How to go about selling old computer bits and pieces

December 27, 2020 9:37 AM

Is it worthwhile to sell old computer components? (Warning: not a computer person)

First of all, no hard-drives with important information are involved here! That might be another question. The items are a lot of wires and components (mother boards, video cards, etc.), they were just stored in a filing cabinet.

I was going to recycle it, until I was informed that apparently people... buy used computer components and pieces. I'm not really into computers (aside from using them), so I guessed like most modern technology, most of it is junk. This shocked me a bit.

I went through one of the boxes and looked up one of the components, it ended up being the following video card: "Diamond Multimedia Monster 3D II PCI 8MB 22150105-005 3Dfx Voodoo 2 Karte Card," from looking online and around eBay, it seems like it could be sold for at least $100 (not sure if anyone is BUYING them though). Realistically, I don't *know* if the graphics card works... can I test it somehow? It's been sitting in a drawer for literally years!! With that in mind, I'd probably sell it for $75 on Facebook Marketplace, if I decide to sell it! Do people buy wires? There are TONS of them.

I guess my main question is... is this a worthwhile endeavor? I do have the time and CAN go through stuff right now. It would be nice to get a little money for this stuff if possible.

posted by VirginiaPlain to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

On eBay you can check "Completed Items" on the lefthand edge and it'll show you how much the thing actually sold for.

To be honest unless you have something really rare it's probably more work than it's worth to list stuff, box it up, ship it, and then deal with people who think you misrepresented the item.

You could try and sell all of it as a big untested lot of stuff to just get rid of it. I'd recycle it.
posted by gregr at 9:53 AM on December 27, 2020

If things are YEARS old, it's probably not worth the hassle. Those components will be out of date (and if you don't know if they work, who would want them?). If they are DECADES old, there might be some nostalgia market.
posted by rikschell at 9:56 AM on December 27, 2020

Good point, gregr. While I have the time to go through it, I have no patience for selling on eBay! Again, I'd chop the price in half and sell it on Facebook Marketplace or Kijiji. Selling on eBay doesn't seem like it'd be worth it.
posted by VirginiaPlain at 9:56 AM on December 27, 2020

So, that specific card is twenty years old. The only person who might pay $100 for it is a collector. That said, there are collectors who are specifically into retro computing hardware! Given that, I'd say ebay is a better bet than Facebook Marketplace, unless you live somewhere with a high density of nerds (like San Francisco / Santa Clara -- the craigslist scene around here is bananas but that probably doesn't help you in this situation). You can try FB Marketplace, but I bet you get much quicker response on eBay.

The bigger question for me is, if all the "wires" are that age, is there a market for them? If you post some photos of the connectors somewhere, people here (including me) can give advice about what might be valuable to someone and what's just scrap.
posted by Alterscape at 10:03 AM on December 27, 2020

I do not think this is worth the time and hassle to sell as items. I think you're probably looking at making $25 for the sale of the whole lot - collectors are likely not going to pay $100 for that graphics card unless it's new-in-box and even then $100 could be extremely optimistic - and just laying it all out, photographing it, and then boxing it all up will take at least 2 hours of your time. That's before you have to back-and-forth with someone to identify it and assess its value, then you have to catalog and list it, and then you have to get it to the buyer.

For the work involved it's likely not going to substantially improve your life if you get top penny for all of it. Lay it out and photograph it, put it in a box, place it on the marketplace of your choice for too much money/OBO, see what kind of offers you get, sell it, and if you accidentally lost an extra $20 on the deal because you didn't know the value of some widget well...Happy New Year to a lucky collector.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:14 AM on December 27, 2020

Alternately: check your local schools and programs to see if anyone's (in normal times) running any electronics or robotics programs for kids and accept donations. They probably can make use of odd wires and connectors and maybe even an old graphics card, or they can sell on anything they can identify as valuable.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:18 AM on December 27, 2020

"Diamond Multimedia Monster 3D II PCI 8MB 3Dfx Voodoo 2 Karte Card".

If the cables you’re describing are of a vintage with this card, which is worth approximately nothing, I would put all of it up on a freecycle site, free for pickup, and get it out of the house. Your time and space have value, and you would not likely get $100 for an intact working computer with this card in it.
posted by mhoye at 11:18 AM on December 27, 2020

The ROI on trying to sell most things from the era of that video card is probably negative if your time is valuable to you, particularly if you can't test them (and even if you could, that would substantially drive up your time investment). The market for stuff like that is a small number of collectors/people maintaining old hardware that can't change (computers used for things like controlling scientific devices are often required to have precise hardware) and hoarders.

Do people buy wires? There are TONS of them.

You could probably sell them as a lot for a few bucks. The most useful thing you might do with it is see if a thrift store would be interested in it. A used cable might be worth $1 but isn't worth spending a lot of time shopping for/shipping them.
posted by Candleman at 11:35 AM on December 27, 2020

Get a decent photo of the box of stuff, put it out on the curb, make a post on Nextdoor/whatever saying it's free, include the pic, and mention the graphics card.

...it'll be gone by tomorrow and, if not, then you know basically nobody wants it and it should be recycled.
posted by aramaic at 11:40 AM on December 27, 2020

Okay, so far, thanks for talking some sense into me and confirming my suspicions that this might not be worth the effort. Selling them was a fun fleeting thought, but to the eco-waste center they go!

I never realized that collectors for old computer parts exist, though, I'm trying to wrap my head around that. I guess this might be the modern equivalent of someone throwing away a Tiffany lamp, but oh well. I just want to get rid of this stuff!
posted by VirginiaPlain at 12:00 PM on December 27, 2020

It's pretty unlikely that you're throwing away tiffany lamps if the components aren't more than 25-30 years old, which is when PC hardware commodification really got into gear. There are a few exceptions for rarer hardware, and if you know the make & model numbers of what you have it's probably worth trolling ebay to check, but yeah. Most likely it's going to be more trouble than it's worth and recycling or donating to a place like FreeGeek is going to be a better use of time.
posted by Aleyn at 2:06 PM on December 27, 2020

Nthing that few will pay more than a pittance for years-old gear, it loses value pretty fast unless it's a collector's item (like an original Mac Classic, etc). Ordinary PC parts don't resell well. Of course no harm done if you try listing them for an asking price for a week or two first.

But! They can be useful to folks putting together working PCs for charitable purposes. There are usually a few organizations along these lines that either use the parts or properly dispose of them. Check online or ask around, around here (Seattle) there are a few where you can drop things off.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 2:40 PM on December 27, 2020

Don't know where in the world you are, but I'll second BlackLeotardFront's suggestion of finding local computer reuse/recycling organizations.

When we lived in Portland, OR it was FreeGeek. They go through the donated stuff, teach people to build computers with it, offer a volunteer-in-exchange-for-a-computer deal, run a tech thrift store, donate to local nonprofits, and are careful to properly recycle anything they couldn't reuse (e.g. getting all the batteries and components-containing-heavy-metals and whatnot into the correct hazmat recycling streams). I think they offer some of those services to the entire PNW, not just the Portland area.
posted by sibilatorix at 6:20 PM on December 27, 2020

FWIW the Voodoo 2 is not a historically insignificant GPU since it was the first card available that could do SLI. It's a little bit more interesting than just a random Radeon HD 4850 or whatever someone found lying around. That Linus Tech-tips youtuber guy made a video about it. Someone might actually want it. It's up to you whether you want to deal with the hassle of listing it for sale.

WRT the random cables, I'd either just toss them or throw them in my pile to be sold for scrap when the box fills up.
posted by glonous keming at 6:34 PM on December 27, 2020