Non-Chemical PCI socket recovery

[g_axelsson]

I wouldn't call that dishonest. It might be that you know the material better than the other company and can profit on your knowledge.

Dishonest is if I lie about the scrap and claiming that it is unprocessed. If the buyer have the opportunity to examine the material and offer a price based on what they see then I don't feel it is wrong to cherrypick it first. Buyers that can't judge the material often pays lower to compensate but that creates a situation where someone with good knowledge can find a niche to make a profit.
Is removing CPU:s and memory to cherrypick?

For example where I live there are two scrap dealers, one paying 25 cents a kilo and the other one 50 cents, even for motherboards. The low prices is because they have no idea of what they buy and I have seen loads of complete hard drives among the circuit boards.
If I can compete with the scrap dealers and buy from their customers at 50 cents a kilo, cherry pick the good stuff (currently just storing it) and then sell the low grade cards to the company that pays the best then my scrap is basically free, just takes time to sort. They inspect and weigh the material when I get there and I'm paid close to power supply prices for everything I bring in. I don't feel I'm dishonest or that I have an obligation to educate them. They still earn money.

Usually though, I offer 20% more than the scrap dealers on general cards and decent prices on ram and CPU:s just so I get loyal suppliers. At least that's the plan as I don't have the volumes yet.

Göran

 

[MarcoP]

Kurt, I knew someone would say something about it. But I've got also prices for fully depopulated boards. I buy them cheap and the buyer knows exactly what I give him. I could have a better price for the untouched board but I've opted to go this way as his price match what I paid for.

Nothing dishonest here, the first time I took fully depopulated boards I told him "if you can give me something for those, good; otherwise I'll give them to you for free". He gave me a price for those and agreed I'll be back with a couple of samples to price. I did so and went with 3 samples, entire, ICs missing, ICs and all pins missing. The lot with only ICs missing was the price I was looking for. Old motherboards are almost fully depopulated and separated from the rest and he still pay me something for it.

I also wanted to add that when I brought in PCI cards with no fingers he gave me a price higher then the same cards with fingers. Off course I let him note the mistake, he smiled and thanked me. But it was obvious from his look that he was testing me. I want to be in business for a long time and the last thing I want to be called is crook. My name precede me here and no money are going to make it dirt.

Oh, at the beginning he used to hold the cards for a day so he could check them all and pay me the day after, last load I got paid straight away. I think this mean something.

Marco

Edit: spelling

 

[g_axelsson]

That is a much better deal than I have. I brought in a couple of hundred kilos of boards once and was told that I would only get half of what I got before because the guy that normally handled my lots had quit and they didn't know what they were buying.
That was after selling cards to them for several years. :evil:

On the other hand it makes it easy to compete with them and get my hands on good material at a very cheap price but still be the one that pays the best. :mrgreen:

Sorry for the topic drift...

Göran

 

[MarcoP]

Yeah, I feel I have a great deal and the last thing I want is to compete with them as they are the only one giving me this deal. I instead started buying from others and it was easy to buy RAM and CPU from then as they had been getting very low prices for those. Honestly I still pay lot less then what I should, but it's 3-5 times more then what they used to get making them extremely happy, this way I ensured the business with PCI cards and motherboards too. Plus I start getting early tips on other materials, and if I wasn't interested, if I was able to pull a better price then what they have, off course I would get something out of it and I did, in money or material.

Since I was a young kid I used to help my dad at the farm and at his almonds industry, I know how to move money around, I know how to cheat and I know how to be honest. Since now my knowledge on cheating have been used to defend my self, just like a sysadmin should know something about hacking, to defend him self.

From RAMs, with time and patience, I was able to pull out 1GB and 2GB working modules soon to be memtested and sold locally and or eBay for an added income. So far, I think in about 80 pounds of RAMs, I was able to pull 40 good sticks, at ~€10 each sounds like a jackpot to me.

 

[kurtak]

OK - now I understand - we are taking two very different things here

I was talking about buying boards based on there value/type "for there value/type" --- de-valuing them - then reselling them for there full value/type

Goran - believe me - when you are handling "large volumes" of boards - you don't have time to inspect every board to see if values are stripped off - you go through them to be sure they have been sorted to there right category &/or (if they are mixed) sort them to there right category for payment

you guys are taking about buying them "under value" (because you can - & nothing wrong with that) cherry picking - & then selling "under" (original) value - which is actually closer to there value after cherry picking

I actually do both --- I have clients that know their boards & value & bring them well sorted - they get paid according --- other clients don't know a brown board from a telcom board (no matter how much you try to teach them) & bring them ALL mixed - I do a "quick" three way sort - brown - low green & high green - they get paid according - 10 cents - 75 cents & $1.50

Sorry for the confusion - my bad

Kurt

 

[g_axelsson]

No worries! 8)

Right now I'm in the beginning of going through all the CPU:s I bought in the spring. So far I've found at least four that will bring in $50 or more each. About 10 of the PPro will go in the range of $30-$40 just because they are rare.

How about that for cherry picking? :mrgreen:

I've learned a lot about CPU collecting and their community over the last week. It takes a lot time and I have to clean the CPU:s up to present them but in the end I can save a few rare ones while making some more money and don't have to mess with chemicals.
A tip, there is something called SSpecs on many intel CPU:s, if you find a rare one it can bring in some serious money. And that also goes for pinless and fiber cpu:s that we usually think is close to junk. I've seen some pentium chip go for $100 each so I hope I'll find some of those...

Then when I'm left with common CPU:s and broken ones I'll send them to the acid bath. :twisted:

Göran

 

[MarcoP]

Kurt, as a buyer your self your reaction was fully justified. It's all good.

Göran, thanks for the tip. Will do some homework even if most, if not all, CPU pins are already bent as I buy them in buckets.

Marco

 

[Anonymous]

You're making me cry Goran. 8) 8)

 

[patnor1011]

What is that sspec?

 

[g_axelsson]

It is a stepping number and tells you which die or masks were used to build that chip. If you look at a 486 or more modern one you will often find a code starting with S, for example SX835 which is the code for one of the Pentium chips with the famous FDIV bug.

If you find one with a Q-code then it is a pre-production or engineer sample and those are always sought after.

Question : How do you get a gram of gold from a Pentium Pro?
Answer : Sell it to a collector for $30 and buy gold with the money!

:mrgreen:

Göran

 

[Anonymous]

Goran don't open up that old chestnut mate 8) 8)

 

[Grelko]

I actually do both --- I have clients that know their boards & value & bring them well sorted - they get paid according --- other clients don't know a brown board from a telcom board (no matter how much you try to teach them) & bring them ALL mixed - I do a "quick" three way sort - brown - low green & high green - they get paid according - 10 cents - 75 cents & $1.50
Kurt

If I could get prices like that from selling boards around here, I probably wouldn't try to process them myself.

Unless I feel like driving about two hours to Boardsort, the couple places in my area pay around 6 cents brown, 40 cents low green, 80 cents high green. That's one of the reasons I'm learning to do this myself. Then again, these places mainly deal with "scrap metal" and not many circuit boards. Sometimes I'll take brown boards to them because they start taking up space after a while.