Chances are you have a lot of stuff in your house. Possibly also in a storage unit. And maybe at your parents’ house, your ex’s place, and liberally scattered throughout the globe. We all accumulate a ton of things as we go through life—it’s estimated that the average home has about 300,000 things in it, if you count all the small stuff like that bowl of paper clips on your desk.
Every now and then you get the idea to clean it all out and maybe sell some of it, to free yourself of all that clutter while making a tidy profit on stuff you don’t even use any more. If that’s the mode you’re in right now, consider parting out some of your stuff instead of just selling it whole, because you can potentially make a lot more money that way.
What is parting out?
“Parting out” is the process of disassembling something and selling the individual parts, which often have a distinct value all their own. If someone has an old car that won’t run because it needs a replacement part, they probably don’t want to buy an entire replacement car when they could just buy the part they need—and they’re often willing to pay a premium for the convenience.
Parting out your possessions isn’t always easy—it takes time, effort, and some knowledge to do it effectively (not to mention specific tools, in many cases). But if you’ve got a bunch of unused stuff lying around, look into what might be worth parting out instead of just dumping on eBay as-is. You can part out almost anything—if it has parts, there’s a decent chance someone, somewhere is looking for them—but not everything is going to be worth your time and effort unless you’re going to spin it up into a business. For example, parting out vacuum cleaners can be profitable, but also requires a lot of work, and parting out your old vacuum when it stops working won’t necessarily be worth it.
An easy way to tell if the parts in your junk are worth something is to pop into eBay and search around there—this can also give you an idea of the prices you can charge for parts, and whether the potential profit is worth your time. There are also often specific forums or marketplaces online for different parts, so it’s worth googling those as well to see if your parts are in demand.
Vehicles
Cars are by far the most common things to sell for parts. People are keeping their cars for longer than ever, and car parts are in short supply, which drives up their value. And if you have an old, vintage car rusting away in your garage, some of those parts might be worth serious money. Even non-vintage car parts can net you some cash—depending on mileage, condition, and the make and model of the car, the engine might be worth $500 or more by itself, and the airbags could be worth $150-$200. If you have the tools, time, and expertise to part out a car (or a motorcycle, or even a bicycle) you can gather estimated value for each part and compare it to the price you’d get for selling the vehicle as a whole.
Computers
If you have a computer, whether it’s a tricked-out desktop gaming machine, a cheap Chromebook, or even a Mac, you can part it out. Between hobbyists building their own machines and frugal folks trying to keep an old warhorse running, there’s a lot of demand for many of the components inside your home computer—and plenty of places to sell them. While some of those components require some tools and knowledge to remove, others, like the RAM sticks and graphics card, are pretty easy to pull with just a screwdriver and some patience.
Laptops can be more challenging because of their compact nature; many components in a laptop are soldered into place or very difficult to access. But if the laptop isn’t functioning anyway, it can still be worth your time to harvest parts. Searching the internet for your specific model of computer and seeing what parts people are looking for or selling will give you an idea of what’s worth salvaging from that old computer.
Board games
If you have some old board games piled up in the garage or basement, don’t toss them—they could be pretty valuable to collectors and enthusiasts. And they’re going to generate more money if you part them out, because people often find themselves missing the original pieces from an old game purchased at a garage sale or found in their basement or garage. In fact, eBay has a dedicated section just for board game pieces where you can research what you might make. Most of these pieces don’t sell for a ton of money by themselves, but you can make more money parting out that old game than from selling it as a unit.
Electric guitars
Setting up a guitar requires knowledge and skill. Tearing an electric guitar apart requires a screwdriver. Like everything else on this list, unless your guitar is a classic vintage axe that can fetch a lot of money, it’s usually more profitable to part out an old beat-up electric guitar, selling everything from the neck to the humbuckers separately on eBay or another online marketplace. Many musicians want to build their own guitars from specific parts, or need to replace worn out parts on their guitars and want to save some money by doing the work themselves (or have trouble finding a rare part), and you can profit from that.
LEGO pieces
People who love LEGO are serious about it. As you might imagine, assembling a complex LEGO set only to discover you’re missing a few pieces—or maybe, most infuriatingly, one piece—is incredibly frustrating. That’s why sites like Bricklink exist—so you can find and purchase LEGO parts. If you have some LEGO sets you’re looking to liquidate, you can use Bricklink to find out the rough part out value, which can be a surprisingly high number.
