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My grandfather owned a couple of wrecking/auto salvage yards and did well buying cars in various states of disrepair and would take them apart and sell the parts for far more than he would have sold the entire car in a one shot sale. I’m certain this is where I get my love of reselling used items from.
Steve has been kind enough to show us how he does it with stereos, electronics, and an organ.
Personally, we will do it with certain appliances that shipping the motorhead would cost more of the sale. Presto Salad shooters, blenders with glass containers, and food processors are things we look out for. Collector’s edition board games from the 90’s are often the victims of us pulling them apart. Tokens in one pile, instructions in another, pretend cash or cards in another.
Just the other day we had a microwave go out in the rental. It was 18 years old but had been very well maintained. We didn’t want to pay to dump it, so we pulled the glass plate and spinner ring and looked them up. Just those two parts sell well for about $60. So I investigated further. The door? Another $80. The wall bracket is $40. Just the three mounting bolts? $8. The fan, grease screens, fan, and vent deflector are all worth 20-30 each. The front panel looks like a franklin. There are other small electrical components inside the unit that I need to identify that look like they do well. And all look like quick sales.
I started out looking for a way to cover the cost of disposal and may well end up paying for the new microwave with only the cabinet and magnetron (this is what went out) to dispose of.
Anyone else have any favorite things to source and break apart that they would care to share?
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I frequently will end up with an old appliance from the 60’s or 70’s. It might be an electric frying pan or a warming plate. Often times the power cord will sell for almost the entire resale value of the appliance and ship very easily.
I recently has a thermos that just wasn’t worth selling, due to the weight. The stopper and cup sold easily and shipped cheaply.
I’ll also sell the pieces from a scrabble set, especially if there are some missing.
In the early days of Ebay, I sold used vintage motorcycle parts. The bikes were plentiful here in southern California and they were hurting for the parts on the east coast and in Europe. Those were the days.
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Thank you for the tip on the thermos! We have redonated some without thinking about it! D’oh!
While it’s not vintage, my motorcycle was the most sold production bike and production ended in 2009 (the year of mine). When I looked into selling it, it wasn’t worth much. So i started looking at taking it apart and hopefully will do much better.
I would love to have the space to part out bikes.
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I love this post, though I’m saddened to think of all the electronics I’ve thrown away in the past that I could have totally parted out and sold. I have several pieces of audio equipment in storage that I acquired in non-working order. On a whim, I checked out a Sony turntable I have on ebay. A working one is going for about $40 on average. But the individual parts were going for around $10-$15 each, and it looks like I can get about 8 or 10 individual parts listed.
That’s a great tip about appliances too! I wonder if vacuum sweepers would be profitable to part out? I’m always seeing them out on the curbs for trash pickup.
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Free sourcing! The only way to find out is run whatever brand and model with the word “replacement” in the search term. We’ve found that is the best term to find the parts listings. And it helps us identify the parts we don’t recognize. While I would just list the unidentifiable stuff as a “flux capacitor” Shan tells me that is inappropriate and a waste of time.
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I bought a box lot last year that included many many old Radio parts. I sold the NOS items on their own, but would take the various “junk” parts and group them into like lots of capacitors etc.
Each listing would be shipped in a flat rate padded envelope.. $20 here.. $30 there. I was very surprised.
It is amazing, but It’s almost all been sold.
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I love parting stuff out! Kirby vacs, Oster Kitchen Centers, Old Sunbeam Mixmasters, Rival meat slicers…I find them all the time at auctions and yard sales for $5. It is easy to make $100 or more by parting that stuff out. Makes it easier to ship, too.
We replaced our dishwasher, took apart our old one, and yep -it is going on ebay.
Broken vintage toys like Transformers are good to part out, too. I made a lot of cash off a $2.50 box of original Transformers parts that everyone else dismissed as garbage. 😀
-Liz
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