Some Cash for Electronic Trash
A few weeks ago, I appeared on CBS The Early Show to do a segment on Earth Day freebies. One tip I gave was RadioShack’s Trade In program that took your old personal electronic waste, appraised it, and gave you a gift card for the item’s recycling worth. Everything from old IPODS to digital cameras to cell phones and camcorders could be looked up on their website and appraised instantly. If you like the trade-in price, you can then ship it to RadioShack for free with a pre-paid Fedex Ground slip you print right off their website.
But to see how easy and lucrative this could be, I decided to dig up some old electronics in my own home and check out their worth. First up: an old Blackberry I recently replaced and a Sony CyberShot digital camera I ruined with an iced coffee.
First, the Blackberry. I looked up the model make, clicked next, and then answered some easy questions about it. The worth was $10.52. Not much, but $10.52 more than just tossing the Blackberry into a recycling box at my T-Mobile store. So, I accepted and moved on.
And now for my unfortunate Sony CyberShot camera. Picked the make and model from the list, clicked next, and answered questions here. Turns out, just clicking “NO” on the question “is the unit fully functional” will lead you to one flat price no matter the condition or if you’re providing a charger/battery or not. So, it’s worth $1.61. Whoopee. But given the fact the camera has been tucked away in the back of a desk drawer for 8 months now, I figured why not accept and add it to my Blackberry trade-in.
Then when I was finished, I typed in my address and it gave me a pre-paid Fedex Ground slip to ship Radioshack everything. Once they get it, they’ll ship me a gift card to RadioShack worth around twelve bucks.
But imagine if you have a few good-working cell phones, camcorder and maybe a gaming device. You could probably get more than $100 back, which is plenty of money to trade-up to something great in-store. In my mind, $12 is better than nothing for these two obsolete things, so why not?
Another thought. One of our local special needs groups also recycles electronics and uses the resulting funds to provide cell phones for emergency use, free of charge, to their special needs clients. We’re given a receipt at the time of donation that we can use as a tax write off at the end of the year. Since I keep receipts on file (needed for warranties, etc.) once we donate an item I clip the purchase receipt to the donation slip so we can verify our initial purchase price and we’re ready to go for tax time.
Last year the charitable donations write off was worth it for us.
or you could give them to your local abuse shelter for abused people to use.. it may only be $10 to you but its a life line to them – most recognised shelters/charities have deals with the phone companies for calling cards and reactivation codes etc so they are worth their weight in gold.
I gave our old phones to our local shelter and got tax credit for it and a good feeling that lasts longer than the phone did.
also digital cameras are also useful for shelters and also fostering homes for the kids and the families ads often they have nothing to record or remem ber their lives with.
After reading about this on your blog (last time) I went to my Radio Shack and turned in a computer monitor and a digital camera. They appraised for the $1 plus but I didn’t care because they were going to be recycled, not thrown away! I’ll keep taking my old electronics there just for that reason. Thanks for all the great info you pass on to us!