Spares or Repair?

FiftyPents

Hi,

I bought a cheap laptop off ebay a couple of weeks ago, an acer aspire one ZG8. It's fully boxed with the manuals and charger, all contents still intact, windows xp installed with the coa on the back, basically working and looking as new - apart from a cracked screen. It was sold to me with this description so i was aware of the cracked screen.

The question I ask, is a replacement LCD screen cost's 44 pounds, which would take my total outgoings for this 'project' 89 pounds. So, do I get a replacement screen, fit it myself and sell the notebook fully working, or in terms of profit is there more money in stripping it down and selling the motherboard, charger, battery, hard drive, ram, bezel etc?

I basically want whichever option is likely to give me the most profit!

It's a nice little laptop actually, very small. One thing that always shocks me is when people don't clear their hard drives. I received this laptop and they'd basically just left everything on there, switched it off and sent it to me. Luckily for them I just restored it to factory settings without looking at them, but still, unbelievable!

Crowqueen

I think Hammyman knows about laptops - hopefully he'll be around, or you can PM him.

Otherwise there may be better forums to ask this on.

As for hard drives, I once bought a camera from eBay, an early digital one, and they hadn't wiped the memory card. The pictures were rather ...scatological, to say the least. I didn't feel I could keep them myself, but it gave me a giggle and I wish I had.

annie-c

I was surprised to get £70 for an old laptop of mine, which was bought by someone who does indeed strip them down and sell the parts. I was astonished to see the prices he gets for the constituent parts but, clearly, he knows what he is doing and has an established TRS business account with a very high no. of 100% feedback.

As with anything on ebay, you need to know your product and have an edge over the competition to get the best prices. So it depends on your knowledge and skills and the current status of your ebay account I guess. Would it be worth it to you to register as a business just for this one laptop, or would you plan to make a long term thing of it?

FiftyPents

annie-c wrote: »

I was surprised to get £70 for an old laptop of mine, which was bought by someone who does indeed strip them down and sell the parts. I was astonished to see the prices he gets for the constituent parts but, clearly, he knows what he is doing and has an established TRS business account with a very high no. of 100% feedback.

As with anything on ebay, you need to know your product and have an edge over the competition to get the best prices. So it depends on your knowledge and skills and the current status of your ebay account I guess. Would it be worth it to you to register as a business just for this one laptop, or would you plan to make a long term thing of it?

I'm basically giving it a trial run to see if there's much money to be made before I go into the business side of things. It started because basically I bought a toshiba laptop that was broken, purely to take the hard drive caddy from it and put it in mine. I took the laptop apart and sold it for parts, and I was quite surprised at the money the parts go for. I rooted in my box of things that I was going to throw out, and I thought I'd stick the bezel from the broken laptop on there too, just the plastic trim from around the screen. It sold within an hour for 20 quid!

FiftyPents

Crowqueen wrote: »

I think Hammyman knows about laptops - hopefully he'll be around, or you can PM him.

Otherwise there may be better forums to ask this on.

As for hard drives, I once bought a camera from eBay, an early digital one, and they hadn't wiped the memory card. The pictures were rather ...scatological, to say the least. I didn't feel I could keep them myself, but it gave me a giggle and I wish I had.

Thanks for the advice, do you know of any good forums other than this one where I could ask? I'll send Hammyman a pm, hopefully he won't mind!

Crowqueen

FiftyPents wrote: »

Thanks for the advice, do you know of any good forums other than this one where I could ask? I'll send Hammyman a pm, hopefully he won't mind!

Unfortunately not, but try googling for laptop service boards and see what you come up with.

annie-c

FiftyPents wrote: »

I'm basically giving it a trial run to see if there's much money to be made before I go into the business side of things.

Just be careful - if a registered business seller notices that you have set up in competition to them they may report you for not registering as a business yourself. Basically anything you buy to sell on for profit counts as business trading.

FiftyPents

annie-c wrote: »

Just be careful - if a registered business seller notices that you have set up in competition to them they may report you for not registering as a business yourself. Basically anything you buy to sell on for profit counts as business trading.

Oh, I thought I was ok if i was just doing it as a hobby? I've only sold one laptop for parts!

Pembroke

FiftyPents wrote: »

Hi,

I bought a cheap laptop off ebay a couple of weeks ago, an acer aspire one ZG8. It's fully boxed with the manuals and charger, all contents still intact, windows xp installed with the coa on the back, basically working and looking as new - apart from a cracked screen. It was sold to me with this description so i was aware of the cracked screen.

The question I ask, is a replacement LCD screen cost's 44 pounds, which would take my total outgoings for this 'project' 89 pounds. So, do I get a replacement screen, fit it myself and sell the notebook fully working, or in terms of profit is there more money in stripping it down and selling the motherboard, charger, battery, hard drive, ram, bezel etc?

I basically want whichever option is likely to give me the most profit!

It's a nice little laptop actually, very small. One thing that always shocks me is when people don't clear their hard drives. I received this laptop and they'd basically just left everything on there, switched it off and sent it to me. Luckily for them I just restored it to factory settings without looking at them, but still, unbelievable!

Rather than buying just a screen could you buy another complete laptop with a working screen but not working in other ways. Then you can sell the working one and break the other one for parts?

But as the others say, buy to sell and you're a business in the eyes of Ebay and HMRC (even if you have a PAYE job as well) so you need to register or possibly face fines (from HMRC) and sanctions from Ebay.

Good luck with your venture.

FiftyPents

Pembroke wrote: »

Rather than buying just a screen could you buy another complete laptop with a working screen but not working in other ways. Then you can sell the working one and break the other one for parts?

But as the others say, buy to sell and you're a business in the eyes of Ebay and HMRC (even if you have a PAYE job as well) so you need to register or possibly face fines (from HMRC) and sanctions from Ebay.

Good luck with your venture.

I genuinely had no idea I had to register as a business account, I just considered it a hobby. What do I have to do? Just change my account to business on ebay? Would I have to pay tax, v.a.t etc? I suppose i'd be better off just stopping then.

Strapped

annie-c wrote: »

Just be careful - if a registered business seller notices that you have set up in competition to them they may report you for not registering as a business yourself. Basically anything you buy to sell on for profit counts as business trading.

Unfortunately eBay won't give two hoots.