Where I live, in the northern central US, shops that sell "old" hardware just don't exist. What we do have is a couple e-waste services, and neither has a policy about selling "scrap" to willing buyers. Sadly, even though I have my name on a "call list" if they come across any PC's or parts, I rarely ever get a call.

Most people in my neck of the woods recycle all their daily goods, but just trash computers and parts becasue it's free, compared to paying for them to be recycled. So, a lot of old hardware is sitting in the landfill. Not good for the environment, or geeks like me.

As far as getting stuff at a reasonable price, rarely, but yes. Mostly from the e-waste recycling places on the very rare occasions I get a call.

Heck, I even have ads out locally saying I'm willing to pick up old hardware for free, no matter the condition. No need to pay for recycling, but I only get a few responses a year.

So, I feel your pain.

You guys have E-Waste places ....

Nearest one to me is 5 hours away and they dont sell to the public, here its due to privacy concerns and data protection so many E-Waste places wont sell or even give you gear even if the HDD/SSD has been removed.

It is what it is and I understand they cant get around the laws without risking their licences since they dont just deal with older hardware but also government/military/commercial e-waste.

In my state it’s illegal for eWaste centers here to sell anything related to electronics. They are worried they are going to get taken to court if someone turns on an old computer and it catches on fire. So much good stuff goes to waste 🙁 Pretty much the only option is eBay, and hope that you find a great deal where the seller doesn’t know what they are selling.

My local recycling centre also won't allow you to take away anything that somebody dumps. I did manage once to take away a retro PC but that's only because I saw it in the person's car before they dumped it and asked if they would mind giving it to me. It turned out to only be a Pentium 4 PC. The hard drive was removed. But for free I couldn't complain. It still had case, PSU, DVD drive, card reader, motherboard/CPU/RAM.
Would make a great Win9x PC with the addition of a suitable GPU.

yes, I suspect more functioning vintage stuff goes through recycling and is lost forever than is 'saved', a lot more (maybe a high multiple). Soon enough there wont be much left, there isn't much now.

You can already see the vast amount of early 64 bit, circa 2010, tech being thrown out without regard, that's been happening with older tech for 20+years.

the fear of being sued is part of it the reason you cannot get anything from recycling, there are no things you can sign to say you accept the danger for instance.

Funny fact, in my public (tax-funded) recycling station - everything is subject to be sold in their recycling store, unless specifically marked (by spraying your stuff with a spray paint located near the dumpsters).

How much I like this giving the opportunity to buy older functional hardware cheap, I also think it should be better informed that this is what happens. I found out, when I suddenly found 4 laptops on the shelf, that I hat gutted out myself and left in the recycling dumpster there. I hadn't even put the screws back in 🤣

They do however always remove harddrives.

The two recycling places near me are slightly different. One is a more local operation and requires nothing to get stuff. Cash and haul it away.

The other is quite a bit larger and does require you to sign a liability waiver for each visit that also basically states you're going to properly and safely recycle the item.

Both places accept e-waste, but a vast majority of what they both handle is not e-waste. I don't think I have a dedicated e-waste center near me. Probably why I don't get a lot of calls, and the fact I'm sure only a few people call when they feel like it. Most of the time I'm sure they can't be bothered for a small-fry like me. Also, like I said above, most people around here throw it all in the trash. Old PC parts rarely make it to a recycling place. Either way, it sucks.

I'm seriously thinking about putting at ad in the local paper. Right now it's Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace, and I truly despise FB Marketplace. CG is OK, but slow.

Yeah, I think the best strategy here is probably to run ads in your local Craigslist as well as local Community Center Message Boards (if they have a place for ads.) Offer to buy the old computers for $5-10 a piece (or whatever you think is a reasonable price), and mention that you also offer "secure data destruction services" done for free on the donated PCs.

RubDub2k wrote on 2025-03-03, 06:57:

So, for those of you out there that might also be in a similar situation of the computers being simultaneously actual trash while also being "priceless antiques", have you found any success in trying to get one of these systems for a reasonable price? It just frustrates me watching these systems be destroyed for no good reason 🙁

When I used to live back in the US (a little over a year ago, on East Coast), I would take regular bike rides around the various neighborhoods around me the day/night before their "trash collection day". Also did that with my car too if I was coming back from work or shopping. My luck with retro PCs hasn't been that great, but it hasn't been bad either - about 2 PCs per year, give or take (and maybe less in the last 5). Craigslist has actually been much better. Of course, worth noting is that I lived in a relatively population-dense area (many cities & towns close to one another, forming a large continuous suburban area).

Anyways... back to the trash picking stuff.
I eventually started picking up other stuff I'd find that might seem useful: speakers, TVs, dead car batteries, METAL AND WIRE OF ANY KIND... i.e. like a total scrapper (and later I noticed I wasn't the only one doing this in my neighborhoods.) Anyways, long story short, when I had to move, I went to recycle some of the metal and car batteries I had accumulated. While I was there putting my batteries on the scale, I saw a Hispanic guy open the gate of his pickup truck and haul metal items on the scale next to mine. Then I saw a PC in there - badly beaten up, with top and sides all destroyed. But I could see the motherboard, RAM, CPU, cooler, PSU, and optical drive were still in it and the mobo had what looked like an LGA socket of some sort. So I got his attention, pulled $5 out of my wallet and asked if I can buy it. After all, the optical drive would be worth that much if it worked. He looked at it and said "of course!" To him, it was just metal scrap, and he probably wasn't going to get much... maybe cents on the dollar given the weight. So I gave him the $5 and he gave me the PC. I asked if there were any other PC parts, but he replied he didn't find any last night. He said, however, that he does find PCs every once in a while and asked if we wanted to exchange phone numbers so he can call or text me when he does and see if I want to buy anything before he gives it for scrap. So I very excitingly gave him my number. Unfortunately, the story ends with the fact that I did this cleanup literally just about a week before I had to terminate my phone number/account (due to moving abroad). So I don't know if he ever tried to call me back or not. But either way, I thought it was worth it for that one week, just to see what would happen.
So I think this is another way to get such PCs - just go to various metal recycling places and look for scrappers that might be willing to sell you what they have and make more than they would from the scrap metal.

Apart from these strategies / things to try, there really isn't much else... at least where I used to live.
Well, I did meet a guy through Craigslist who had a friend that worked at an e-recycler place, and I managed to get two CRT monitors from him. But that was an exception, because he said the recycling place looses money when they have to recycle CRTs (and they are obligated to collect them and dispose of them as per county rules), so they are always OK if someone is willing to take some from them... but only through that person that worked in the recycling place, as, like others posted here, there was a policy that nothing could get sold out of that recycling place.
Unfortunately, this too happened just weeks before I had to move out... so I didn't get more chances to talk to the guy and maybe get more CRTs. The two I picked up I left at a friend's house, along with a box of my own personal stuff. I'll probably "get rid of these" (sell them or find someone interested) down the road when I go visit them. Same with that PC I picked from the Hispanic guy at the recycler place. But I had to save these.

So anyways... there are ways, but it does depend a lot on where you live and how close you are to a larger populated area.

Also, I forgot to mention, but as I was donating some stuff to a local thrift store, I noticed one day they also had a Pentium3/4 era beige PC with a GeForce FX series video card in it... going for $20, untested. Unfortunately, this was literally 2 days before moving out of the country, so I decided not to buy it and give this opportunity to someone else. So no idea what happened to that. But worth mentioning here is that some thrift stores may also have such things once in a while (not Goodwill, though - I think they have a problem where they collect all PCs and laptops and sell those off to a recycler or something similar, because I've never seen one make it through onto the sales floor.) FWIW, the thrift store where I saw that PC was a small independent one. I've also found pawn shops to have such stuff once in a while. And very occasionally, even Habitat for Humanity. So go to those places, become a known and well-intentioned regular, and then see if you can establish some contacts with the staff there.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-03-03, 13:46:

Funny fact, in my public (tax-funded) recycling station - everything is subject to be sold in their recycling store, unless specifically marked (by spraying your stuff with a spray paint located near the dumpsters).

Wow, no wonder North European countries like yours are doing so well - you actually have laws / policies that make sense.
I really wish more places around the world (particularly in "developed" / "1st world" countries) would adopt laws and policies like that.

We used to have a recycling place near me that sold pretty much anything they brought in. Unfortunately they closed down around 6 or 7 years ago.

Near that place, another company opened up that sold refurb computers and parts. I got a few parts for them a few years ago. Pretty sure they closed down soon after that.

Everywhere else that I know of around here that does recycling doesn't sell anything, at least to the general public. My guess is that a bunch of it ends up on eBay.

I thought US e-waste stores were good for parts because of the data protection required for selling complete systems.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2025-03-04, 20:56:

I thought US e-waste stores were good for parts because of the data protection required for selling complete systems.

Where I live, you can only get what they offer, and there is never data storage devices available, of any kind.

Never seen a phone or tablet there, no drives of any kind. All laptops, desktops, cameras, etc. all say "no drives included". I assume they do this to get around that data protection liability.

Unless you are connected to forums that have retro sales pages you're typically confined to ebay deals. I am from the other side of the world and managed to find a 1GHz P3 package with good board and RAM from Europe. But costly @ $US100+.

StriderTR wrote on 2025-03-05, 05:37:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2025-03-04, 20:56:

I thought US e-waste stores were good for parts because of the data protection required for selling complete systems.

Where I live, you can only get what they offer, and there is never data storage devices available, of any kind.

Never seen a phone or tablet there, no drives of any kind. All laptops, desktops, cameras, etc. all say "no drives included". I assume they do this to get around that data protection liability.

here in Australia they simply refuse to sell anything citing the laws concerning e-waste and liability and even if you manage to argue the point and offer to sign a waiver they then start citing data protection laws which here in Australia are strict and that they could lose their licences/contracts if they get found selling hardware.

Australia honestly has some really stupid laws and many more that have simply never been updated for modern IT so a lot of retro gear that goes to e-waste gets shredded.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-03-05, 09:30:

here in Australia they simply refuse to sell anything citing the laws concerning e-waste and liability.

Australia honestly has some really stupid laws and many more that have simply never been updated for modern IT so a lot of retro gear that goes to e-waste gets shredded.

I thought only Queensland had these stupid laws. Im shocked other states have them too.

zuldan wrote on 2025-03-05, 09:32:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-03-05, 09:30:

here in Australia they simply refuse to sell anything citing the laws concerning e-waste and liability.

Australia honestly has some really stupid laws and many more that have simply never been updated for modern IT so a lot of retro gear that goes to e-waste gets shredded.

I thought only Queensland had these stupid laws. Im shocked other states have them too.

Mate SA is THE nanny state, you want the government protecting you then SA is where you want to be, it was SA that for the longest time was the reason Australia never had R18 ratings for games or Ratings for adult games.

It was our Attorney General Michael Atkinson that refused to allow the ratings or updating of laws due to morality reasons. He was also the one pushing for Australian citizens to require display of real First and Last names to post on the internet. (As in you had zero anonymity)

He was an utter Catholic clown and Im glad he is gone.

There are states here in the US where such "stupid" laws exist as well, thankfully, I live it one where they're a bit more forgiving.

Sadly, many of these such laws are written by people, perhaps with good intentions, but who lack any real understanding of the subject matter in terms of technology.

Still, even though where I live they will sell many things to the public, they don't have a storefront. You can't just walk in whenever you want. They have posted specific date and times, or you get on a call list. Not the best, but better than many other areas.

Working as an outsourced IT technician I'd come across interesting hardware from time to time.
Some companies were more than happy for me to take old hardware, Saves them having to pay and arrange someone to do it.

However it's becoming more and more common that the response will be no.
Even if I offer to wipe hard drives or remove it completely it's still no as they want to have some kind of paperwork showing x amount of computers been sent off for disposal.
I do understand, often the decision maker is an office manager, secretary or similar who just got stuck with the job of clearing out the old hardware.
For them it's not worth the risk or time to find out from management if they are ok with it, or understand any data security or Enviromental laws.
They just want that bit of paper that says "we disposed of properly" if anything bad happens it's the ewaste company not them who's in trouble.
I can imagine recycle center workers are much the same. Not worth loosing a job, much easier to just say no to everything.

I do wonder though how much of this is purely economic though.
Like the Cash for Clunkers car scrappage scheme. While it originally was supposed to be to get polluting cars off the road, at least in the UK they admitted it was also to help the car industry.
Many instances of classic or lower emission cars HAD to be scrapped if traded in, no exceptions.

chinny22 wrote on 2025-03-06, 04:32:

Working as an outsourced IT technician I'd come across interesting hardware from time to time. Some companies were more than hap […]
Show full quote

Working as an outsourced IT technician I'd come across interesting hardware from time to time.
Some companies were more than happy for me to take old hardware, Saves them having to pay and arrange someone to do it.

However it's becoming more and more common that the response will be no.
Even if I offer to wipe hard drives or remove it completely it's still no as they want to have some kind of paperwork showing x amount of computers been sent off for disposal.
I do understand, often the decision maker is an office manager, secretary or similar who just got stuck with the job of clearing out the old hardware.
For them it's not worth the risk or time to find out from management if they are ok with it, or understand any data security or Enviromental laws.
They just want that bit of paper that says "we disposed of properly" if anything bad happens it's the ewaste company not them who's in trouble.
I can imagine recycle center workers are much the same. Not worth loosing a job, much easier to just say no to everything.

I do wonder though how much of this is purely economic though.
Like the Cash for Clunkers car scrappage scheme. While it originally was supposed to be to get polluting cars off the road, at least in the UK they admitted it was also to help the car industry.
Many instances of classic or lower emission cars HAD to be scrapped if traded in, no exceptions.

i guess the answer is to go self employed as a middle-man e-waste collector giving yourself time to pick through. Having said that there are probably codes and regulations you have to abide by to become an e-waste collector that forbid anything interesting or useful happening

with cars i often wonder, an old car might be more polluting - i'm aware of features in modern cars that reduce exhaust particulate problems for instance - but i think creating a whole new car must be more polluting not just in the short term but for many years of that cars life. If nothing else an old car is a "sunk cost" in terms of its initial environmental impact. Unless i'm wrong and new cars have much less environmental impact than i thought

incidentally i think the same about old computers - as long as you are using them then you are not creating 'demand' for a new set of rare earth metals to be dug up. Doesn't work with us vintage enthusiasts though, we just get them anyway 😀

In the county next to me, they have an e-waste program that is very organized and they sell stuff on Ebay as "Biff_Howard_Tannen" in the "Bits Please" store.

My city? I don't know what they do with it once it goes into the city recycle bin.