I have 2 19" Dell CRTs. I don’t know the model offhand, but they were quite nice at the time they were bought and still work well. They are flat-tubes (AKA Sony Trinitron). I seem to recall that some people in the visual arts still prefer CRTs due to their better color fidelity, or something like that. Any idea if they would be worth selling and where? Otherwise off to the recycler, as soon as I find one.
If you don’t find anyone to buy them, don’t recycle them. Contact your local school district and see if they are in need of monitors.
I had 6 CRTs in my basement last year (people kept buying LCDs and giving me their CRTs to store) and I gave them to the schools. They gave me a letter saying I donated $150 worth of computer equipment, for tax purposes.
donate them to a charity (Goodwill?).
Poor people use computers, too.
Knew a guy who worked for a computer recycling company (mostly, they resold stuff on eBay), and he said that they charged to take CRT monitors, as there was no market for them.
It may depend on where you live, but in Central Oregon, they’re (recyclable) garbage – you have to pay to have them taken away. When I had one, schools didn’t want it, and the Goodwill nearby had a sign threatening you with legal action if you dumped one on them overnight (well, that or anything else–but they wouldn’t take the CRT at all).
The bit about color accuracy of monitors is true: shops where color accuracy is very important tend to have issues with LCDs. But an old trinitron will have problems of its own (phosphors and other parts change over the monitor’s life), and these are places that will not be looking to buy/transport/store them singly, anyway.
Plus, there are some options for them now: HP makes a color-correct LCD if you’re not the kind that gets sticker shock easily. Several of the HD technologies for televisions are rapidly closing in on this space as well. Once these things are out the door, the technologies always get cheaper rapidly. Combine that with nobody still making CRTs, the obvious power, space, and weight advantages of an LCD, and the days of the CRT are long over now.
Toss it.
Yeah, but not in the garbage. There’s lots of toxic materials in them, including several pounds of lead. And in some jurisdictions (e.g. california), it’s illegal to dispose of them in landfills.
I asked some people about donation. It looks like the several charities I’ve contacted won’t take them, but I haven’t heard directly from all of them yet. Apparently, the schools don’t want them either, but I’ll call during the week. Typical. The school system is chronically under-funded and underperforming, and they specifically whine about needing money for “technology” (although I have my doubts about it’s usefulness in the classroom), but they won’t take perfectly usable materials.
But if they don’t have a computer to go with it then how are they going to use a CRT monitor? Anyone with an old desktop to drop off at the local grade school away is almost certainly going to have a monitor (or five) to make it a set. Stray tube monitors are just junk they have to clean up after.
I was able to give one away with an ad on craigslist. In fact, got about about 20 hits in the first hour.
I’ve gotten rid of them in the past with Craigslist or Freecycle, with some patience. It took a few weeks - far longer than most other items (including a crap TV/VCR, VCR broken, no remote - that went within hours).
Unfortunately, if you have a lot of them, this is difficult because organizations seldom want them - just individuals short on cash and looking to replace what they have. My company’s been sitting on a pallet of them ever since we switched to LCDs.
A major reason schools or charities might be refusing them is to do with electrical safety & liability - no charity shops here will touch such items any more.
You would get very little if you could sell it. There are people I’m sure would take it, because they have something worse. Goodwill doesn’t take computers, but they take old booze bottles and sell them with the vases. They are a bizarre charity. I do find twenty year old software, keyboards and other controllers. A note on a public bulletin board in the grocery store will probably sell it for $20.
I do computer support for half a dozen graphic design places and a couple print shops, not a single CRT among them.
In CA there is a program that charges a hazmat fee for monitor sales which are returned if you drop it off at some specified site. Most of the recyclers here don’t charge anything for their services and plenty of them are driving nice trucks.
Next time you have a card reader (a 711 is a favorite) or a few reels of DECtape lying around, see what they have to say. I’m sure a PET would draw some comments as well.
CRTs are one of the worst technologies ever mass-produced: They’re heavy, energy-hungry, toxic, fragile, and they degrade over time. Now that there’s no need for them, you can’t expect people to fall all over themselves to acquire them. Even antiquarian/collector interest is limited because most kinds were never rare and were never associated with particularly interesting systems.
A couple of months ago I put an ad up on craigslist for 15 CRT monitors of varying age. Specified that preference would be given to people who could take several.
Gone at the end of the day, in two loads.
I doubt they are worth anything. I had a 10 year old 34" CRT that I was happy to let my girlfriend’s brother take off my hands for free. It would probably cost me $50 just to get it disposed of.
I realize that this is a small market, but those of us in vision science are still mainly relying on CRTs because LCDs don’t have adequate temporal response for most purposes. The desirability will be a lot higher if your monitors have a high refresh rate, but I bet if you post them on Ebay you’d get a decent price.