I’m sure even a guy named Cletus could find such a thing were he looking for it. Maybe even in the dark.
Trade them in to who, Microsoft? Fucking Aquaman?!
If it was really that important to them, they’d have a trade-in program like the cell companies do.
Hell, I can donate my PC to a school or something, but no-one’s going to buy it, and I’d probably have to pay to have it recycled. Fortunately, this perfectly good machine is recent enough that it is supposed to be able to run Windows 11.
I remember over 20 years ago trying to donate monitors from the business I worked for, and nobody wanted them. I called around to multiple schools and charities. I ended up chucking them into a landfill. (That was before the landfills had rules against that.)
Doesn’t Staples take old electronics that people want to recycle? That is, assuming you have a Staples within reasonable distance?
Don’t know about Staples, but Best Buy has taken my last 3-4 old computers and tablets. Haven’t tried a monitor, however.
Were they old CRT monitors? They typically have a lot of lead in 'em, and very few places are qualified to handle them for scrap.
Modern flatscreen LCDs are a lot easier to recycle.
Does anybody pay you anything for turning them in, though?
The usual meaning of “trade in” is that you get significant credit on the next purchase in return for the value of what you’re trading in. If the value of what you’re bringing in is zero (let alone if it’s a negative and you had to pay them to take it), then IMO it’s not a trade in.
Our county recycling center has an entire section just for electronics. They will take anything. Public hours are only twice a week, so they have a constant stream of cars bringing in everything, including pills, oils, batteries, plastics, and a half dozen others as well.
Check your county. They may have similar good services.
They were, yes. This was 2002 if I remember properly so CRTs were still a pretty standard monitor to use, but nobody wanted them.
And I believe mercury, and some other nasty stuff, which is why not long after the landfills would never take them (I suspect a local environmental law kicked in). But at the time they didn’t care.
Later I found a local store in the area (I worked in Seattle at the time) called “RE-PC” which would let you drop off old electronics and they’d dispose of it for you (and I looked them up, they still exist). And then years later a huge service statewide that would take electronics at drop-off places which is still around today.
Apparently RE-PC does…
The computer store I worked at (my first IT job) also took in old computers. We used a pricing guide sort of like this one:
Though the guide we used had the resale value, not the price we’d actually pay people to take in their old junk. So many times a hopeful person would bring in their computer trying to make money and I’d have to show them the book literally saying it was worth $1, and point out that would be what we sold it for, and so we’d have to give them less than that amount to make a profit (if it was even worth the effort, which it obviously wasn’t). It was very useful to have an actual guide to show people so they’d know we weren’t just trying to insult them and we weren’t making it up when we told them how little their equipment was worth.
And much easier to carry. I worked for 30 years in IT, and in the days of CRTs I almost broke my back schlepping all those monitors around, stairs up and down, especially in their final days when the real big ones became available. LCD monitors saved my back, and now that I’m retired I never have back pain.
About 20 years ago, my (now ex) BIL needed to borrow a monitor for something. I had a very nice, very large, very heavy CRT that I lent him since I had just picked up a new, and my first, flat panel monitor. A few months later I was nagging him for it back since he has a tendency to forget that kind of stuff. When he brought back to me, I moved it back to my basement where my computer stuff was and I knew I screwed up. I didn’t have any use for it, and should’ve just let him keep it so it would’ve been his problem. 20 years later and it hasn’t moved from that spot. It’s kinda in the way too.
Goodwil,. maybe.
Same here. A larger CRT is something that it might take two grown men of moderate strength to lift safely. More than once I injured myself with them. Fortunately, I was in my 20s at the time so recovering wasn’t difficult. I wouldn’t even think about it now.
But I will say, swinging a CRT by the integrated VGA video cable to hurl it like a hammer throw into a landfill was therapeutic. (You could only get away with it on the smaller ones of course.)
I probably shared this story before, but I once had a Packard Bell CRT monitor that died on me. At the time I was scraping by at the poverty level (the only reason I could afford a PC was because I built it with spare parts from the store I worked at) and I didn’t ever want to waste anything. I cut off the video cable, found a pad of foam rubber, and screwed that pad into the top of the monitor by hand with a screwdriver and some wood screws. (It was easy because there was a plastic grill on top to vent out heat and the screws went right into it.)
The end result was a butt-ugly thing that made a great footstool. It could tilt and swivel and was just the right height. I put it in front of an old chair and it made for a comfortable place to read books. Garbage chic.
My limit for carrying on my own was a 17", with the screen side against my belly because that was the heavier end. Any monitor larger than that needed four hands.
Just a reminder, a kindergarten mod, as it were…
We are not talking about sensible people doing good recycling things. This thread is about disasters. Idiocy. People not using their brain too hard, lest it combust.
These people:
But what is the current market price for old computers?
That reads to me as that they’ll pay you if you bring something in that’s readily marketable; but it doesn’t read to me that they’ll pay you for anything and everything that they take.
In the late 1990s, I drove a 1994 Honda Accord sedan and once bought a 17" CRT monitor for the office but could not get it in the box in the trunk. I think it fit on the front passenger seat though I can’t remember if I had to unbox it to do so. Flatscreen monitors are so much easier to move.
I’ll give you just one example that is pretty typical. A Dell Latitude 7420 All-In-One laptop was released 4 years ago. Brand new, the price was about $3,000.
Today I can get one on eBay for around $300. It lost 90% of its value in 4 years. And that is the resale price; if you were to try to dump it on a store that would resell it, you’d probably be lucky to get half of that money from them.