Hi BoardSort folks. Stumbled across this site when browsing reddit, and realized BoardSort is less than an hour drive from me. I've browsed a couple of pages and topics so it looks like there is a solid itemized list of things that boardsort is willing to pay for, if separated/sorted.

Here's my situation; I'm a techie guy and have been the go to "old tech" hoarder for my friends and coworkers for about 25 years. Before I get too old and leave a huge mess for my kids to clean up, I have been making a solid effort to re-home/downsize/donate/scrap everything I'm not actively using. For my garage, workshop, and office, this is now including several hundred pounds of circuit boards I have harvested from PCs, servers, laptops, and network/AV equipment over the past 25-30 years, back to the Pentium Pro days. I also have several dozen smaller bins of video cards, sound cards, CPUs, and memory modules that were working pulls. I also have several piles of laptop computers, tablets, DVD drives, spinning hard drives, floppy drives, etc, and a giant tub full of heatsinks and cooling equipment. Finally I have several tubs of "a lot of project bits in a tub" that were going to be reassembled "some day," like the remnants of probably a dozen iPod Touches, etc.

I know that is a lot for a single person to be dealing with so I want to be as deliberate AND as time-efficient as possible in turning these materials in to BoardSort. Has anyone done something of this nature before and can give me a rundown of the best way to do this? My current thinking is sort into boxes by identifiable item from the quote list on the website, pack up and drive in. But if I can do some pre-processing of certain items to improve my experience on-site and make it easier on both me and the staff, I'm very inclined to do the work and bring as little junk as possible. It will probably be a very full SUV-load, possibly two, if I were to tear down everything I have.

Finally - is there a better option for 'salvaging' things like old GPU and sound card boards other than scrapping? it looks like the only product under 'test and buy' is Intel CPUs. I'd prefer to move these things forward into the retro computing scene if possible, but not sure I want to be shipping in bulk for something like ebay.

Many thanks for your inputs.

If you're not worried about getting the best payout you can sort less. If you want to get the most for your boards you'll want to sort as best as you can.

If time is not a factor and you know what you have works or could be salvaged, you could try ebay, or maybe other similar sites, to sell. Some people collect circuit boards for various reasons so if you have anything particularly rare this may be a good route to take. I've seen people with CPU displays and hard drive disk collections and hear board art is a thing as well. This will likely take awhile to list and wait for buyers though. You could put out an ad on Craigslist in hopes someone would take a lot. You could post some of the stuff here and see if anyone is interested. I know lostinlodos had a pretty extensive collection.

If scrapping is how you end up going, sort everything you can as best you can. If you do go in person, you can over-sort to an extent if your aim is getting a higher payout. For instance, if you had ten identical stereos with 5-6 boards that you took out, you could put the identical boards into 5-6 buckets to keep them sorted and, when you arrive, Boardsort could combine the 2 buckets of low grade and 3 buckets of high peripheral and so on. Obviously do try to combine some of it, otherwise you'll be hauling more buckets than boards, feel free to post pictures here if you need help.

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

Good advice, thank you. I've largely saved the loose boards to be "board art" but it's time i recognized i'm not really going to renovate my garage and hang the PCBs before I retire. I have too many hobbies and too many projects.

The biggest payout would be ebay.
The easiest payout would be Craigslist

For working retro stuff you have places like macari and that type. Mostly for crafters but a lot of retro tech in those apps too.
There’s also offer-up. The alternative to Craigslist.
I’ve used all the above.

If you want to literally give some away try freecycle.

Unfortunately you’re a long way from me. And I’m in the middle of multiple issues.
Depending on how long you are willing to sit on stuff I’d be able to drive out in mid to late spring for an afternoon sort. Something I’ve done often for those near me and occasionally for larger collections. Generally I’ll trade for a the ride and work for a system or two— because I’d buy some working or fixable things myself before they got scrapped.
Rest we can sort out for boardsort

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