Offline Base
How our computer buyback works, and where your old machine goes
How our photo-in buyback for old desktops, laptops and graphics cards works, what we take, how you get paid and what happens to your data.
Our buyback starts with a photo. The Sell your old computer (opens in a new tab) page, live since September 18, 2026, says so in its headline: "Send a photo of your old computer. If we want it, we pay you and take it away."
We need working machines and parts to rebuild, and every working machine we rebuild is one that skips the shredder.
What we take
The line under the headline sets the scope: "Desktops, laptops, workstations and graphics cards from about 2014 on. No printers, no monitors, no TVs, no phones."
The model that writes quotes works from a fuller list. It accepts:
- Desktop towers from 2014 on with a 4th-generation Intel Core chip (an i5-4590, say) or any Ryzen, such as a Dell OptiPlex, HP EliteDesk or Lenovo ThinkCentre.
- Any Apple Silicon Mac from M1 to M4, including the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini, Mac Studio and iMac.
- Business laptops from 2018 on: ThinkPad T, X and P series, Dell Latitude and XPS, and HP EliteBook.
- Graphics cards with 6 GB of memory or more, from a GTX 1060 6 GB up to every RTX card, plus Radeon RX 6600 and up.
- Rackmount servers and workstations.
- Loose parts: DDR4 and DDR5 memory sticks of 8 GB and up, NVMe SSDs of 256 GB and up, and CPUs from 2015 on.
Beyond the four that line names, we also turn away scanners, projectors, tablets, watches and anything with a picture tube. The same goes for desktops from before about 2014 (a Core 2 Duo, or a 1st- to 3rd-generation Core i3, i5 or i7), home routers, cable boxes, disc players and speakers. We also can't take machines that have been through a flood or a fire, or loose lithium batteries, which we aren't allowed to ship. On monitors and TVs our buy list is blunt: "We can't move them at a price that works for either of us."
A machine we turn down still gets somewhere to go. The reply links to Earth911's recycling search, Best Buy's electronics recycling and the EPA's take-back directory, where it can be dropped off free.
How a quote works
You send 1 to 10 photos, taken on the page or picked from your device. Three or more is better, and the form asks for the whole machine, the label on the back and the ports. One photo of a closed case says little about what is inside it, and what is inside is most of the price.
You also give a 5-digit zip code and a phone number or email. If you have a link to the product page or an old listing, you can add it. When you do, we run one web search to see what that model is going for this week and, if the search turns up something useful, the quote carries a one-sentence note on what it goes for, with the pages it came from. That search goes through a search provider, which sits outside the zero-retention promise the photo gets. Leave the link field empty if you'd rather nothing about the machine goes to a search engine.
A model reads the photos, identifies the machine against the list above and gives one of four answers:
- A number. A range, what the top of the range depends on, and a handoff window.
- One more photo. When a shot is dark, far away or ambiguous, it asks for another, usually of the service tag or model sticker.
- A polite no. One sentence, plus the free drop-off links.
- A phone call. Two or more machines in one photo go to a person. We call you the same day and price the lot as one number.
Quotes are estimates for now
As of October 2026, we are still setting our buy prices, so treat any number the page gives you as an estimate. The page says so under every quote. Before anything is collected, a person gives you the real figure, and you can still say no.
The dollar figures come from code. The model picks which band a machine falls into, and the page looks up that band's range in a table we wrote, so a model cannot invent a price. The market note from that web search is there for your information, and the model is instructed not to let it change which band it picks.
Three ways the machine reaches us
The quote tells you which handoff applies before you commit to anything.
Handoff | Timing | For | When you're paid |
|---|---|---|---|
We come get it | Usually within 3 business days | Towers, workstations and servers, anything awkward to box | At pickup |
We mail you a box | Box arrives in 2 to 4 days | Laptops, graphics cards and parts | The day it's checked in |
You drop it off | Whenever suits you | Machines worth less than the shipping | There, if your quote was a number |
For a pickup, we confirm a two-hour window by text the day before. The mailed box comes padded, with a prepaid label: you pack the machine and leave it for your carrier. For a drop-off, we send the nearest address that takes it free. If your quote came back as a number, our page says we pay you there.
We pay you in money, through a payment method you already use.
What happens to your data
Your data is the obvious worry, so here is the whole promise:
- Keep the drive. Pull it out before you hand the machine over. The payout stays the same, and in our own words it is "the only answer here that doesn't require trusting us."
- Or we erase it. Leave the drive in and it comes out at intake, erased to the NIST SP 800-88 Purge standard before the machine goes anywhere else. Drives too old or too broken to verify get shredded.
- Your files stay untouched. We never boot your machine to see what's on it, we copy nothing from it, and your drive is out of the machine before anything is sold.
- One model sees your photo. It reads the photo to identify the hardware. That model runs on an endpoint that keeps nothing, and we keep no copy ourselves.
What zero data retention means, and where it stops explains what an endpoint that keeps nothing means in practice and where that promise ends.
Where your machine goes
Every machine we buy gets stripped and its parts tested. The ones that pass are rebuilt into hardware we plan to sell, and what fails goes to a certified recycling processor. As of October 2026, none of that hardware is on sale, so the parts we rebuild now are stock for when it is.
The energy case for local AI, with our caveats covers the power side of running AI on hardware you own. The buyback covers the materials side, and our own explanation of it ends on the point we care about most: "A working machine that gets shredded is a waste of the mining and the manufacturing that went into it, and there are a lot of them."