Raped curbside sets

[Findm-Keepm]

Originally Posted by andy

I saw lots of modern CRT sets with smashed backs, and missing yokes, CRTs, or chassis. I don't think I saw a single intact TV this year.

Copper spiked after the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes - much like the cost of drywall spikes up after a hurricane. Our metals company that buys our aluminum and copper shut down until things settled back down. He wasn't going to pay high prices, only to lose it later. They settled down, but only by a margin of a few cents off the high. I haven't sold any copper recently, and when I do, it's just the cheap stuff - old extension cords folks throw out all summer and the like. Highest I've seen it was in June 2008 - about $3.75 a pound. It's getting close to that now, I imagine. It was 2.76 a pound before Christmas. A Sony XBR set gives up over 3 pounds of copper - yoke, d-coil, common mode choke, the pincushion transformers and even the IHVT - they buy those as "motors and transformers". Gotta say, we see treasure, and they see tomorrows paycheck.

This to shall pass.....this too shall pass.....this too shall pass.......

[62SY4]

In the Pgh area on Thursday No.2 Copper was $2.50 No. 3 was $1.10 small electric motors were paying $0.95. Thats an awful lot of busted TVs to pay for lunch.

[Findm-Keepm]

Just checked here - we have two yards, one which sells to the other! The highest payning of the two was 3.17 a pound for #2 wire. Could be that because we are near the port (where the copper gets shipped to God knows where) there are less transportation costs? Electric motors and transformers are 95 cents a pound here too. IHVT flybacks get that price.

One of my favorite trash pickin places is a post-WWII neighborhood with narrow streets and on-street parking. The copper crowd with their wide trailers can't fit, and so the stuff is left for the folks like me. I got my Portacolor in that neighborhood, and also a 6-year old roto-tiller that needed some TLC.

Guys around here don't just go for the copper - it's aluminum and steel too, albeit not as profitable as copper. I make a mad dash on Wednesday mornings in the summer to get stuff before the copper crowd. My wife is into it as well - she trash-picked one of those plastic playhouses that was only a few months old and being discarded as part of a military move. Still, I'm in it for sets and parts (if it's something trashed already or too large for me).

Cheers,

[bandersen]

Found another one in the alley today. At least they did a neat job of it.

[AUdubon5425]

I stopped to look at a set on the curb a few days ago - it was an '88 Samsung 19" in a neighborhood where you'd think this kind of stuff would occur. It doesn't seem like anyone is yanking yokes out around New Orleans, not yet.

[rpm1200]

I don't usually see this here in Rochester (people do pick up sets, but usually no one does the smash and grab). We do have a lot of scrappers and they are apparently after steel - I threw out a stack of cheapo 90s VCRs and it was gone the next day. However I saw a good curbside yoke removal victim today, 36" late 90s Zenith (so the tube was probably trashed before the TV was thrown out). The carpet is a nice touch. I grabbed the main board prior to taking the picture.

[bandersen]

Damn scrappers got to this vintage capehart-farnsworth ! At least someone saved what they could. That would be quite a challenge to bring back to life.

[Whirled One]

In my area, I never saw this kind of stuff happen until just this year during the annual "spring clean-up" bulk-trash days. Before this year, the scrappers would clip off the power cords (and coax, VGA cables, data cables, etc.) off anything they could find, but apparently never realized that there's a lot more copper in a TV set than the power cord. In fact, it wasn't unusual to see a console TV with the back removed and the yoke just sitting there in place on the CRT in plain sight-- completely unmolested-- even though the scrappers had made off with the power cord and sometimes even the (clipped off) yoke and/or convergence harnesses.

This year, however, it appears that some of the scrappers in the area have discovered TV yokes, as I've seen a fair number of TVs and computer monitors on the curb with their backs *bashed* in, busting off the CRT necks to remove the yokes. Bleehhh... I suspect it's only a few scrappers at this point, because the "bashed-in" sets on the curb always seem to appear in clusters within a few blocks. Fortunately, I haven't seen anything potentially "collector-worthwhile" ruined by the scrappers in that particular manner-- they've mostly gone after cheap modern "BPC" TVs and the occasional computer monitor.

This year I've also seen several TVs and computer monitors on the curb with destroyed CRTs, but not because of zealous scrappers. Looks like some kids think it'd be entertaining to throw rocks or whatever at the face of a CRT TV to see what happens. Double bleehhhh... Amazing how those tension bands around the CRT really do seem to keep the glass from flying too far when the face gets smashed in though.

I'll post more about spring clean-up trashday finds in a separate thread once I finally get around to taking pictures and writing up something..!

[peverett]

I cleaned out a TV shop that had many TVs with the yokes missing. It was not scrappers, this was years ago. The serviceman had cannablized the sets for parts to fix other sets.

[andy]

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[site123a]

There's not a lot of scrappers in my neighborhood, however this is what happens from time-to-time (mostly from kids):



Hopefully the kids who did this got some glass thrown in there faces (it's a 32" Proscan by the way)...

[bandersen]

This is the first old electronics pick-up day for the city that I can recall.
I'm expecting to find many raped sets around the city Saturday

[AUdubon5425]

We had a mayor who liked to put his name on everything too. That was many years ago. Now everything that still has his name on it is pretty run down, beat up and/or broken.

Of course, the Daleys have been in power for so long there's probably a horse-drawn garbage wagon somewhere with that name on it

[Rodzilla]

yup it's going on everywhere...you gotta wonder at the intelligence of those breaking into live substations tho...yeah there's tons of copper...almost all of it live and in use,there's gotta be some particular combination of guts and sheer stupidity involved in something like that

there was even a rash of thefts last year of copper line from homes,now these lines were actually the feed lines from outside heating oil tanks...a few feet of copper line at best...never mind the complete nightmare inflicted on the homeowner who loses a tank of oil spilled in thier yard..

[AUdubon5425]

I finally spotted 3 or 4 raped BPC sets last night outside of a TV shop - they just broke the cabinets and left a mess.