If you have been collecting arcade games for any length of time, you probably have a few piles of miscellaneous parts laying around. You know, those parts that you just might need one day and can’t bring yourself to toss them out? The parts that aren’t worth listing on the bay or even CTCW because while they may be unusual, they aren’t highly sought after. After almost a decade of being in this hobby I’ve accumulated more than my fair share of parts. Recent events forced me to clean out my storage unit so my garage is full and I need to clean up, what to do? Recycle and get some cash, that’s what!

Having lived in the City of Chicago for so long, I had seen the scrap haulers with their beat up pickup trucks, hauling all sorts of odd metal parts off to who knows where for who knows what. I had never done it myself but figured I’d give it a try. It was better than just throwing the stuff out. Besides, I could use the cash to buy something arcade related Even though I had moved to the suburbs, there was still plenty of metal recycling places close by and I chose the closest one that would take anything and everything metal. I loaded up four plastic totes with all sorts of parts and also pulled some junk out of the yard left by the previous owner. Re-bar, fencing material, aluminum decking, you name it. I packed my truck full and headed off.

I pulled up to Metal Recycling Systems, Inc in Blue Island, IL and parked by one of the loading doors where I saw some activity. I talked to one of the workers and he gave me a run down of the process. First step, get weighed. Not just the material, but the whole darn truck. So I drove up on the scale and waited for the OK through the intercom.

After the OK I drove around to the main dumping area and backed my truck into the space. Really just an open area with piles of crap. There were a few other guys dumping loads from their trucks so I figured it must be the right place. The second step was to dump out all the crap metal. Steel and iron. Anything that wasn’t aluminum or brass or some other more valuable metal. Pretty easy as i just dumped it right out of the truck onto the ground, the worker said he’d take care of it later with the equipment. After I was done it was back to the scale to check my weight. I had to wait my turn.

With that done I walked into the office and got my receipt which would be used to get my cash later. The third step was to pull back up to that first loading dock and get the aluminum weighed. This was done by hand and I dropped everything onto a much smaller scale. After the weigh in I got another receipt and then it was off to the ATM machine outside the office. I scanned each receipt and it gave me the cash. No human interaction required.

All of that for $46 bucks. I was hoping for a lot more of course, but at least it will get recycled and I can take Lisa out for dinner or perhaps buy a couple of Vectrex carts. It was a lot of work to collect and haul the stuff over there and I’m not sure if the payout was really worth it. Maybe now that I know the process I can move faster if I ever decide to do this again. One thing to note is that while the aluminum was barely a quarter of the load in my truck, it brought in almost as much cash as the rest. Save those cans!

Tags: arcade parts, recyling, scrapping

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Misc, Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.