Where do you go to find stuff?

From: Riccardo Romagnoli <chemif_at_mbox.queen.it>
Date: Fri Oct 24 22:40:28 1997

Brendan Reynolds wrote:

> Tony,
> Here in Western Australia, many places have a rubbish recycling service
> where the stuff people throw away has to be seen to be believed ! I
> regularly pick up pc/xt desktop/portable/luggables for a song, usually
> for $US 2.50 to $US 10.00 .
> Perhaps you may have the same sort of thing in your area...
> Best of luck,
> Brendan

I started looking for similar places 6 years ago, when I was collecting
old public telephone exchange parts (very hard).
My suggestion is to connect informations coming from both ends of the
computer recyclyng/wasting.
Personally I started to visit scrapyards.
Here is hard to find someone that is specialized in reciclyng *only* or
*mainly* computers, so you have to visit scrapyards looking for
machines, but MAINLY for infos about from WHO or WHERE the machines
come.
This is important because those recyclers cares about metals only, so
they load/unload them with no care, and keep them under the rain.
After I know the organization's name, I contact them and try to know how
it works:Was it a spot? or they throw machines on a regular basis?
I found that I (as many of us, I think) can hardly replace recycler's
work.
Organizations prefers them for many reasons:
1)They are Companyes, not privates.
2)They are *specialized* and *careless* with items = very fast in
cleaning up.
3)Sometimes they made auction for dismantling big installations (I.G.
Telephony field)
4)Sometimes the "recycler" is one charitable association (they finance
missions with the computer sales incomes) and responsibles of those
organizations prefers (of course) to "help" those associations.
So at least it's important to know when there will be the next
"handover" and find the better way to try to pick rare/useful items.
With some recyclers you have to pay the value of the equivalent iron
weight, with someone else you have to try to lower a price made on the
estimation based on they're
own computer knowledge (=0) and it's a hard work.
I have succeeded in making an agreement with a recycler that is
satisfied with my help in moving items from those organizations to its
scrapyards.

Good luck!
 
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Riccardo Romagnoli
Classic Computers, Phones and Phonecards
Collector
Forli' - Italy
chemif_at_mbox.queen.it
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Received on Fri Oct 24 1997 - 22:40:28 BST