3 Places to Look When Selling Electronics Hardware
Posted by Jessica Bosari on July 29, 2011 in Empower Yourself
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A brown out recently tanked two of my laptops. I still have two more in the house to use, but I’d have to wrench them away from the kids. A dear friend hooked me up with a killer deal on a new Acer to get me by.
Anyway, I heard from Kyle at PerkStreet that you can sell your electronics hardware on a few sites, so I thought I’d give them each a test drive. The main point of these sites is to keep electronics out of the trash and save the planet, but my focus for this article is money. I visited Gazelle, Nextworth and BuyMyTronics to peddle my wares. Here’s what I found:
Gazelle
To sell your gear at this site, first you look up what it’s worth. If you like the price, register to complete the transaction. Gazelle wasn’t interested in my non-functioning laptops. Out of curiosity, I priced my Motorola Bravo. They would have given me $66 for it. Since I only paid 1 penny, it would be a good deal. Still, you can have my Droid when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
NextWorth
You can get a quote on the spot from NextWorth, but you must register to complete a deal with the site. They pay after they receive it in a condition that matches your description. NextWorth offered me $4.75 cents for my Thinkpad, and $6.97 for my HP. The site offered me $59 for the Bravo. If you’re selling a functioning device, you probably want to go with Gazelle. If it’s totally broken, check with NextWorth.
BuyMyTronics
If you own an item on the list at BuyMyTronics, that company may buy it even if it doesn’t work. Sorry, they don’t take laptops. They were willing to pay $40 for my phone.
One thing all three places have in common is that they offer a pre-determined list of devices they will consider buying. It’s very easy to find out what they are willing to offer for your device. Just for giggles, I checked on eBay to see what my laptops would go far as “parts only.”
eBay
It looks like if I parted the Thinkpad out, it’s worth about $100. Even though I can’t tell if the internal components will work, I can sell the case and hinge, keypad, etc. I was also able to test the memory chips and they are fine. The HP could be worth even more because it has an optical drive and working power supply. So, for me, eBay’s still the way to go, but it’s a heck of a lot more work, worry and stress than just looking up a device on one of these three sites and shooting it off for a quick sale. But get this…the phone was going for $160 on eBay. At a quick glance, it seems that these sites offer a lot in convenience, but a lot less in value.
Have you ever sold an outdated or broken device? How did you do it honestly at the greatest value? Please meet us in the comments and share below.
Jessica Bosari is a PerkStreet Customer Columnist, as well as the Site Manager and Editor for billeater a blog with money-saving tips to lower your bills. When she’s not gathering money-saving tips, Jessica is feeding her geeky side with sci-fi movies, tech gadgets, useful apps and productivity tricks, just to keep things interesting. Read more of Jessica’s great financial advice on Perkstreet’s blog, or view her other money-saving tips at billeater.com.
Photo: meddygarnet
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