MP 1,1-5,1 Decisions decisions, how much should we ask for our used Mac Pros?

[panjandrum]

We have a choice to make; keep our existing Mac Pro 4,1s flashed to 5,1s in the education sector, or sell them on and replace them. Before advent of the Apple Silicon machines I would have expected an excellent return on these, but from what I'm seeing the M1s have reduced Intel Mac selling points a bit.

The tidbits: Nice machines, all in good shape. All upgraded to dual 2.66 6-Core CPUs (I believe that's the X5660 model IIRC), this takes care of the audio-glitch issue that arose with the original CPUs. All come equipped with a Radeon RX 560 graphics card. All upgraded with a BYO fusion drive consisting of a 60GB SSD and 1TB or 540GB HDD. All would come wiped with a clean install of Mojave. Systems include Apple extended keyboard (various vintages), a mouse (multi-button non-Apple), and a cheapie 1080p monitor (white bezel), hdmi cable, power cables (often not the original power cable). Each unit has 8GB of ram. The accessories all work, but have been used by children in a K-8 environment and may show some signs of such usage.

So what do you all think? Keeping them around is not out of the question, but they are going to become an increasing burden on me (the IT guy) to keep them on a recent enough OS to be useful, what with Open Core, etc, needed to go beyond Mojave (well, I guess Catalina can be patched.) Not because I consider Mojave to be out of date, but because the entities that make the software we have to use for things such as state-mandated testing will stop supporting anything other than very recent versions of the MacOS. No matter how capable they technically are, I expect we may find their size outweighs their usefulness as soon as next school year unless I'm willing to do the Open Core thing. Path of least resistance may simply be to replace.

In a nutshell it's that software compatibility that has me considering selling them on. What do you think I could reasonably ask for these on todays market? (Buyer pays for packaging and shipping.) I perused ebay for a while, trying to figure this out, but prices are all over the place on these older Mac Pros.

 

[arche3]

Packaging and shipping will be close to 200 bucks from ups. That is worth more than the computer.

 

[Soba]

I sold a number of old Mac Pro and Power Mac systems on eBay in 2020. The reason I prefer selling things at auction is precisely because I don't need to worry about choosing the optimal asking price; the market sets the price for me.

If you're willing to pack and ship them, sell one of them on eBay as a test to see how you'll do and then decide if you want to try selling the rest. I suggest not selling more than one or two at a time to avoid bringing down your final sale price, as there is finite demand for these systems and you don't want to saturate the market.

If you need packing boxes for them, Macsales sells a shipping kit for the tower Mac Pros, which is what I used:

OWC Safe Shipping Carton & Packing Set for Mac Pro... at MacSales.com

XMCPROCTN OWC Safe Shipping Carton & Packing Set for Mac Pro (2006 - 2012). Complete box set/materials for proper shipping of Mac Pro "Silver Tower" models. Meets all major shipping carrier requirements for safe packaging of computers and peripherals.

eshop.macsales.com

When buying postage through eBay, my shipping cost within the USA ranged from about $35–$65 at that time. Good luck!

 

[startergo]

I sold a number of old Mac Pro and Power Mac systems on eBay in 2020. The reason I prefer selling things at auction is precisely because I don't need to worry about choosing the optimal asking price; the market sets the price for me.

If you're willing to pack and ship them, sell one of them on eBay as a test to see how you'll do and then decide if you want to try selling the rest. I suggest not selling more than one or two at a time to avoid bringing down your final sale price, as there is finite demand for these systems and you don't want to saturate the market.

If you need packing boxes for them, Macsales sells a shipping kit for the tower Mac Pros, which is what I used:

OWC Safe Shipping Carton & Packing Set for Mac Pro... at MacSales.com

XMCPROCTN OWC Safe Shipping Carton & Packing Set for Mac Pro (2006 - 2012). Complete box set/materials for proper shipping of Mac Pro "Silver Tower" models. Meets all major shipping carrier requirements for safe packaging of computers and peripherals.

eshop.macsales.com

When buying postage through eBay, my shipping cost within the USA ranged from about $35–$65 at that time. Good luck!

What about the returns?

 

[startergo]

Selling with the original video card will be less than 800

 

[Soba]

What about the returns?

I do not offer returns on any of my sales unless there's a defect (in which case I'm required by eBay policy to accept the return, though I would do so anyway even if eBay didn't compel me because not doing so would be dishonest).

I test all equipment (very) thoroughly before resale. Any system that exhibits problems that I cannot solve is stripped of its salable parts, which are then sold separately. My Mac Pros and Power Macs went through many, many rounds of Apple Hardware Test and Apple Service Diagnostic. If I found bad RAM or a bad graphics card, I replaced those parts and began testing all over again.

I had 43 such Macs in storage. I sold 18 of them and sent 25 of them off the recycler, along with a pile of faulty graphics cards, RAM, and Superdrives. I also sold off a pile of good RAM, graphics cards, Superdrives, and even some of the oddball screws that I knew that some other owners could use. Dealing with several Power Mac G5s with leaky cooling systems was "fun" and I did not even consider selling any of the liquid-cooled G5s except for the final revision because all of the others were notoriously unreliable.

@panjandrum You work in IT, so you're probably aware of this, but do yourself a big favor and test these machines to excess if you go forward with selling them. Also, I'm not sure I'd recommend the BYO fusion drive setup. Keep the machines as vanilla as possible, otherwise you're going to have to help your buyers fix something when they break it after the fact.

I also wouldn't recommend selling the systems with a display. That will significantly increase your packing and shipping cost for each lot because they must be shipped separately. Sell those separate from the Macs if you want to; if someone needs a display, they'll buy one, and you can also get better prices since you're widening your audience of buyers to all computer users and not just Mac users who are in the market for an old Mac Pro (which is a pretty tiny market). If they're very cheap displays, you might want to just recycle them or try to Craigslist them, since eBaying might not be profitable.

Full disclosure: I don't intend to ever go through this kind of sale again. It's a lot of work. Testing this equipment took weeks, and I had to purchase additional hard drive trays, RAM, and hard drives (dozens of them) to make the systems complete, and then the auctions ran for months. If you can do this as part of your job (thus it's not really your own time that you're spending on it) and don't mind dealing with packing, shipping, and the occasional difficult buyer, then go for it.

 

[goMac]

I sold my upgraded 5,1 for maybe $300? They aren't worth much.

For edu probably time to pull them out of service. If they start dying replacement parts are going to be hard to find. Software support is gone. And OpenCore isn't going to provide any sort of warranty on those things.

New Mac Minis aren't expensive. If you sell them off you might get somewhat close to paying for the new Macs. Maybe.

Also remember if you work for a public school it may be illegal to resell those things. Taxpayer property. Usually have to go to public auction.

 

[DFP1989]

I mucked around with an upgraded 4,1 and 5,1 for a few months, and flipped them for a bit of a profit after upgrading them, but that was just before the M1s came out, and I wouldn't expect them to go for as much now. Even the youngest 5,1's are getting old at this point.

No idea on pricing, but I'd echo what others have said and sell them as standard as possible. As I recall, that means a fresh install of Mojave with the RX560, and don't be bothering with hacky Fusion drive setups, just have an OS drive and a storage drive.

The less reasons something could go wrong with them in the short term after you've sold, the better.

 

[startergo]

The easiest way of selling it (or in bulk) is through https://www.macmeanoffer.com/. Good value for the original condition of the cMP. They will send you a shipping box for 30$ and will prepay the shipping label.

 

[nothingtoseehere]

With M1 machines, you should save a lot of energy, and therefore costs? This factor could be included in the calculation whether keep or sell them.

 

[goMac]

With M1 machines, you should save a lot of energy, and therefore costs? This factor could be included in the calculation whether keep or sell them.

And maintenance costs. Not having to worry about OpenCore and patching OS installs across dozens of machines is worth time, and therefore money.

 

[panjandrum]

OK, thanks for the feedback on this, I do appreciate it. Like I said, prices elsewhere are so all over the place on these models for now that I had a much harder time than expected coming up with anything resembling an accurate price point. Selling up before the M1s came out would have been a wise decision on my part. (Also, part of me wonders if they might jump in value again once Apple stops selling Intel Macs and companies with mission-critical Intel-only requirements seek to replace failed equipment with still-working Intel machines.)

Many of your points are are well taken, and often have already been taken into consideration, especially power-consumption (they sleep very quickly under their current configuration for example), but realistically we have to use them if we can't afford to replace them. Non-profit public education is not a place where there is a lot of $ to spend, and one of the ways we manage this is by keeping our systems alive as long as humanly possible (we've been averaging about a 10-year cycle on Mac equipment, and even our iPads are now 9 years old). I'm already here as part of the school's annual budget, so I'm always happy to spend that time saving the school money in other ways if I can. I'm actually about to try to conquer Open Core for the first time. I'll see how that goes. The complexity and reliability of that solution will impact my decision.

 

[Macsonic]

Two of my friends where planning on selling their 2009 cMac Pro but they have been receiving side projects. They ended up keeping their Macs. Their side jobs and client customers didn’t require them to use the newest and fastest computer. My friend, a former high school teacher, gets side jobs from his alma mater doing Powerpoint presentations and thesis projects for working students. Helps pay off utility bills.

 

[InuNacho]

I sold my 12 core 3.33GHz 5,1 back in January locally for $400. No Ram, disks, or GPU.
Kept the RX 580 and slapped in an eGPU for my Mini and the RAM I sold on ebay separately for maybe $100 for 128GB.

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

Comparing with a new mini M1, I think your cMP 5,1 can be priced reasonably at 500$ per set at retail, 400$ or lower for wholesales.
An old 1080p monitor is not very expensive. They are flooding the PC junks market right now. Unless yours are luxury pro model at purchase time, you can't ask too much for them.

Price it higher, you are pushing your prospective buyers toward the mini M1.

 

[Grumply]

It's not just the M1 machines, the latest intel macs (moreso the iMacs and Macbook Pros, than the vastly more expensive 7,1) have also taken a chunk out of the 5,1's value.

People can (finally) get into genuinely powerful Mac machines for reasonable money again (for the first time in a long time), so frankensteined 5,1s don't hold quite the appeal they used to (until very recently).

 

[Nguyen Duc Hieu]

I guess OP has 2 options:

<1> Keeping the current set-up, seek school management board to authorize the upgrade to non supported OS. OpenCore Legacy Patcher is very easy to use. It will only take time on the first machine. From the second one, just clone the SSDs, which is pretty fast. This option only cost labour.

<2> Wholesales the cMP flocks and purchase Mac Mini M1 to replace. Keep all the keyboards, mouses and monitors; just replace the dead ones. This option cost both labour and cost, but might save OP time for upgrading.

 

[fatespawn]

For reference - west chicago area... A guy had his stock dual 4,1 listed on facebook marketplace for $450 for a few weeks with no takers. He dropped the price to $150 and I bought it (came with 12GB ram, HD4870 and no disks). I don't know what your market will be, but it seems there are fewer and fewer people shopping for this machine. I installed a pair of delidded 5690's for $200 on ebay now waiting to find an RX560 for Mojave. So, just to get it reasonably upgraded it's a $500 investment IF I can get the computer cheap. Ram extra, drives extra....

It's getting to the point where it's not going to be worth the resale IMO.

 

[bsbeamer]

You're better off selling out parts if you want to make a few bucks, unless there is a local who wants to buy with local pickup. Really not worth shipping/packing cost which would be passed onto buyer.

Have considered selling an MP5,1 dual 3.46 tray with 128GB RAM and an authentic GTX680 Mac Edition or the Sapphire RX580. Have the OEM single 3.33 tray I could add back in with the other GPU.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Sorry to say those machines are mostly worthless now. Security updates for Mojave will end this fall. I’d sell them locally for whatever anyone is willing to pay and buy M1 minis for the classrooms.

 

[MacPoulet]

For reference - west chicago area... A guy had his stock dual 4,1 listed on facebook marketplace for $450 for a few weeks with no takers. He dropped the price to $150 and I bought it (came with 12GB ram, HD4870 and no disks). I don't know what your market will be, but it seems there are fewer and fewer people shopping for this machine. I installed a pair of delidded 5690's for $200 on ebay now waiting to find an RX560 for Mojave. So, just to get it reasonably upgraded it's a $500 investment IF I can get the computer cheap. Ram extra, drives extra....

It's getting to the point where it's not going to be worth the resale IMO.

I bought my 4,1 about four years ago and paid $150 for it back then from my uni’s surplus store. I ended up putting about $500 into it for a better CPU, ram, and RX 580, so I’d say you’re spot on.