take the free stuff, scrapping is my side hustle. Its what I do for a little bit of extra cash and as a hobby. Its a form of treasure hunting that satisfies both my curiosity and my desire for another income stream. Being a micro scrapper it doesn't make sense (for me) to buy scrap to try and resell. So far I only have my gas and my own time in this. A little bit of extra cash in tools but I also use those for around the house chores/projects as well. Is it profitable for me? Heck yeah. Would I quit my day job to do it - oh hell no.

Part Time,

I've been saying this for years.
There's folks on here that love a good auction for scrap, and while sometimes you can find some good hidden treasure, at the end of the day, you're paying money to roll the dice as to whether or not you will come out ahead. If you're a hobbyist or pensioner and don't care either way, then cool. But this isn't a sustainable business model and can never be.
Free stuff, no matter what it is, will always be profit. It's up to you as to how much. You can be the guy that picks up stuff on trash day, or have a legitimate operation.
I went from the guy in a white cargo van, picking scrap from trash to having a legit warehouse dealing with computer stores/municipalities/transfer stations across three states and now I run a business. Went from 9-5 punching a clock and doing scrap on the side to dealing with scrap full time. Like with anything else, how much you make is dependent upon how much time you want to put into it and if it makes sense to keep it as a "side hustle" (hate that new fangled kid term) or fully jump in.
Where you live should be a consideration as well. You see these guys on youtube making a living on scrapping and reselling. While that is awesome to see and what makes America great (and is great youtube content), what they neglect to tell you is that they live in the Louisiana swamp, rural SC, and generally areas that offer relatively lower costs of living. You won't find these people doing this and making content, for example, in New York/MA/CT or the more expensve states. And if you do, it's definitely not your everyday Joe.
One guy for example, who will remain unnamed, gets by scrapping and reselling and he broke down his expenses. He mentioned that his mortgage was $600/month. His entire operation would grind to a halt in NY where the average 30 year mortgage is about $1600/month, and not for anything fancy.
Anyways, point is: if everything is free, the sky is the limit. You just have to be the guy/gal available to grab it, and let everyone that you can know about it. Stuff will flow in.

Helpful tip on telling everyone:
Get a free VoIP phone number. One just outside your area.
I have a google voice number that’s technically a Madison number, out of a small community between Madison and Milwaukee.
Why? It’s a tech rust belt out there. Sure, it’s a few hours drive each way. And I turn down 1 washing machine calls. (And redirect them to a local scrapper there who can handle it). But an abandoned office building scheduled for demo brought me 50 IBM PC/XT units. PLUS a 5655 “PC” used as a server filled with a literal dozen old CB 20MB hard drives!

Four of the drives WORKED! Which I swapped for a brand new OWC Thunderbolt 3 8 bay mini-rack.
I scavenged parts from multiple XTs to fix a half dozen computers missing components. An Atari 800XE, a rom swap on a Tandy. Etc.
But what relates to boardsort here, most of the units had a Signit88 replacement processors. Which varied between 8088 and Motorola CPU rates.
Woohoo!

If you have a truck/suv and trailer hookups:
Grab a free number.
Drive up to the area targeted, drop a few hundred flyers in mailboxes or hand them to receptionists.

The only down side to these free numbers is the constant flow of spam calls. Which you can’t just ignore.
Fake Spectrum and fake /insurance call me all day long.

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Hey los, I’m a hour from Madison, and 40 min from Milwaukee. Small world……

Smaller, if they increase the speed limits just slightly. Lol.

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