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Learn to properly Sort, Sell, and Profit from your electronic scrap material.
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 Post subject: Where to begin.
PostPosted: Thu Feb 18, 2021 10:28 am 

Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2021 2:13 am
Posts: 1
Hello.
I am brand new and have been reading the posts. I must say that this is one of the greatest learning tools i've come across. So informative.. Awesome Job!!
With so much product, will you please direct me to a starting point.
I feel like I'm in kindergarten. I am teachable.
I think I have some of everything and a lil bit more.
Thanks for all the help. I look forward to this adventure.
The Arkansas Kat


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 Post subject: Re: Where to begin.
PostPosted: Thu Feb 18, 2021 4:07 pm 
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Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:57 pm
Posts: 9751
Location: Low DOS
Well I’m going to make an observation based assumption.
You’re posting on an escrap forum attached to an escrap company’s website so you want to escrap. Yes?

COVID has made life difficult for most of us non-inside escrappers. Which is why over the last 6 months or so. Which is why there’s been an uptick in “the hen did that change” posts as larger hoarders start digging through stuff of lesser value looking to get /something/ out the door.

Sourcing:
Right now on the free side of things the best way anyone can do is hop in your vehicle and go on early morning street runs looking for scrap.

Post local notices on Craigslist or the local paper’s free services offerings. And generally tell the public if they put it outside you’ll take it for no charge.
Just be clear on what, or what size, you’ll take. Not wanting to get stuck with build-in appliances I once stated “no large appliances” and wound up with a cube washer dryer set. Because Home Depot called them small. Lol.

For the more adventurous and more open to human contact people: there’s some huge sources out there waiting to be tapped.
Most cost some level of up front output so use the forums and payout list photos to guide you on what it hints are worth.

Easy:pay for it.

Storage unit auctions and business surplus.
You’re gonna pay here, cash, so be prepared for that. Real life isn’t like storage wars. Assuming you get to look at all they usually cut the look, open the door, and start bidding. No looking time. If you see good stuff in original boxes walk away. You’re out of class and the ebay sellers WILL outbid you OR push the price over value. Don’t get into bidding wars. Nobody wins then.

Surplus, returns, and abandonment:
This comes in two types. Mixed pallet or single item pallet.
Surplus is castoff from larger organisations. May or may not work. Tech is rarely complete.

Returns are literally returned merchandise. Amazon, Best Buy, Office Max/Depot and Staples, Walmart and Tiger are the largest suppliers for return auctions. These are good for scraping because many resellers tend to shy away from the risk with damaged or opened items.

Abandonment auctions are usually the most expensive. Your looking at a pallet to a trailer load of an order that wasn’t paid for or couldn’t be delivered. Still some risk here in that some companies are up tight about acceptance and simply refuse an order that has any damage. Since it’s never been opened up you have no idea the condition of what your buying.
I bought a pallet of boxed coin dryers once hoping for a nice payday only to realise in loading the order into the trailer that the weight was WAY off. I bought replacement shells. Not whole machines.

Moderate:
Foreclosure and liquidation!
This is fairly easy to get involved in at the moment. COVID has destroyed business nation-wide.
They usually have a two-type system.
An on location blowout. Show up. Grab the card from a liquidation manager. (NEVER ask an employee, it’s the ultimate in rudeness!). The real deal is in the off-site auctions on what’s left.
This includes most used items, sales and marketing, display and merchandising, back office, and materials and handling.
Second-level liquidation sales have very little competition. The local scrapers and resellers have minimal interest as almost anything easy to flip is already gone. Here you can grab all sorts of valuable, but hard to deal with, stuff.
A dozen used laser printers. POS systems. If the company was big enough you get shipping and receiving equipment. Fork lifts. Roller and conveyor belt systems. Low value single input monitors, security, …. Things you’re not going to likely ebay.
On the other hand paying $500-$1000 for a totally dead LP forklift is a scrap dream.
Some tech experience and you can reprogram security equipment for resale. A dozen 80” LCD displays with a single coax or dvi or hdmi input are a pain to sell and even worse to ship. But the high end etched glass screens make them expensive when they do sell.
Both security and POS systems can be a literally gold mine in high telco boards.

Difficult:
Buy local loss and waste.
This takes a lot of work! You must understand the difference between “no” and “NO”. There is a difference here.
This is a case where you need to do some deep backend research. Most major retail companies are out as they can return damage for a partial-to-full refund.
So I’ll brake this up a bit.

Resale, consignment, donation, and thrift
The larger companies have a free to haul recycling agreement with a tech company. Goodwill uses Dell. Salvation Army and Savers, at least here, use HP.
They collect and recycle anything the store can’t sell or gets returned for free. No questions asked. So you’re fighting an uphill battle.
You need to make it worth their while to sort, and store, what could be easily just ‘goned’. And they WILL say no at first.

I’ll use my pre-COVID goodwill agreements as the example. They have a no questions asked return policy for everything with a receipt.
They also get a LOT do donations that can’t be sold.
First off what comes into store A is not sold at store A! You probably noticed your couch never went on the floor. Most damaged items are already sorted out of the stream before it gets to a local store. And no, there’s no way you can get to that. So: what you’re after is stuff that was missed or broken by a customer.
After months of weekly Being told no I found out when a district employee would be there, went on that day, and handed him a notarised agreement stating that I would permanently wave all return rights on all purchases to have access to PAY $0.25-$1.00 per damaged items in classes I chose. And to take those items at those rates no matter the condition. $250 drill with a damaged power cable. Junk VCR with toys jammed inside of it. $1 each. Desk Lamps, electrical shavers, power toothbrush, $0.50 each. Always scrap for me. Floor lamps, small appliances (microwave, toaster…) $1.00 each.
Etc
Doa handheld video games can be fixed and flip from my 25č for $5 or more. Sometimes much more. $50 for pocket football.
I opens up and swapped the wire on that drill and sold it for $100.
Health care and beauty items will have real junk boards or real high end. Lamps tend to give me real nice brass, copper, stainless.

Tinker shops and corner computer shops are another great source. Approach and offer to haul junk for free. A fair many say yes first try. If not come back a week later and offer to pay to haul it. That’s why these posts on boardsort are useful. Look at the shop inventory. Carefully. Decide how much of 50 lbs would be steel and modern lower value stuff, vs high value old equipment. How many TVs you need to deal with for those 70’s era clock radios. Etc.

The key to making money by spending it is to find your local scrap yards, figure out their prices and how they sort levels of metals. Do they pay for stainless separate or is it just all steel. Is 302 and 316 sorted. Do they take “transformers” or do they have grades for electrical scrap.
A TF from a microwave oven is worth more than a wall wart. Do they sort them.

Finally:
Picking up scrap from the street trash is a multi-billion dollar practice in this country. It’s fierce and people protect their routes. Be kind.
You can make friends in street scrap if you negotiate. I’ll take a and leave b for you situations. Never never fight. I’ve heard from friends of being shot at and know one person who was shot. It’s extremely rare but if the guy in the box truck says go away, best to go away. “I’m first” causes problems. I’ve face a knife blade or pipe more than once.
But It’s extremely rare.
Be civil. Most will even trade tips. (Out of room, floor stove a block over)!!!! I got a full 80s server tip in exchange for that.
In larger suburban areas In time you’ll learn the post run hangouts where the scrappers hang out for lunch and discuss their hauls. Strange stories: a man chasing a scrapper 4 blocks over a bike he threw out with a garbage sticker on it, only to put it back on the curb the following week!

Learn local scrap rules and customs and you can do well with it. Most long term street scrappers have a selected commodity they’re after and leave most other things behind. I focus on electronics and appliances. But leave anything big that I can’t fix. I haven’t done routes in months but I still get an occasional text when someone finds something for me. One couple even picks it up and gives it to me later for a small price.

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 Post subject: Re: Where to begin.
PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:33 pm 

Joined: Fri Feb 14, 2014 3:42 pm
Posts: 227
Location: Troy, NY
Just to boil that down to something more manageable...
If you didn't want to pay for material, you could go the garbage route as Lost says, sometimes you'll find interesting things, sometimes you won't. If you live in a state where bottle deposits are a thing (they are here in NY) you can fill up your truck easy and make $100 every morning before breakfast.
Easiest thing to do is make yourself known, either via flyers, website, or just go door to door, business to business (made a little difficult because of Covid) let them know what you're doing and offer to take the material.
Every business and every home has some form of junk equipment in a basement or attic, and 90% of the computer shops consider this equipment garbage and will pounce on the opportunity to just give you the boards/cases etc. for nothing. Then they don't have to pay to remove it. This is my experience anyway. Go to literally every establishment and give them your information, there is no risk in approaching selling e-waste in this manner, short of the owners telling to leave (or Covid).
You could go the auction/storage unit route, and sometimes you will find interesting things, but now you are paying for unknown. This doesn't make sense from a business perspective in the long term. Boardsort won't pay you for mystery and you shouldn't either, unless you know exactly what you are getting an do the math to make sure you can make some money.
Go off grid and get out there: contact schools, town offices, restaurants, you will be surprised what you will get when you ask.
Final point: try craigslist. Look for people selling vintage anything, and ask them if they have more stuff to get rid of. Chances are, they do.


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 Post subject: Re: Where to begin.
PostPosted: Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:18 pm 
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Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:57 pm
Posts: 9751
Location: Low DOS
I should clarify two things I said. I do NOT bid blind. I know people who do. But I’m generally not a fan of pure gambling. I point out my biggest mistake as a warning:
KNOW what you’re bidding on.

As Thearchivebooks points to clearly, just walk in and ask.
That works in street scrap. As long as it’s not some awful hour if they have a pile of something awesome, chance is they have more. Especially where pay-to-toss stickers exist.

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 Post subject: Re: Where to begin.
PostPosted: Wed Jun 16, 2021 10:12 am 

Joined: Sun Jun 13, 2021 7:10 pm
Posts: 1
This thread is very insightful for many of us who're starting this endeavor, I want to recommend this thread get pinned to the top just so it'll be seen by all members, new and old and help us all out. Thanks!


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