Find equipment, and scrap, at re-marketers/asset recovery

[NobleMetalWorks]

I met the owner of a re marketing company who purchases the contents of manufacturing facilities in Silicon Valley Ca, recently. In talking with him, initially to purchase an analytical scale and fume hood, I found out he has a lot of stuff he just simply doesn't know what to do with, and ends up selling to the scrap yards.

Amazing...

So he has about 28,000 sq feet of stuff, some of it decades old, that is just growing dust because he doesn't know what to do with it. He's allowed me free access to his warehouse, and even has taken me through some of the facilities he's closing down. A very nice guy. Here are just a few pictures I snapped of his warehouse, you can kind of get a feeling for the overwhelming mountain of "stuff".

If you are lucky to have a company like this in your area, I would encourage you to check them out. Call them up and make an appointment with them. They probably have equipment you can use to update your own operation, and you might even be able to pay for the equipment by processing some of their material for precious metals. That is the deal I have worked out with the owner of the company I am doing business with. Many times they have consumables that they do not need, want or know what to do with. I picked up 40 boxes of "Nitric Acid Gloves" or at least that's how it was labelled, for free along with pipettes, PH test strips, lab glass.

I would say this however, these guys have heard every negotiating tactic you can imagine and have probably forgotten more than you have learned. Just be super honest with them, it takes them off guard and they tend to treat you with a lot more respect. Your case of course might be different, but the few owners I have dealt with, all seem to be and respond, the same.

Scott

 

[MMFJ]

I sure miss Silicon Valley..... always found TONS of JUNK there....

Great find on this one, though I think there's plenty of other money to be made other than scrap - certainly would love to get the chance to prove that statement 8)

 

[element47.5]

There's great exhiliration wandering around scrap yards and depots of "stuff" like that. It makes one's mind wonder endlessly about all the work that was done, could have been done, how much (insane amounts) of money was spent buying or fabricating it, where it might have come from, what was made with it. For me it's like being a kid in a candy store. I recall very well wandering around lower NYC in the 1960's before the World Trade Ctr buildings were built in what was then known as "Radio Row" a whole section of the city where beginning after WW2, dozens and dozens of surplus electronic crap dealers sprung up. They didn't scrap hardly anything---they resold it as whatever it was. I used to take the bus from my suburban home in NJ for 55 cents and just wander around there all day. I could walk 20 miles just gawking at the weird stuff that was there. I'd look at a relay and think "Wow, I could build a B-29 if I only had.....". LOL.

Sadly, there are very, very few places like what you've pictured any more, operating as "surplus" stores. The liability of having goofball customers wandering around, the low, low value of used gear in an era where new stuff is always better and cheaper than stuff that's 5 or so years old. Peoples' stupid and inconsiderate habits of tearing open boxes and leaving the contents strewn all over the place because they want one connector. I am not especially in an accumulative mode these days, but I love wandering around places like that. It opens and expands the mind and frankly, there aren't that many places that do that, other than scenic or natural places or museums.