#3: OfficeSpares

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I realized one day that every office I’d ever worked for had an old phone system in the closet that “didn’t work” or had otherwise been replaced.  This was a few years ago, but that day I went to my current boss and asked if I could have that box of phones and put it on eBay.  He said the only reason it was there was because it was old, useless, and no one wanted to pay the money to bring it to the dump-so he gave it to me readily and for free.  I spiffed it up, took pictures, made a video, and eventually sold it on eBay for $1500!  Excited, I called my wife and asked her to check with her previous office and ask for their phones.  Again, they had a whole set and gave them up quickly.  Again they sold for greater than $1000.  A few months later I asked a third person, who also was always nagged by the phones in his closet and ended up donating them.  Again I received multiple offers for close to $1000 for that system.  So, zero investment and thousands of dollars profit.  There are plenty of companies that will buy an old phone system from you, for $100 or something.  I’m banking in a different direction, assuming people are really donating their phones because they’re in the way; and would just as quickly give them away free just to avoid the fees and regulation of taking it to a junkyard.  Plus they’ll be keeping alive an urban middle school Spanish teacher who simply can’t survive off what they pay teachers.

So I hereby codify it in the form of officespares.com.  If you have extra office equipment of any type, especially phone systems, I will have someone qualified remove or de-install that phone system and take it off your hands.  Of course we’re not a non-profit, so I assume you won’t get a write-off, but again, you will help an urban Spanish teacher (and one of the last living Latin teachers) stay alive, as well as his wife and kids.