Hi all!
I have been thinking about selling off my Blue & White G4 400Mhz w/ 256MB RAM. It has a DVD/CD-RW and a 160GB IDE hard drive w/ a SATA 1.5 Adapter. It also has an ACARD SATA 1.5 -> PCI 2.2 Adapter (32-bit/33Mhz) and a 32MB Mac Edition RADEON 7000 PCI in the 66Mhz PCI Slot.
The machine has a 4-disk Drive carrier, so it allows for 4 hard drives to be used.
I also have Tiger on the machine and it runs pretty smooth.
I was wondering how much a setup like this would be worth. w/o Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor.
The machine's case is in fair condition but has a few scuffs.
Anyone want to guess?
I was thinking about $300-400USD or so but it might be higher.
As a system, I'd say not that much. The add-ons are good, but it's still just a 400 MHz Yikes equivalent.
Considering I just checked a B&W 350 sitting unsold with a buy-it-now of about $30, you're basically selling a few nice cards and a hard drive...and throwing in a slightly upgraded G3.
IMHO, you'd get more parting it out than offering it as a complete system.
On my local craigslist today:
"PowerMac G4 dual 1ghz MDD mirror drive door 1.5gb RAM superdrive - $400
Selling my PowerMac G4 Mirror Drive Door (MDD) with dual 1Ghz processors, 1.5gb of RAM, one 160gb OS drive, and one 200GB data drive, a SuperDrive and a regular CDROM. Has room for 2 more IDE hard drives.
Also has an upgraded copper heatsink, and not the stock aluminum one. Also has a 4 port USB2 PCI card installed. Will come with a fresh install of Mac OS X, and comes with original media as well."
Of course, selling used stuff is hit and miss. Depends on where you are and who's around looking and what time of year it is and where you advertise and which way the birds are flying and all the other variables. Start high and see if anyone bites.
The used hardware game seems to be getting tougher. I've gotten out of doing the buy/sell/swap stuff for the most part. Too much hassle and prices are shifting rapidly. Also, I no longer have the ready supply of hardware I once had. Nowadays, I have a broken g4 or a working beige g3 follow me home on a good day.
I used to sell a TON of stuff every month at the MIT flea market (in Cambridge, Ma) and made a killing on it. It was great, one Sunday a month I'd get up early, load up the car, and just hang out. Being a stupid geek myself, I'd usually end up spending most of what I'd make on a new laptop or parts or something, and it was a blast! One weekend a month and I'd make my rent, and all I had to do was keep an eye out for used parts during the month.
About a year or two it all started slowing down, there were guys that stocked up on Blue and Whites, and brought a 20' truck to the show full of them. They were selling them off LOADED WORKING for $25. 400mhz, 256-512MB... sweet deals, I bought 10 or 15 of them at the time, ended up not really being able to make much on them after. I think what it boils down to is that the B&W G3 is now almost 10 years old. Usable machine? Absolutely. Fast machine? Absolutely not. If I were going to pick up something to use as a daily mac, that would not be my choice, even at those prices.
The times they are a-changin'... it's up to us to change with them or get left behind.
It's been interesting buying and flipping Macs on ebay over the last five or so years.
It's mostly been to keep myself with a usable Mac, then I'd get motivated to either upgrade, or sometimes I just needed the money.
Over that time period, my price point has generally been around the $200 CDN range. I started with a desktop beige G3, then went through two more of those, a beige G3 tower, a B&W, a Sawtooth G4, dual-G4 gigabit, and finally the DA I'm using now...which was the first purchase to fall well-below the $200 average.
One of the B&Ws I had in my basement I ended up giving away to an intern at work who wanted to learn OS X. It simply wasn't worth the hassle of finding a big box and packing material, listing it, and lugging it to the post office or UPS for what I'd get for it.
I just sold my bare bone Dual 1.25GHz MDD for $700 on Boston CraigsList. It had a 200GB HD, and a radeon 9800 pro 128mb. 1GB RAM.
G4 Tower Value Guide
http://the-ish.com/g4value/
Mac2Sell offers online estimates for used Apple Macs
The Mac2Sell service is free: http://www.mac2sell.net
Cheers, Tom