The Recycling System: From Scrap Collector to Billionaire

Chapter 8: Recycling

"These are the freshest units I've got. Check out this AC unit, practically brand new, made this year even. Take it home, patch it up, and it's good as gold." Old Pete gestured at an air conditioner that was nearly snapped in half.

Jake wasn't just walking and listening, he'd already pulled up his recycling interface and tapped through the appraisal function on every item they passed. The system did the valuation instantly, so Jake already knew exactly what each piece was worth before Pete even finished his pitch.

Pete rambled on through his usual sales routine, but noticing Jake staying quiet and unreadable, he finally stopped, planted his hands on his hips, and asked outright.

"Jake, you messing with me here? You want these or not?"

"Alright, I'll take everything you just showed me," Jake said after a moment's thought.

"Wait, what?! All of it?!"

Jake nodded. Between the two of them, Pete had walked him past roughly forty or fifty large appliances total. Maybe a dozen were relatively recent models, and the rest were genuinely ancient, but Jake wanted those too.

His repairs cost points, and since these were being bought as scrap, the price would be dirt cheap regardless. He could burn the truly worthless old units for cheap points, then spend those points repairing the newer, more valuable ones back to full condition. Do the math right, and he'd rack up a serious points balance for next to nothing.

A refrigerator was a perfect example, a decade-old broken fridge and a brand-new one recycled for roughly the same points, somewhere around twenty or thirty either way. Age genuinely didn't matter to the system.

He'd also already tested recycling scrap copper and iron, and the points return was nowhere close to what electronics and appliances gave him.

So the decision was easy. Every single appliance here was going home with him.

"Let's settle the price first, Pete. Then find me a truck to haul all this back to my place." Jake pulled out paper and a pen and started running numbers.

"The fridge is worth a bit more, but this one's ancient, call it forty bucks, tops. And this one here..."

Item by item, Jake worked out a fair market price for each piece, then handed the total over to Pete.

"Seventeen hundred bucks? Are you kidding me?! You're robbing me blind, kid!" Pete practically shouted, snatching the paper and glaring at the number.

"Come on, Pete, half of this stuff I sold *to* you in the first place, you think I don't know what it's worth? I even padded every single line by a good margin so you'd walk away with a real profit. We've known each other years, it wouldn't sit right with me if you didn't make anything off this."

Pete's expression cycled through several stages of outrage before finally settling into a pained sigh. "Fine, fine, take it! If you weren't an old friend, there's no way I'd let this go for that price!"

Jake just rolled his eyes internally. He knew full well Pete wasn't losing a cent on this, probably walking away with a tidy little profit. Pete's whole shtick was acting wounded right up until the deal that actually worked fine for him.

Jake didn't have much experience in most things, but scrap trading he knew cold. Pete knew better than to try pulling anything over on him, and since Jake had left him real margin anyway, there wasn't much to complain about.

"Pete, this is just round one. My shop hasn't even opened yet, I'll be back in a few days for more. I could probably take every piece of electronics you've got, long-term."

Pete's eyes lit up at that, his whole demeanor warming instantly.

"Ha! No problem at all, no problem! We're old friends, whatever amount you need, I've got it. Say, Jake, level with your old buddy here, what exactly are you doing with all this junk?"

"Opened up a secondhand shop. Buying and selling small used items," Jake said with a grin.

"Come on now, you really think you can flip this stuff and have it actually work?" Pete looked openly skeptical.

"Don't worry about that part. I wouldn't be buying it if I didn't already have buyers lined up." Jake kept it vague, no interest in explaining the system to anyone.

"Fair enough. Hey, you interested in phones? You hear about that truck that flipped on the interstate a couple days back? Whole trailer full of iPhones, burned to a crisp. Buddy of mine ended up with a pile of them, ready to just toss the lot. Real shame if you ask me, but if you want in, I can put in a word for you."

"iPhones? What model?" Jake's pulse quickened, though he kept his face carefully neutral.

"Not totally sure yet, just heard they're all the newest models. Owner lost something like seven hundred grand on that load, nearly cried about it, from what I heard."

"If they're recent models, I'm interested. But you know I can't go high on price, what's your buddy's rock-bottom number? What's he actually looking to move them for?"

Jake pulled an unopened pack of cigarettes from his pocket, shook two loose, handed one to Pete, kept one for himself, and tucked the rest into Pete's shirt pocket.

Pete chuckled and leaned in. "His floor's about forty-five bucks a unit on average. But they've been sitting on his hands two weeks now, nobody wants to touch damaged stock like that. If you're serious, I bet you could get him down to thirty a unit. Fair warning though, most of the internals are fried."

Jake nodded along, keeping his expression carefully bored, though inside he was practically vibrating with excitement. If this deal actually closed, he was about to make an absolute killing.

As for whether the internals worked or not, that mattered to literally everyone except him. No matter how fried the components were, one tap of the Repair function and they'd come back looking factory-fresh in the blink of an eye.

The latest iPhones retailed for over eight hundred dollars easy. At thirty bucks a unit? Jake could barely breathe.

His shop had just opened, and he'd been racking his brain for a flagship product to draw people in. Big appliances, fridges, TVs, AC units, people only replaced those once every several years, which made it tough to build early momentum.

But a stack of the newest iPhones? That would be exactly the kind of hook he needed.

"So? Your boy's got connections, huh?" Pete beamed.

"From now on, you're basically my actual brother," Jake laughed.

"Alright, alright, I'll go find a truck and get all this hauled to your place right now. Freight's on me this round. And remember, you need anything else, you come find me first!" Pete thumped his own chest proudly.

Jake, never one to drag his feet on a good deal, handed the cash over immediately, not remotely worried about Pete skipping out on him. Pete counted it twice over before carefully tucking it away.

Riding in the truck cab beside the driver on the way back to his place, Jake couldn't stop the grin spreading across his face. His shop was about to have exactly what it needed to launch.

The driver helped unload everything into the courtyard. Once he saw the truck off, Jake locked the front gate behind him without a second's delay.

Standing in front of his fresh mountain of beat-up old appliances, Jake could barely wait to pull up the recycling interface and get started.