For a buyer a complete system is usually better value than getting individual parts. However many people are just after a specific part or two. So it's difficult to say.

I would sell each part individually as this has always worked best for me. Sure it's more work, but it is what it is.

Also value all the items and think if it's actually worth it. I have a lot of parts that I could sell but the money doesn't make a difference and they will only slowly go up in value. Plus it took me a while to get them.

Good luck!

Complete PCs: sometimes sells faster and you can throw stuff in for free. But it is challenging to sell complete systems. Most sell <$70 with shipping. Unless it is really desirable (brand, boxes, specifications, 3D card, rare sound card).

Parts are even harder. Generic PCI VGA, ISA / PCI / MCA NICs, 30/72 PIN SIMMs and so on typically do not yield much. CRTs are a disaster to ship. MOBOs are good when Asus or other desirable brands. Older MOBOs sometimes sell as well.

You can also sell all is one lot but usually for C on the $ compared to piecemeal. Unless you have high value collectibles or get luck someone is willing to shell out $.

Vintage Computer Forum and Amibay are good selling places. Other specialty forums / sites as well. eBay is a problematic venue: a lot of buyer fraud goes on.

The problem with complete systems is the cost of shipping. People do not like spending $ on it.

I dunno, every time I tried to sell complete systems I usually had few bids but several messages asking me to part them out.

For something like a PC I'd rather buy piecemeal and make it myself - half the fun is building it, and its ultimately cheaper (the whole is more than the sum of its parts). I suspect most others who are interested in this sort of hobby are going to be inclined the same way.

Thanks for the advice. DonutKing said what I thought, more request to part out than bids. And building it is the fun part. As mentioned shipping is a pain with weight, and I've shipped a 20" and two 24" for about the bid price. This computer is an all steel slide out MB variety and will weigh a bit with or without guts, so I was thinking whole. Actually 'as was' it is parted out since no monitors or the two under monitor cases that where with it. And it's raid cage is still in use in another machine. An all steel dual head 4 channel scsi and floptical with a soft menu socket 7 NT box is pretty rare I think. A pretty penny when I built it. It's been running for a few days, and I still like it, but it's no gamer, and it's business use is long gone. I was into emulators under NT but have none of that software anymore or the ultra tweaked NT that did what I now can't figure out. I wiped and used a disc from it years ago and reloaded it yesterday only to find it is NT 4 a. I have no idea, but must be sp0. I found SP5 in my archive on a CD, but wiped all collected NT stuff at some point. Hardware is different, so I got the pre ATI Hydravision loaded (2MB each whohoo) and sound, and the floptical software was on an unreadable original floppy and my archive has the files without instructions? Something needs loaded, like an overlay, I can't remember. The controller had a bios setting but works once per boot and won't flush on eject. Maybe piece that out with the stack of disc to someone that already has one and knows, and it can go into non-pc's. I want to git rid of it all so I stop playing with it. I still have a LX, two BX, 3 HE's and 2 Q35's I like. It was interesting to see a 15mb to desktop load and 90% free, that's tight.

If you want to sell a lot of parts quickly, build systems but be prepared to take a hit on the price compared to what you would get for individual parts. If you aren't in a hurry and would rather sell for more money, then sell the parts individually.

Building systems also gives you the ability to rid yourself of some of your more common parts by bundling them. Parts that are easy to find won't sell very well on their own because there are so many of them available, better to bundle those with a system.

Personally I do not believe self build is cheaper. I find $70 including shipping for a complete desktop (MOBO, HDD, RAM, VGA, FDD, PSU, CD-ROM) is a lot cheaper actually than buying all these parts individually of eBay. When you have access to cheap spare parts outside eBay it may very well turn out to be cheaper. In my case eBay is really my only option and perhaps sometimes Craigslist / Bonanza. But then you go into a lot of risk of non shipping and/or gas + tolls + parking and what have you. That is the downside of living on an island. 😊

Selling spare parts is not that easy. As mentioned many parts are very common so their value is low. I am not sure it is worth it to sell a VGA for $10 for instance. After PayPal / eBay / shipping / driving to the PO / printing you may have a $3 rake. Rather a waste of time in my personal opinion. 😈

Also full systems tend to be like the famous Forrest Gump quote:

"...like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're going to get."

Good point. So far I have been lucky. The 4 IBMs, 1 NEC, 1 HP and 1 LT I bought all worked. Except 1 PS/2 8530 8086 that had 2 dead FDDs. And 1 Everex that has a bad FDD/HDD controller and bad VGA. 😁

DonutKing wrote:

I dunno, every time I tried to sell complete systems I usually had few bids but several messages asking me to part them out.

As a buyer I agree. A while ago I found a complete system on ebay with a Rendition card inside (mentioned this on the relevant thread here). After the auction expired I asked the seller about the card (I already have one, but I didn't like for it to go to waste, and it doesn't hurt to have a spare). I got the card for 10 € including shipping. The seller tried to sell the box again several times without a video card, but so far without luck. (I could have gotten the whole box for 20 € including shipping, but I just don't want to have the whole lot.)
Admittedly the system is not so hot, only a 266 MHz Celeron.

I think I'll try to sell the board complete (IT5H/233/128) as the most desirable piece and tier some freebies for higher bids. That way someone can buy up out of the pieces I have. Even today, if I wanted a MMX computer this might still be top on my list for a single socket. It was a nice weekend so I didn't get everything done, but I used it to validate the function of much stuff, video, nics, sound, scsi, and it had no issues. A matrox and a DAT and lots of media made it into the trash. Ran 98SE and NT4sp5 and it worked well. The IDE ports I can't test, and have never been tried.