check ebay for recently sold, identical parts for their market value. no idea if it would be worth it
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Make sure you select the “sold” filter, so you don’t get your hopes up by the asking price of items that aren’t selling.
this life hack I went like 4 or 5 years on ebay without knowing. I always went by the prices off the filter, was so much easier after.
Depends how old.
A 1973 pdp11 is worth a few bucks.
A 2008 Dell Optiplex not so much.
That said, there might be some idiot some where looking axactly for what you''re selling.
some idiot whose business depends on extremely niche software that only reliably runs on that exact model of PC, most likely. we've all heard the horror stories of 20 year old but otherwise functional, multi-million dollar machinery becoming crippled because the controlling HP Pavilion tower's motherboard finally ate it
Ive thought about just doing a case swap and upgrading what i can but that dosent really seem worth doing. Also yes what i mostly have is optiplex-like systems. I have found some with a i7 on the other hand, the best machine i found came with a i7 and a 4vram nvidia card. Im mostly lost on what online marketplaces to list on.
Edit: I may have got a hold of the wrong end of the stick on this one. Leaving it for posterity.
eBay lets you search previous sales of items so in theory, if you search for things you already have, you could get some idea of their worth. Other sites may have similar features.
As for where to post them, it's pretty common here in the UK to parcel things up and take them to the nearest Post Office. I'm sure I've heard people on YouTube talk about doing the same sort of thing in (parts of?) the US, so it might be a common thing wherever you are too.
Some delivery services will pick up from your premises but I'm not 100% sure of the process there. i.e. where the delivery labels come from, whether you're supposed to print them yourself or whether the driver turns up with something to slap on a parcel, etc. I presume their websites outline the steps.
By "where to post them", OP almost certainly meant which platform to advertise the items on.
Whoops. That's about par for my brain lately. Ah well.
As for where to post them, it's pretty common here in the UK to parcel things up and take them to the nearest Post Office
🤣
Hah, easy mistake for you Brits to make, so don't feel bad. In the states we don't use the word "post" as a verb meaning to mail something out
I collect old stuff too. There are only a handful of things that have been useful over the years, mainly USB devices. People who work with hobby embedded devices can also make use of RS232 serial equipment. It might be worth holding on to a single old monitor that can also do VGA. Or a single SATA DVD drive in case you find some old discs you need to read. I have a box of C-64 stuff I am never getting rid of. The kids will have to figure out what to do with that when I am gone.
But all those old ISA cards? Parallel printer port cables? Zip drives? Yeah, nobody wants them. Maybe you can list those old Apple talk dongles on eBay and make a hundred bucks, but you also have to deal with shipping them and stuff.
Just be careful when disposing old drives. I have a stack of busted drives that I won't get rid of because I don't know if anyone will be able to pull the data with the right equipment. Every now and then if I get too bored I take one apart to play with the magnets, I figure it's safe to discard the platters if I scratch them up good.
You may want to look for local "electronics recycling" places. They might charge a fee, and if they find something they can refurbish and sell they will do it (and keep the profit). But then you have more space to accumulate new stuff.
It reminds me I sold a LS120 with some floppies for it, I barely used it 20 years ago, I tested it and it was still working fine, I put the lot for 10$ on marketplace and a few minutes after someone wrote to me saying "I WANT THEM!" he needed one for a server setup in a company that still used LS120 and put an alert on marketplace for it. He was super happy and told me I saved his life :)
Concerning C-64 (and maybe other types), I've seen places online that will take donated manuals and such in decent condition for preservation purposes. You know, back when you actually bought a box that had the disk as well as maps and books to go along with the game.
As far as old electronics itself, best bet is to try to give it away via Craigslist or local posting, but it's hit or miss on if someone is going to happen to need that stick of RAM at the same time. It should be recycled if you can't get rid of it, as there are toxic things in circuit boards (small amounts, but still).
Disc drives (primarily blu ray now, DVD drives aren't as useful) are very much so still in use. The USB ones are just slim sata drives in an enclosure.
I'm trying to track down a very specific one, myself, for a laptop that wont hold a standard slim drive due to a weird bezel. Literally cheaper to buy an entire laptop used off ebay that already has one than direct from HP.
For Macs, I’d visit 68kmla.org, which has a buy/sell/trade forum. There are other forums specific to other platforms as well,
I somehow dont have any macs, there mostly old office windows based computers. I have 1 imac with issues.
Honestly depends on what it is. I have four pentium pro's sitting here that at current value are worth about 100 each.
Some parts can be desired in the retro gaming community.
You may be better off doing what I try to do. Fix them up and install Linux. Then give them to someone who could use it. I left a laptop with a dive operation while I was there so they could give it to a school. I installed linux and a few other things and grabbed a copy of Wikipedia so they could take it to a community without internet and still have some access to the knowledge. I threw in a copy of python and rust to support programming as well as some learning applications and videos. I stuffed a 320GB hdd till therewas only about 10GB of free space. I wish I had more to take down but space was limited.
If they are from the 80s or older there's potentially a healthy used parts market on eBay.
Newer stuff tends to be less desirable unless it was particularly popular like a voodoo card or apple device.
Im 19 the 80s sounded cool but im not from that time period.
Many physical goods have a price that seems to follow a bathtub curve (like a wide U shape). Whether it's computers or furniture or whatever, this is how it usually goes. When it's new it's valuable because its new, then it becomes old which make it less valuable because it's old, but then when it gets very old it becomes more valuable again because it's rare.
So the worth of your devices will be based on its rarity and how much it's desired. Most 10 year old and older computers and parts are worth nothing right now, but very occasionally there are jackpot items that for whatever reason are worth a lot. But don't count on having any of those.
If your computers are in the 10+ years old range then don't expect to get more than like 20 bucks at most for each one. And that's at most.
Craigslist or eBay type sites are probably the best place to post an ad selling them. If you really have a bunch of them you can try selling them all together as a bundled "lot".
It is also about how many people are interested. There are a lot of collectors items worth a lot of money because there are more people collecting than interested, there are also a lot that are not worth much because every collector that wants one has one already. Often there is a curve because when collectors get interested they pay money, which causes people who have one gathering dust in the attic to get it out and sell it and soon the market is saturated.
You have no idea what collectors will care about in 20-50 years. As such investing in something because collectors will care about it and make it worth money is not a good idea. However there are a lot of neat things out there so if you like it go ahead and collect it - if you are the only one interested in 50 years well you have yours, if everyone wants it maybe you can pay for a nice nursing home from the sale. Either way if you have something you need to either enjoy it or use it.
Oh for sure, i didn't mean to suggest that you can buy anything for use as an investment, i just meant that after enough time every object will eventually start increasing in value merely because it is old enough. Even a used diaper from babylonian times would probably be worth some amount of money
Sure. I had to buy some replacement RAM sticks for a 2001 PC and was very glad to find a guy selling a bundle of them. Half were not working though.
Post on eBay. I've bought ancient parts from Romania for a 486SX project build. Somebody can use that stuff. But if it's not really new or really old, probably won't get much.
Sure but not for much money. I know a dude who sells DDR3 ram on eBay for a few bucks a stick (in bulk)
I can't even recycle these old fuckin' parts without paying the recyclers. The complete opposite of recycling bottles and cans.
I put them on marketplace, in case someone need some parts, for instance an old dell tower with an i7-3770, 16GB RAM, a somewhat standard radeon, for 50$. If it is not sold after a few months it goes to the recycle center.
I feel encient. Tht setup isn't old at all, it is still relevant. Now, if you said an AMD Athlon or a K6-III...
I still have my old i386 somewhere.
I wish I still had my old computers. I really miss my 98 machine with an 8mb 3D Rage Pro. I used that until 2005. Ive been buying some WinXP era stuff recently, since it seems to be in the sweet spot for buying right now. I got a pair of quad core Xeons for $10! Ive got 32gb of DDR2 for $35. The GTX 980ti wasn't super cheap, but thats a card you maybe still could use today. This is going to be the bitchin'-est XP machine. Im excited.
Ahahah looks great man...
I whish I had an old 8088/8086 with 1mb RAM a 20mb HDD (not yet IDE) and both 3.5 and 5.25 floppy drives. I still have somewhere Ultima 7 original with a full set of 5.25 big floppies.... And Ultima Underworld 2, both original monkey islands with 3.5 floppies... And many more.
Oh, thats really cool. I never had any pre-pentium stuff. I used an Apple ][ in school, and I remember playing Oregon Trail on 5.25 floppies, on a beautiful green monochrome monitor. But my first computer at home was a Pentium 133. It was a Compaq LTE 5300, with the docking bay, the CD drive, extra batteries, all the fixings. I loved that thing.
Yes, many DIY types are scouring ebay et al for parts.