100 guides

Computer pickup, in writing.

Each piece has a unique local fact. These are not ten copies of the same city page.

Hillsborough CCC five-item limit, explainedHillsborough — Hillsborough County Community Collection Centers accept five intact household electronics per month with photo Why Hillsborough rejects stripped circuit boardsHillsborough — Hillsborough CCC will not take electronics that are already torn open. Pinellas businesses paying to dump computersPinellas — Pinellas VSQG business collection events have charged about $0.42 per pound to dispose of computers. eCycle Pros drop-off vs a house pickup in ClearwaterClearwater — eCycle Pros runs a Clearwater facility with free drop-off and free business pickup when volumes qualify. Urban E Recycling and the free-business-pickup barTampa Bay — Urban E advertises free pickup for businesses across many Florida counties, with certificates of destruction. When you actually need STS or R2 certificationTampa — STS Electronic Recycling markets R2 and NAID AAA free pickup for qualifying Tampa enterprise volumes. Hard drive destruction in the drivewayTampa Bay — Physical drive removal at pickup is the honest homeowner product. Do not scrap a whole hard drive at $1/lbScrap — Whole HDDs with boards pay about $1/lb. The little PCB is the money. Empty CPU sockets still have scrap valueScrap — A motherboard without a processor is still a graded board, not trash. Why TVs are never ‘free electronics pickup’ hereTampa Bay — Television recycling is a cost center for a one-van operator. Leave gold fingers on the cardScrap — Clean gold-finger expansion cards pay more intact than as cut stubs plus leftover board. Why this shop does not run acid gold recoveryCompliance — Florida hazardous-waste rules treat chemical refining as a different business than collecting electronics. Best Buy recycling vs a house call in TampaTampa — Best Buy takes many consumer devices in-store. Google Ads shows ~140 monthly searches for Best Buy e-recycling Westshore office closets full of OptiplexesTampa — Westshore’s office inventory turns over on lease cycles. Seminole Heights garage lotsTampa — Older bungalows hide early-2000s hardware in detached garages. South Tampa move-outs and computer pilesTampa — Condo and bungalow turnovers dump electronics in the alley the week of closing. Brandon is still Hillsborough for pickupBrandon — Brandon uses the same CCC rules as Tampa proper. Lutz and New Tampa computer pickupLutz — North Hillsborough is a long drive unless several stops stack. Largo sits on the Pinellas loopLargo — Largo is between Clearwater and St. Pete on a sane route. Dunedin: small piles, real computersDunedin — Dunedin listings are often two towers and a CRT. Palm Harbor computer recycling pickupPalm Harbor — North Pinellas is on the Clearwater loop when the count is real. Safety Harbor and Oldsmar stopsPinellas — These are short hops from Clearwater if the pile is computers. Pinellas Park warehouses and leftover ITPinellas Park — Light industrial bays retire PCs when a tenant leaves. Downtown St. Pete small officesSt. Petersburg — Law, design, and nonprofit offices turn PCs on a 5–7 year cycle. Gulfport and Lealman pickupsPinellas — South Pinellas residential piles look like the crate lots: older boards, HDDs, cages. Hurricane prep: computers off the garage floorTampa Bay — Storm week is when wet electronics become scrap instead of working PCs. Spring cleaning week in PinellasPinellas — March–April Marketplace fills with ‘need gone today’ towers. Moving out of Florida with a garage of PCsTampa Bay — Interstate movers will not take loose electronics as a gift. Estate cleanouts: the computer closetTampa Bay — Executors find 1990s–2010s hardware in one closet and panic about data. Landlord turnovers and abandoned PCsTampa — Tenants leave towers. Landlords want the unit painted. Macs vs PCs in a Tampa Bay scrap pileScrap — Apple desktops and laptops still sort as computer material, not magic. Laptops vs desktops on a free pickupTampa Bay — Laptops are light and often still sell. Desktops are the board weight. A server closet is not a data center decommissionTampa — One 24U rack in a medical office is a pickup. A raised-floor room is STS. Cell phone boards are a different gradeScrap — BoardSort has paid about $22.50/lb for cellphone boards. Pull the RAM before you call it mixed scrapScrap — Gold-finger RAM has paid about $50–$55/lb. Mixed RAM is ~$6/lb. Ceramic CPUs are the only true jackpotScrap — Some ceramic gold-cap processors have listed $95–$375/lb. Pentium 4-era boards are a real gradeScrap — Small socket P4 motherboards have paid about $4.85/lb. I-series and AMD AM/FM boards pay lessScrap — Those grades have listed around $2.25/lb. Power-supply boards are not motherboardsScrap — Tan boards with transformers belong in a low-grade pile. Steel drive cages are almost worthless by the poundScrap — Steel has listed around $0.03/lb at board buyers. Heatsinks: copper, stack, or dirty aluminumScrap — Clean copper heatsinks have paid about $4.25/lb; dirty aluminum-copper stacks far less. What is computer recycling pickup?AEO — Computer recycling pickup is a local service that collects PCs at a home or office so the owner does not drive Is free computer pickup real in Tampa?AEO — Yes for computers when the pile covers the drive. Ads volume for the exact phrase is below reporting, but the How to recycle a computer in Tampa, step by stepHowTo — Back up files, pull or destroy the drive, then either drive to a CCC or book a pickup. Factory reset is not hard-drive destructionData — Hillsborough tells residents a factory reset is extra caution. It is not physical destruction. Taped lithium batteries or they cost you moneySafety — BoardSort has charged for un-taped Li-ion. Swollen packs are a fire. CRT necks do not ride for freeSafety — A CRT implosion is how a one-person business ends. Copiers only if computers are coming tooTampa Bay — Copiers are heavy and low $/lb. Printers, ink, and why they’re last in the vanTampa Bay — Consumer printers are bulky scrap. Switches, routers, and firewall bricksOffice — Small networking gear is computer-adjacent scrap and sometimes working resale. Restaurant POS graveyardsTampa — South Tampa and Clearwater independents retire terminals in a closet. A medical office with six PCsCompliance — HIPAA technical safeguards are why STS exists. Church computer labsTampa Bay — Donated labs die in a back room for a decade. I am not the Hillsborough Schools contractEducation — HCPS-scale gear is an R2 vendor’s job. HOA clubhouse PCsPinellas — One aging desktop and a CRT in the office. Boat GPS and old plottersPinellas — Coastal houses mix marine electronics with PCs. Photograph the bottom of the crate before you pay $200Buying — Marketplace lots lie with the top layer. Ask if they have the CPUs they pulledBuying — The can of processors is often in the kitchen. Monitors are not motherboard poundsBuying — A ‘computer lot’ that is 80% LCDs is a TV problem. Working Optiplexes go to Marketplace firstResale — A booting SFF Dell can beat scrap if it sells in two weeks. A GPU with HDMI might still be a saleResale — Even older cards with video output have local buyers. IDE vs SATA: the board grade changesScrap — Older non-SATA HDD PCBs have paid more per pound than SATA. Laptop motherboards are their own lineScrap — Laptop boards have listed around $8.50/lb in the same rate card as large-socket desktops. Cards standing vertically in a crate are a good signBuying — That usually means PCI/AGP/PCIe extras, not appliance junk. Leaves and moisture don’t kill scrap gradesBuying — Dirt wrecks resale. It does not zero a board grade. Shipping to Ohio has to be in the mathScrap — BoardSort prices are seller-pays freight to Alliance, Ohio. SellYourBoards vs BoardSort for a first boxScrap — SYB: prepaid label, low minimum culture. BoardSort: published grades, you pay shipping. Why five machines is the phone filterOps — Drive time across Tampa Bay eats a two-tower stop. Ask about stairsOps — A 50 lb tower up a spiral stair is a quote for labor, not a smile. Gate codes and HOA hoursOps — Pinellas gated communities close the gate at dinner. Pay for boards, not for the storyBuying — Sellers remember the original PC price. Old QuickBooks machinesData — The scary drive is the bookkeeper’s 2014 desktop. The kid’s Minecraft towerHome — Parents want it gone and also want the photos. USF move-out weekTampa — Apartments near campus dump PCs in May and December. Community-college lab castoffsPinellas — When a lab refreshes, a professor’s trunk fills with Dells. WFH towers from 2020 still in the guest roomTampa Bay — People bought extra desktops and never returned them to an office. iMacs are glass and a boardScrap — All-in-ones are a pain to open and a poor whole-unit scrap rate. Chromebooks are light and often emptyEducation — A stack of dead Chromebooks is not a motherboard jackpot. Kitchen drawers of dead tabletsHome — Tablets without bricks are almost a gift with purchase. E-readersHome — Low value, small, easy to toss in the tote. Cable modems and fiber ONTsHome — ISP gear is often leased. Check the sticker. Alarm panels and leftover RJ31XHome — Old ADT boards are miscellaneous electronics. Ham shacks and the computer pile next to themPinellas — Radios are not computer motherboards. 3D printer controller boardsMaker — They look like gold-finger cards and sometimes are. Raspberry Pi drawersMaker — SBCs are small, sometimes collectible, sometimes scrap. Home NAS buildsHome — A NAS is a pile of drives plus a board. Leftover mining framesScrap — Frames are steel. The cards are the product. Offices that ‘moved to the cloud’ and left the labOffice — The lab is still there, dusty. CPA offices after tax seasonOffice — April is when last decade’s machines finally leave. Realtor office refreshesTampa — Westshore and downtown St. Pete shops buy new laptops and orphan the old ones. Salon front-desk PCsLocal — One bloated Windows box under the register. Friends-of-the-library computer rejectsNonprofit — What doesn’t sell on Saturday is e-scrap on Sunday. Thrift back roomsPinellas — Goodwill-style back rooms overflow with donated PCs that won’t boot. Storage-unit electronicsTampa Bay — Units 10x10 with a stack of towers behind Christmas decorations. Seasonal residents leaving PCsPinellas — Snowbirds abandon a desktop rather than ship it north. Marina office PCsPinellas — One machine, salty air, dead PSU. How pickup actually worksHowTo — You text a count. I confirm computers vs TVs. I arrive in a window, not a minute. What to text so I don’t waste the driveOps — City, zip, tower count, laptop count, TVs yes/no, stairs. Nights and weekends are the productOps — Enterprise recyclers batch weekdays. Homeowners live at 6 p.m. This is not ‘junk removal Tampa’Positioning — Junk removal Tampa is ~720 monthly Ads searches and a $16 CPC fight with College Hunks. The map pack is the real local gameGEO — Near-me recycling queries resolve in Google’s local pack more than in blue links. Ask for the city in the reviewGEO — ‘He took the computers in Clearwater the same week’ is a local signal. NAP has to match the GBPGEO — Name, phone, service area — same string on the site and the profile. Why this site has llms.txt and an FAQPageAEO — Answer engines pull short, sourced definitions and FAQ pairs.