I have been upgrading mining gear lately and was wondering where the best place to sell of my old stuff is?
eBay buyers still pay the highest prices.
I ran some numbers and it's a good spread still; sell ebay for cash, exchange revenues for BTC, acquire equal hashing power on group buys and keep a profit, or buy up a significant upgrade and break even with higher future revenue- I'll be buying up more power I think, and maybe keeping a small profit. Even on low-end price forecast I'll be able to dump blades and cubes at competitive prices and buy up more hashing speed with a few Antminers on group buys, and will have rather nice profit, an option to upgrade, and definitely less heat and more space in my apartment.
The thing is, it took a while to buy up the blades and cubes, and the fact people can jump in small to try out mining with these makes them still very marketable to new miners. Most first-time miners can't (or don't want to) dive in head-first and buy an Antminer for over $1k. It's funny how experience increases comfort level when things are going well, and buying gear with mining revenues helped with that. When I bought my first 7gh/s miner back in November I got a good deal at $260usd, most were selling for $400, but to me that seemed like way too much money for this "weird idea"... Most "normal" people still don't understand Bitcoin, there's still a lot of un-acted upon curiosity...
Everybody's gotta start somewhere, and the old gear through Ebay is a great place for that because buyers can start "small" $120-200 for a blade and build it out later, filling up a backplane at their own pace. Even though they aren't as efficient like the newest stuff, I still appreciate the design of the ASICminer equipment because they allow people to grow into mining, either by using a backplane and blades or locking the cubes together- both are affordable in relative terms. I was much more comfortable starting out with a bunch of small purchases over time, essentially it's the same concept as dollar-cost-averaging into a more traditional investment. Not like anyone here was looking for a marketing strategy, but I do think the best way to position the older gear is with a focus on the low cost and expansion potential.