Question: What should I expect when I go to an e waste recycling center?

[Tigarion]

I'm trying to get a mechanical keyboard for a cheap price, and some people on these forums have recommended e waste recycling centers. So, that leads me to ask: What should I expect when I go to an e waste recycling center? Will I be able to buy stuff there, or will I have to go to one of their online stores? For your info, the recycling place I'm going to is by United Electronics Recycling.

[typo]

It depends. some will not allow you in. some will let you have at it. If it is one that will let you have at it expect to get a lot of goodies for almost nothing. You are really going to roll up your sleeves though. these places are huge and very disorganized. It could take you many hours to come across a gem. Others however already pull the good stuff and charge plenty for it. those I avoid.

[Darthbaggins]

I know the one I previously worked at would probably let you dig through the bin of mice and keyboards (big bin too, I fell in it once)

[Maledicted]

Yeah, typo is right. It is a mixed bag. Reach out and find out. Most of the ones I have dealt with are run by pretty cool, laid-back guys. Another kept changing their prices, and eventually told me not to come back, before I had even finished picking things out. At that place I was rummaging through regular PC components though as well. I'm not sure if they were concerned that I was getting too good of a deal, that I was purchasing to sell, that I could somehow be stealing data (even though I agreed early on to remove hard drives), or a combination of the above.

They were a general recycler though too, the place a lot of that stuff goes to before it filters to electronics recyclers, so I imagine that the management didn't even know the difference between a hard drive and a toaster, just like how the local Goodwill refuses to sell anything computer-related, recycling brand new Intel processors ... but they'll sell used flash drives and external hard drives.

[Darthbaggins]

only ones you might have issues with are R2 certified recyclers, but if you can get in good with one you might find some really good stuff (R2's tend to handle retailer's warranty discards etc).

[jjjnordis99]

It depends. some will not allow you in.

[Leslieann]

It also depends on how knowledgeable they are.
My brother and I got several Model Ms for free at one, also saw several Alps boards and such (wish I had grabbed more), then all of a sudden it stopped and all we could find after was cheap rubber domes after that. The same happened with mice.

[absyrd]

The two a went to years ago both clipped all the cables from the keyboards. I tried to bribe a guy to pull anything that said IBM or Cherry, but he didn't care to take me up on it.

[tp4tissue]

KORONA..

no one's said it yet ?

[Maledicted]

The two a went to years ago both clipped all the cables from the keyboards. I tried to bribe a guy to pull anything that said IBM or Cherry, but he didn't care to take me up on it.

Plenty of those boards are worth saving, with or without the original cable. I got My F XT like that. Whenever I see a snipped cable I just see an opportunity to not only get something at a discount, but also replace the cable with something better than the original.

[noisyturtle]

I feel like the last heyday for old electronics was the late '00s somewhere in the early '10s a lot of places trashed a lot of old electronics for some reason, guess to make way for all the plastic garbage clutter from the 2000s.

[Leslieann]

I feel like the last heyday for old electronics was the late '00s somewhere in the early '10s a lot of places trashed a lot of old electronics for some reason, guess to make way for all the plastic garbage clutter from the 2000s.

Quite a few things conspired to make that happen.

Win7 came out mid 2009
Core I series 2009/2010
2011 Thailand floods destroyed what was left of the DDR2 ram factories, making it more than twice the price of DDR3.