Much money to be made in laptop parts?

FiftyPents

I have an old broken laptop at home and I was looking around ebay for spare parts, when I came across someone selling a Toshiba laptop for 65 quid buy it now. The whole unit, minus the charger, hard drive, 2gb ram etc.

I bought it, mainly because I just wanted to take the cover from the back and add it onto mine. But then I realised I could take the laptop apart, and the parts were probably worth more than 65? I've put the dvd drive, the hard drive, the ram and the motherboard on ebay, at a buy it now price over 30 days.

Is it better selling the parts at fixed rate over 30 days, or on auction over 5-10 days?

Do people tend to get a lot of success selling laptop/computer parts on ebay? Looking through the items on there now there seems to be lots, so i'm guessing its a tough market to get into!

davidisonfire

I'd say there's far too many people at it and chances are no-one will want obsolete 2nd hand parts.

Find something no-one else is doing

FiftyPents

davidisonfire wrote: »

I'd say there's far too many people at it and chances are no-one will want obsolete 2nd hand parts.

Find something no-one else is doing

That's what I thought initially, and the only reason I got encouraged was because I looked at 'completed listings' and everything I had had previously sold at good prices. I guess I got pretty lucky with the price of this laptop though.

forgotmyname

Its better if someone actually buys the items. And you make a profit.

Problem is people do not know what they are buying, A laptop may have the same model name or
number but be a different spec/type. I have been given one to try and get working its been water
damaged. I looked online and the specs do not match this laptop.

Model number and serial number are all intact so i know thats correct.

Hammyman

I make a mint selling parts. I can make over £160 on a keyboard alone. But then again it is my business and I have TSR for selling laptop parts which makes a huge difference and I don't care if it takes a year to sell every key off a keyboard because at any one time I've got around 80-100 listings on the go. The only problem with the laptop you bought is that unless its one with a common mainboard fault, that won't sell and the main money is in the keyboard, the lid and the screen. Hard drives are cheap as is RAM unless its 512MB or 1GB sticks of DDR in which case it'll fetch good money. Core 2 Duo CPUs are lucky to make £15 no matter what the speed.

Where did the hard drive and RAM come from cos you said you bought it without them?

FiftyPents

Hammyman wrote: »

I make a mint selling parts. I can make over £160 on a keyboard alone. But then again it is my business and I have TSR for selling laptop parts which makes a huge difference and I don't care if it takes a year to sell every key off a keyboard because at any one time I've got around 80-100 listings on the go. The only problem with the laptop you bought is that unless its one with a common mainboard fault, that won't sell and the main money is in the keyboard, the lid and the screen. Hard drives are cheap as is RAM unless its 512MB or 1GB sticks of DDR in which case it'll fetch good money. Core 2 Duo CPUs are lucky to make £15 no matter what the speed.

Where did the hard drive and RAM come from cos you said you bought it without them?

Sorry! I meant minus the charger, BUT still with the hard drive, ram etc.

The money is in the lid you say? The laptop came to me with a non working screen, so the bits I chose to sell were -

Motherboard
Hard drive
DVD Drive
RAM
Fan and heatsink

The rest is just in a box ready to throw away.

How did you start out with your business? Are you regularly buying in laptops just for their keys, to sell on at 3-4 quid per key?

angel_snowfey

good idea and hope can find out what th costomers interested most and make decent profit from your selling. good luck and regards!