Yes, but 775 CPUs only. I bought about 50 of them once and only 2 of them were defective. I buy 775 lots regularly.
I stopped buying s478 and AM lots when I received a pack of CPUs with bent and broken pins. Not worth it, these are dropped a 100 times before they are sold.

Back before the sellers started asking stupid prices for them, yes.

Got a nice lot of Tualatin Pentium III CPUs and have also gotten lots of 486 class CPUs, S939, LGA775 and others.

Yeah, a single broken pin can kill a CPU or render it unstable.

nowadays buying single CPUs is often cheaper than buying these "CPU for gold" lots... people are absolutely insane what they pay for these.

I got lucky and got a lot from a former collector with a wide variety of nice cpus to chose from for a good price, and I've also repaired a whole bunch from scrap... I stopped looking at CPU lots pretty much as they always end up ridiculously expensive...
I'll scoop up the odd scrap lot here and there that has a few CPUs in it but that's about it.

I have sold a lot of packs of CPU-s, but in good condition and only because I had plenty and prizes were getting high. Collected so many and realized I do not need "modernish" stuff or 8bit/16bit stuff. Only left 486s to P3s. And the main clients were gold scrappers, but they pay good money, and I really do not care. I do not need them, they need them, it capitalism.

Few years ago I had an exclusive short lived access to a bunch of scrap 80s-90s Robot welding and CNC machines. So I made CPU and RAM and ROM pull from all of them well everything that was Socketed or even if not socketed then purple ceramic or golden, then just ripped and cut them out. I just did not had the time and space to take more. I got some nice old Intel and Motorola CPUs and so on.

Hardware job lots (not limiting to just CPU's I think its a good way to start out to get spares.
Most lots seem to have at least 1 item that's common but semi desirable, say a Sound blaster or S3 Virge.
Treat that as your max bid (maybe slight bit more) which means your getting the rest for free in a way.
Having a few extra Video, sound, Network cards, CPU, RAM, etc is always handy for testing no matter how crappy they are.

I've got must stuff now so only after very specific parts but did grab a job lot off Freecycle last year.
mostly IC's not even computer related. a matched pair of P2 400's, Slocket adapter that I cant remember I saw that in the photo or not, a PIC SCSI RAID card I'll probably never use and what I did see a AWE64 Gold which sadly did have some chips included but loose. I'm hoping to repair that one day. As a extra bonus it included a matched pair of PPro 200 gold tops that weren't in the photo. Pins are a mess but I'm hopeful.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-04-28, 10:12:

P3s. And the main clients were gold scrappers, but they pay good money, and I really do not care. I do not need them, they need them, it capitalism.

you're doing it wrong! it was supposed to be the other way around.
capitalism bad.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-04-28, 10:12:

And the main clients were gold scrappers, but they pay good money, and I really do not care.

Do scrappers pay more than collectors? It's hard to believe.

Well, if a guy comes up to buy a won auction, and I offer him some other chips and he says that they are smaller and I can pay you less, then what I suppose to think? Collectors usually do not buy chips by size.

And really how much can you ask for Pentium 4 and D Celeron 4 and D CPU-s??? And some unnamed old Gold/Green Ceramic special purpose CPUs?

Miphee wrote on 2021-04-28, 10:39:

Cyberdyne wrote on 2021-04-28, 10:12:

And the main clients were gold scrappers, but they pay good money, and I really do not care.

Do scrappers pay more than collectors? It's hard to believe.

watching prices on ebay for lots of scrap processors it certainly seems like it.

every non enthusiast write up I've seen about gold scrapping comes to the same conclusion: there is gold but takes way too long, with possible chemical danger, to make getting at it worth doing on any small 'garage' scale

so its something people do for fun ( in moderately wealthier countries anyway ) and the prices reflect a mix of premium for that fun or naivety or both (plus possible competition for test & resell one by one ppl)

good point about pins, rough handling ruins them but those lga 775's, im sure you could throw a bucket load down the stairs and most would still be fine (don't recommend!)

on other components i'd agree with chinny, who knows what you'll get but if the price is low then the chance of something worthy rises, and who knows what use the other things might be later on anyway.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-04-28, 08:22:

Back before the sellers started asking stupid prices for them, yes.

i sometimes follow bids just to see and then the prices aren't so silly, but the ones with high starting prices or reserves (that are never met) just go round and round

smaller job lots - not by weight but by selection, e.g. "11 lga 775 cpus" are ok, if you dont mind getting 9 low end ones in the mix

imi wrote on 2021-04-28, 11:52:

watching prices on ebay for lots of scrap processors it certainly seems like it.

I see the opposite. Someone bought 15 scrap AMD CPUs for $30 so that's $2 each. A typical AM CPU sells for $5 and more.
Love how Ebay is forcing me to change my browser with the stupid broken verification captcha I got for doing 5 searches in a row:
"If you are having difficulties with rendering of images on the above verification page, eBay suggests using the latest version of your browser, or an alternate browser listed in here"

I think the term "job lot" is weird. 😀 But I've bought some bulk lots of motherboards and video cards a few times.

A lot of 24 AGP video cards that I bought 10+ years ago has to be the greatest collecting score I ever had. At the time it was pretty good. Today it's just absurd when I look at the list vs what I paid. Much of my video card collection came from that buy.
I bought lots of CPUs a few times. Once was socket-370, once or twice with socket-A, and a few times with slot-1. I wish I had done it with Pentiums.
The socket-370 and slot-1 lots worked out well. Socket-A CPUs turn up dead an awful lot though. I'm not sure why so many people managed to break these, but they did.
I didn't have a lot of bent pins because the ones I bought were not advertised as "gold scrap". Straightening CPU pins is tedious and never seems to be fully achievable to perfection, so I dislike having to do it.
Anything from mPGA478 onward I *really* don't want to mess with bent pins. Socket-370 I can manage but I still don't like it.

Slot-1 is mostly bulletproof but a lot of those CPUs in bulk lots came from retired rackmount servers or something, equipped with cheap tinfoil heatsinks that can't be used without a wind tunnel to cool them.
I actually bought another lot of cheap slot-1 CPUs once just for the purpose of stealing their heatsinks. As a result I still have a bunch of bare P2 350MHz CPU cards now.

Bulk motherboards were lucrative sometimes, a waste other times. A long time ago I got some bulk lots that I wish I could have back, but they were sold off. I did keep a variety of interesting boards over the years though and have a sizable collection of them now.

I'm not sure what to make of "gold scrap" - I doubt very many people actually buy these for gold. It seems like it's just a weird search term everybody has learned to use, and a way for the seller to say "These will be jammed into a box as cheaply as possible with no protection". That's why I'm hesitant to buy things listed with that term.
Most recently I bought a "gold scrap" listing for 2 or 3 socket-7 430TX boards. I was a little worried about shipping damage but I don't believe in trying to change terms after buying something, so I didn't want to ask for much. Knowing the seller had probably already figured on a particular box and shipping cost (and hoping it wasn't pre-boxed), I only asked the seller if they'd be willing to put some scrap paper between the boards so they wouldn't be as likely to scratch each other up. When the box arrived the boards were individually bubble wrapped. It probably bulked up the box and made it more expensive to ship (and I wasn't paying much more than the likely postage cost) so that was an unexpected and nice surprise. The boards worked perfectly so that was a win.

Many years ago I used to buy bulk lots of motherboards, test/recap them, and sell them. There was one bulk seller who I tended to get a good yield from, but then at the end I started getting boxes full of DOAs. Stubborn as I am, I *still* have those boards, thinking one of these days I'll figure out what's wrong with them (they're mostly identical boards with similar symptoms).
When I moved I had to throw out some of the most hopeless parts, and boards I had already stolen components from. One of the dangers of buying bulk lots is you start to end up with a *lot* of clutter.

I bought a box of old CPUs once – mostly Socket 370 chips. Every one of them had bent pins, but it really wasn't too hard to straighten them out with a knife blade. Afterwards they would take a gentle tap to settle into the socket, but the majority of them turned out to work fine. Only a few of them were outright unusable due to lost pins. One or two of them didn't have an entry in the CPU-World database, so I dutifully submitted them.

I wound up selling most of them on eBay afterwards as a lot; I don't think I made much profit in the end. Bit of a pointless exercise.

shamino wrote on 2021-04-28, 23:36:

I think the term "job lot" is weird. 😀 But I've bought some bulk lots of motherboards and video cards a few times.

i enjoyed reading the various bulk adventures you've had 😀

Miphee wrote on 2021-04-28, 12:47:

I see the opposite. Someone bought 15 scrap AMD CPUs for $30 so that's $2 each. A typical AM CPU sells for $5 and more. Love how […]
Show full quote

imi wrote on 2021-04-28, 11:52:

watching prices on ebay for lots of scrap processors it certainly seems like it.

I see the opposite. Someone bought 15 scrap AMD CPUs for $30 so that's $2 each. A typical AM CPU sells for $5 and more.
Love how Ebay is forcing me to change my browser with the stupid broken verification captcha I got for doing 5 searches in a row:
"If you are having difficulties with rendering of images on the above verification page, eBay suggests using the latest version of your browser, or an alternate browser listed in here"

and I've seen lots of actually broken and unusable ceramic CPUs sell for hundreds of € while you can get single cpus for €5 or less if you're lucky... as soon as there's a PPro it always goes over €100 no matter how damaged, while single CPUs often sell for around €25.

sure there's the odd example of cpu lots going for cheap, but those are usually not big lots but just a handful of CPUs.

scrappers obviously don't care about buying single cpus, or little lots with a handful of them, they buy the lots that go by the kg and those curiously often end up more expensive /cpu than if you'd buy them single.

imi wrote on 2021-04-29, 10:08:

scrappers obviously don't care about buying single cpus, or little lots with a handful of them, they buy the lots that go by the kg and those curiously often end up more expensive /cpu than if you'd buy them single.

What's behind that phenomenon? I'd really like to know how much profit someone makes after extracting gold from 15 AMD CPUs.
Selling price of 15 AMD CPUs: $30.
Tools used to extract gold: $X
Time invested: X minutes
I've seen "pin bars" on Ebay, melted CPU pins molded into bars that sell for $36/100 g or $200/1,7 kg. Strange differences in prices here.
I just don't get the business behind this but it's everywhere on Ebay.

Miphee wrote on 2021-04-29, 17:48:

What's behind that phenomenon? I'd really like to know how much profit someone makes after extracting gold from 15 AMD CPUs.

There is no way that amateurs out there are making a profit on gold extraction unless they've been gifted:

• the tools and abundant chemicals required to process the material
• an industrial site on which to do this at scale
• the proper means to dispose of the toxic sludge that's left behind (which comprises 99% of what you get out of the process)
• a wage from one of those fabled jobs where they don't mind you not turning up for 15 years

Gold extraction is simply the get-rich-quick scheme of the day. Cody's Lab on YouTube has a video series on the subject which demonstrates the immense tedium required to obtain a tiny ball of the stuff. And he only made a profit through ad revenue and Patreon picking up the tab for all the materials.