Cleaning - What to do with 'leftovers'

[forrestc]

I've been accumulating electronic stuff for years - and recently I've decided it's time to lighten up here, mainly because I have lots of stuff I'll never use.

Things that have an invididual value on ebay are fairly easy to sell.    The question is, what to do with the others?

For instance, in the boxes I've gone through recently, there's a collection of random, unsorted through hole components (resistors, caps, diodes, transistors, etc).   Probably around 20,000 parts in total.   

Another box have various old development boards which I don't use anymore.

I also have a couple pieces of test equipment for which the value on ebay is far less than the pain it will be to sell them (for instance a GIANT old logic analyzer from like 20 years ago, which isn't as good as the USB ones today - they're selling on ebay, if at all, for a few dollars).

Lots of questionable dmms (freebies from vendors), more dev boards, components, and on and on.   

And so on.

None of these have any meaningful value individually so I'm trying to figure out how to best dispose of them.  Some of the stuff will just end up in the bin, but for alot of this I'd really like this to go to a good home.  But in the area I'm in, there really isn't anywhere to donate them to.

What do do?   

Ebay some as 'random assortments'?    (Pictures, etc)
Post them on here with 'free if you pay postage + packaging?'
Throw them in the bin?

What has worked for others?

[james_s]

I would say offer them here as random grab bags for the cost of postage or maybe a bit more to cover your time. Post some boxes on ebay with a picture, for example "3 pound electronic components grab bag" and see what you get for it. I have a hard time resisting grab bags like that to dig through looking for interesting treasures, which is probably why I need to do some similar cleaning soon. When I was younger I built all sorts of stuff out of parts I found in random assortments, I'm still occasionally using bits from a big box of components I bought at a garage sale nearly 30 years ago.

If it's worth your time, you could sort through some of it and pluck out some of the more interesting/valuable parts for individual sale, otherwise just sprinkle it into the grab bags. If some stuff is already sorted you could offer boxes of categories of parts like resistors, capacitors, etc. Those USPS flat rate boxes make it really easy to pack and send stuff since you can just tape it shut and buy the postage online.

Development boards can be interesting depending on what they are, maybe list those here?

Test equipment like the logic analyzer isn't worth shipping but you might get $25 for it locally fairly easily if you post it on craigslist, old equipment like that is fun to play with and if it has a CRT monitor in it there is some value in those for retro projects.

[edpalmer42]

Is there a makerspace near you?  Give it all to them.  If there's any value in the items, they'll use it.

Ed

[forrestc]

Whilst I normally would say what is rubbish to you is rubbish to others, it isn't always true. Can you list out and maybe photograph some of the more desirable stuff? There is always a chance someone here might want it or know someone.

Sometime as parts get older they may come to the attention of people working on equipment that is similarly older.

If you intend to sell stuff on Ebay that there is a reasonable chance someone will want, then I suggest also listing everything else in some form. Someone might want it, someone might want it with another more desirable thing and you can send them together, someone might be more inclined to drive over to collect it if they can get more stuff to make the trip worthwhile or failing that you can say to anyone who comes that there is free stuff.

Or just bite the bullet and chuck it and be done with it.

A lot of the stuff is just going into the trash heap.   The 'leftovers' are the things that I could envision wanting.   An example are all of the assorted caps I have.   I have a fairly deep 'junk box' of capacitors from nf to many uF, of various types, somewhat organized (by rough range, and type (i.e. electrolytic caps under 100uF)).   As the hobby has evolved into R&D, I've quit digging through many of these these for engineering.  Instead I went out and bought a good quality assortment which has pretty much all reasonable values and sizes in it.   That way I don't have to deal with the challenges of 'junk box' capacitors.   Doesn't make the old ones less valuable, just not valuable to me.

Also interesting are the leftover throughhole components from when we bought the P&P machine and converted to surface mount.  As a result, I've got thousands of certain values of resistors and/or capacitors.   Like something like Qty 10,000 120uF caps of fairly high voltage (at least 63V, don't remember the exact spec).   Some I'll keep, just because it sometimes is helpful to have a lot of a certain value (like 10K), but others not so much.  Not quite sure what to do with some of these.

[station240]

Guess it's a choice between here for $0 plus postage vs ebay $2 min plus postage.
The $2 min being ebay's fees etc mean you actually lose money if you price anything lower.

I got rid of some of my random assortments of parts I knew I wouldn't use, by listing them on ebay for cheap.
Basically a small bag that would fit in an envelope sized padded bag, of like parts.
Trick is to list some/all of the part numbers/values, people searching for one part in particular then get temped.

Bulky stuff has always been a pain for me to find a new home for, the cost of posting it puts people off I think.

[taydin]

I have a few cabinets for electronic junk. Mainly prototype electronic cards, PC components, cables etc.

I use the electronic cards for desoldering practice. Don't need to desolder stuff for work regularly, so this practice helps me do a good job when I need to desolder something out of necessity.

Once the cabinet reaches a certain volume, I throw everything out. Tried to sell them on the ebay equivalent of Turkey, but it just won't sell. You might think you are throwing out stuff that has value, but your storage space also has value. And your lost productivity because you have to sift through junk to find what you are looking for also has a value.

[Cyberdragon]

Actives are generally more valuable then passives, depending on the rarity. Passives can be valuable based on the size (large resistors or caps) and quantity. You say you have thousands of parts, so I'm assuming they're sorted. Make some large sandwich bags with bulks of one value part, then just throw the rest in assorted grab bags by weight and component type. Any thing left just throw in one big everything grab bag.

Stay away from old electrolytics though, if they look 25+ years old, toss them, nobody wants crusty caps that could fail on them.

[calexanian]

I scoop it all up and sell it at the Ham swap meets when the box gets full enough. Good excuse to BS with other technical minded people. Its not so much the money, its more just knowing the stuff is not hitting the scrap pile. At a certain point though I just take a box to e waste recycling.

[nctnico]

This reminds me: I also have to dig through a large pile of leftovers and old electronics to do a really good cleanup.
A while ago I contacted a local makerspace to see if they are interested but no response at all. In some way I don't blame them because in the end you use like 0.01% of what is in a big pile of junk. Recently I already cleaned out a large load of 74xxxx TTL and 4000 CMOS chips.

[james_s]

Dang, I would have loved to have a big pile of 74xx chips, I end up using quite a few of those working on old gear and building retro stuff.

All too often I've heard "I just threw out a bunch of that, you should have asked a week ago!" 

[Cubdriver]

Dang, I would have loved to have a big pile of 74xx chips, I end up using quite a few of those working on old gear and building retro stuff.

All too often I've heard "I just threw out a bunch of that, you should have asked a week ago!" 

Yeah, right?  A lot of those are getting harder to find, and those of us that keep boat anchors of various vintages alive occasionally have a need for such things.

-Pat

[ruairi]

Ebay some as 'random assortments'?    (Pictures, etc)
Post them on here with 'free if you pay postage + packaging?'
Throw them in the bin?

What has worked for others?

I've given away lots of older test gear on Craigslist, stuff that I probably could have sold for small money on eBay.  It's fun to see it go to a geek who will value it, and often when they collect I'll throw in some other stuff.

[james_s]

Another thing I'd love to find if someone has some collecting dust is a pile of wire wrap sockets. I've been itching to build a 70s style wire wrap something or other but the sockets are relatively expensive to buy new. I think they're a rather niche product these days.

[calexanian]

you can find wire wrap sockets at most electronics surplus stores. They are around for reasonable prices in you are willing to scrounge. Wirewrap is not as fulfilling though as doing an oshpark board or something like that. At least for me anyways. Anytime I do a wire wrap project I think, oh yeah. This sucked back then too. I would always go from bread board to etched PCB.

[james_s]

I've just never done it before. I've made lots of PCBs, no novelty in that. Not saying I'd want to give up PCBs and start wire wrapping everything but it's still something I'd like to try. I look at it as the engineer equivalent to knitting some socks.

[vealmike]

Try it. You really will change your mind

[W2NAP]

id love to be able to snag a ton of components. just never find any local worthwhile

[technix]

If you can post a list of items you have here (or somewhere) people may be interested.