Old Laptop Resale – What’s It Worth

Really old laptops can be a bit tricky to price for resale. Most people wildly overestimate what their aging machines are worth. This video walks through evaluating a 2012 Acer Aspire One to see whether it still has any resale value and what a realistic selling price might be:

Question. Can I sell this really old laptop? And if so, how much could it be worth? I guess it’s really going to depend on a few things:

One: How old it is.

Two: How well it still works.

Three: How powerful the machine is.

So, let’s take a look at what we’ve got:

This is an Acer Aspire One. The Acer Aspire One series are netbooks or small laptops that were released between 2008 and 2013. So, as far as how old it is, this machine was manufactured in mid 2012. That’s a promising sign as it is one of the later models of Aspire One, but we’re talking about 13 years here. Anything much older than this and there really wouldn’t be any value to it.

Now, as far as how well it works, when I found it on a shelf, it did have a sticker that said “good” on it. So I’m assuming it at least turns on, but we’ll check it out and make sure it’s working well. With most of this older computer equipment, it really needs to be in great working condition for it to be worth much of anything. It’s also going to need to have a working charger with it or there won’t be much interest. Fortunately, we do have that. You might be able to find someone who wants older machines just for parts or collections, but that’s going to be a challenge.

Taking a look in BIOS, the CPU is a Pentium 967. This is a low power two core, two thread chip running at 1.3 GHz. This is pretty weak even when it was first released in late 2011. It does support DDR3 and DirectX 10.

However, taking a look at the memory, it does have 8 GB installed. This means it must have had additional memory added to it at some point since these machines from around this time came with 2 to 4 gigs of RAM. That extra memory is great though, as it will really help boost the performance. Few people are going to want anything with less than 8 GB now anyway.

After opening it up, it also appears that the storage drive is a newer 500 GB Western Digital SSD drive. That’s also going to be a big step up from whatever this machine originally came with. Most likely a 250 or 320 GB traditional hard drive.

Booting up the machine shows that it has already been updated to Windows 10 and everything appears to be working fine with it.

So, what’s the verdict on this little laptop? Since it’s in working condition, has multiple upgrades on it, and still has the original charging cable, this should absolutely be able to be sold for at least something.

Let’s go ahead and reset the computer back to base Windows 10, test the various ports, and wipe it down nicely before listing it for sale on eBay.

(One hour later). All right, there we go. Nice and squeaky clean.

How much is this thing worth, however? Probably not all that much. We’re looking at what was already a cheap, low powered computer 13 years ago when it was manufactured. People often think their technology is worth more than it is. Unfortunately, once the tech is more than 8 to 10 years old, it’s really not worth much.

For instance, you can buy a brand new laptop today for well under 200 dollars. If this little laptop wasn’t significantly upgraded already, I would think you could get maybe 30 dollars for it. However, with these nice upgrades, I think 60 dollars is reasonable.

I’d be interested to hear what some of the viewers think, however. How much do you think this thing is worth? Post your thoughts about it in the video comments!