There's luckily a computer store across the street from me I regularly sell parts to.

Do the drives still have gold in them? I thought that they did at one stage. So, you could also take a weekend off, dismantle them and search for the gold. I kid, but one of my pals once did exactly that with one of my old drives when he was bored.

I just threw a couple old computer cases in my recycle bin. Let my city sanitation deal with my ewaste.

No but the old ones make good wind chimes. Oh, and then there are those wonderful magnets.

I don't bother keeping old computer parts anymore, I've thrown most of it away to recycling, as there's no real monetary value in it, unless you have a huge load of it, in which case you could try to sell it by the weight.

lol I hate those things!

You can make a bench supply out of the power supply pretty easily. I've made four, I think. The one pictured is the first, and I've used it for years (so has my kid). Another failed, and two were made from those nifty small supplies used in Shuttle computers. I gave them away but they've both seen a lot of use.

You can't read the labels in the pic, but they are +3.3V, +5V, +12V, -12V, and GND. I have a few leads with alligator clips on the end, and I use the supply for driving Lego contraptions, various toys, and for breadboarding.

Maybe I can dig up a photo of the prettier Shuttle supplies.

edit:
Found one.

edit again:
The ATX with the mess of cables still attached hasn't been wired up yet. When I finished that one, I discovered the supply was dead anyway, dammit.

Sell it to people you know for cheap, or try to get more for em from creepy strangers. That's about it. :P

Interesting idea, thanks!

Generally if the PC is completely obsolete, I just give it away. If It's still got some life left in it, I'll usually sell it very cheap, sometimes even still give it away to people who do not have much money to begin with. If they have kids I'll install a few freeware games as well, determined by age. I usually try to get like $20 though just to help pay for the electric and my time. I always keep spare parts around though so I can save from buying parts later on. Makes it much easier to sell them cheap or just give away. Can't sell a PC for $20 if I spent $50 for a RAM upgrade and larger capacity hard drive.

Bad hard drives though are my favorite. If it's riddled with bad sectors or just plain out will not work. I use it for shotgun practice then burn them. Put a slug through a hard drive and you'll know what I mean. It's FUN!! Plus, you never know what kind of sensitive data might be on them.