# Can I make a living processing e-scrap?



## notaspambot369 (Jul 28, 2016)

New member here. I joined this forum in the hopes that it would help me make a living off of processing scrap electronics. A living for me is at least $535.00 CAD a month. Electronic scrap is likely the only thing I can get my hands on. Is this possible?


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## FrugalRefiner (Jul 28, 2016)

It is possible, but it won't happen quickly. 

If you want to devote a few years to studying to learn all the various processes you'll need to recover from the variety of materials, sourcing chemicals, practicing to get proficient, developing yield data to know what you can expect from the material that's available to _you_, establishing contacts to develop a steady stream of raw material, setting up a waste disposal system, etc., it can be done. There are several members here who have done it. Just be realistic and expect it to take a long time to get there.

Dave


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## silversaddle1 (Jul 28, 2016)

yes, yes you can. And you don't have to know how to refine anything either.

You can make a pretty good living if you just collect, take apart, and sell components of computers, etc. 

Sell the copper wire, the power supplies, the fingers, the CPU's, the expansion cards, the motherboards, the heat sinks, the HDD's the memory, and all the steel.

Collect it up and pile it up for a month and them sell it and start over. Go out to business's and make contacts and offer free recycling of e-scrap.

You will need these four things for sure. 1. A pick-up or truck. 2. A Dewalt 12 volt impact driver/screwgun. 3. A place to tear down and store materials. 4. The ambition to get up and get at it every day.

$535.00? Hell, you can do that in a week, sometimes 1 day if you really work it.


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## myfalconry76 (Jul 28, 2016)

Or you could continue to live by what ever means you are doing now! Be persistent at collecting and parting in your spare time. Save it all up for a few years. Till you have littoral tons of parted sorted stuff. Refine all your fairly easy gold bearing stuff like processors and ram or any part with gold finger. Sell all the rest. If you could collect a very large amount over a few years. You could take a few years off to go fishing. When your not fishing stock up on more.
These guys that own junk yards, have millions of dollars in junk cars. Every couple years they sell of a large portion after parting some out for usable parts. I don't see why this could be fine on the same level with escrap.
My grandfather started out with ten junk cars, in 4 years he made over a million dollar. Reivested that and continued the procces. Then he was bought out by Cisco Steele and bought a large portion of Alladin Steele! That I sold when he died! Unfortunately I'm not as frugal as he was. And have long spent that money!


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## 4metals (Jul 28, 2016)

One of the things I try to do as a moderator is look at threads and ask myself how can this thread appeal to more members? This thread has potential. 

True there is a lot of learning ahead for someone to start up from scratch. And the OP has been given some good kickoff advice. But often it is hard to maintain motivation if progress is slow, I guess that is the human part of all of us that we have to deal with. But if I were starting out with e-scrap the questions I would have which could yield positive results early on would be something like this;

What is the low hanging fruit. What components are easy to identify and separate out and process to get that first bead of gold? I know it still will entail some learning but I'm looking for some sort of encouragement here where a newbee could say, I can go and collect "X" and crop the fingers (for example) and strip the foils with some rather simple techniques and watch that jar of foils grow. Now that's encouragement, and before long a newbee can begin to see how profits can be made from scrapping and cherry picking values and refining. And before long these discussions lead to more advanced techniques and discussions of safe treatment of waste and recycling and everybody gains. 

So why don't some of the more experienced back-yard e-scrappers jump in here and make this a proud thread in the GRF tradition.


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## glorycloud (Jul 28, 2016)

Listen to silversaddle - it can be done!! Simple things like knowing how
to power something up and check BIOS for features like memory installed,
CPU(s) installed, drives installed, etc. can go a long way to selling locally
where you are, on ebay or when you grow your testing skills to maintenance
companies and dealers. Learn how to wipe hard drives and offer that as a service.
I do it for free and individuals and companies love me for it. i.e., I get stuff "free".

I have been doing this very thing since 1981 and I haven't starved yet. As with
all things, there have been some good times and some lean times but you can
do it if you are willing to work for it! 8)

One of my better days was picking up an IBM tape drive system for practically free
for someone who had to move and selling it to a dealer for about $50K! :shock: 
You may get a free server of Core i5 PC's that you part out and as silversaddle
has said, make $500 in a day.

As you go, study here and learn what to keep and refine one day for yourself.
It is daunting at first but this is a great resource and many who will help those
willing to learn.


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## g_axelsson (Jul 28, 2016)

There are some important points to remember.

- Not all scrap has large values hidden. Sometimes it's better to just sell it on to the next level and not waste time on extracting every last bit of value. PC power supplies for example.

- Try to find somewhere to sell every bit's and pieces so there will be minimal waste to deal with. If you find a buyer or even someone that just hauls plastics away then you have solved a problem that many have, what to do with the plastic scrap.

- If your scrap is low value then you need large volumes to make a good earning.

- If your scrap contains high value parts that can be resold then you need contacts and knowledge of the market. Glorycloud is a master of this area.

- Free is good, but you could even make a deal and be paid to haul scrap away.

- Sometimes you need to put up some money in the beginning to make more money in the end. If you don't have that it can take a lot of time to work up that buffer you need. I spent a lot a year ago on a single CPU scrap lot but in the end it was my income over the winter when work was scarce. Instead of making 40% on my investment I explored and learned two other markets, collectors of CPU:s and retrogamers. In the end it seems like I can make 150% of my investment but it took a lot of work.
It looks like PC-systems up to 486 and even early pentium is saleable today to the retrocomputing crowd. Some rare stuff can fetch quite good prices.

- Don't overlook the collectors market, some old PDP-8 and PDP-12 systems in good condition could fetch large sums. I made $3000+ in a month by just selling a carload of PDP-8E equipment eight years ago. Today I would probably get twice as much.

Start slow, learn the markets before starting to rely on it for a living.

Göran


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## Grelko (Jul 28, 2016)

notaspambot369 said:


> Electronic scrap is likely the only thing I can get my hands on. Is this possible?



I know this is more about E-scrap, but this makes it a bit easier to come up with the $535 CAD ($406.57 US right now)

I basically started out with my pickup truck going out on trash night to find scrap metal. After a couple months separating the motors, wire, aluminum, copper etc, I started keeping all of the circuitboards that I came across while taking things apart.

Sometimes if I see a washer, dryer or other items on the curb, I would ask if the person already has someone picking it up (they almost never do). I would let them know that I recycle scrap metal and electronics "not the old CRT Tvs" and many of them would UNLOAD a bunch of other scrap that they had lying around like grills, computers, or even an old vacuum.

For the cirtuit boards, I would separate all of the gold plated pins, IC chips, ram, wires, steel, aluminum heat sinks and a few other items until I get a nice pile of them. You can recover/refine them yourself, or just cherry pick and sell to Boardsort and many other places "including on here". Certain scrap yards will give decent prices for separated items also.

Depending where you live, you can easily get $200/month just for the scrap metal found on trash night, "I drive around 3 towns each week collecting" (the $200 is just the items from the curb, it doesn't include asking people, fixing items to sell, or selling working parts on E-bay and other sites). Plus, while selling all of the scrap, you can continue collecting circuit boards to recover/refine when you get a good amount.

Just picking up change off the ground, or out of the Coin Star machines, I might find an extra $10/month :lol:

You could even go around town with a lawn mower, rake, or shovel, depending on the time of the year, to mow lawns, shovel snow, or become a "neighborhood fix-it guy". Asking your neighbors to save their soda cans for you helps also.

$535 CAD/month can definately be done.


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## notaspambot369 (Jul 29, 2016)

Thank you all very much.


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## everydayisalesson (Jul 29, 2016)

As 4metals stated, it's nice to have something to look at. I figured out early on that until i knew how to handle waste and everything involved I decided not to buy the first chemical. Instead, I stacked my fingers and everything else as I researched. I kept the fingers on my bench for something to watch and keep me focused. And to this day, I carry a sim card. Every time I get in my pocket, it reminds me that everywhere I go, and everyone I speak to may be a business contact. Good luck, but keep in mind, it will be slow in the beginning so try not to get discouraged.


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