Most businesses leave money on the table during equipment refreshes. Here's what your gear is actually worth on the secondary market in 2026.
The headline numbers
For a typical mid-sized business doing a full fleet refresh in 2026, expect recovery values roughly in these ranges (as a percentage of original retail):
- Laptops, 2–3 years old: 25–45% of original price
- Laptops, 4–5 years old: 8–18%
- Desktops, 2–4 years old: 10–25% (lower than laptops — less demand)
- Servers, recent generation: 15–35%, sometimes much higher for in-demand SKUs
- Networking gear (enterprise switches/firewalls): 10–40% — varies wildly by vendor and model
- Phones, 1–2 years old: 30–55%
- Monitors: 5–15% — heavy and expensive to ship relative to value
These are realistic, not optimistic. Anyone quoting 60-70% on three-year-old equipment is either looking at the rare in-demand model or telling you what you want to hear.
What moves the number up
- Volume. 100 identical laptops sells faster and at higher per-unit value than 100 mixed
- Recent generation. The market discounts hard at each new product cycle
- Premium brands. Apple, ThinkPad X/T-series, EliteBook, certain Dell Latitude/Precision lines hold value
- Original accessories. Power adapters, original boxes, documentation
- Working, tested condition. "Working confirmed" beats "untested" by 15-30%
- Wiped, not destroyed. Drives that can be sold with the unit recover their own residual value
What moves the number down
- Asset tag residue, etched serial numbers, custom paint. Refurb costs rise; resale value drops
- Damaged screens or chassis. Repair eats most of the upside
- Off-brand or commodity equipment. Generic desktops often hit parts-only value within 2 years
- Mixed configurations. 50 different models = 50 separate listings
- Stuck in BIOS lock or MDM enrollment. Apple Activation Lock and BitLocker without recovery keys can kill resale value entirely
The hidden multiplier: harvested parts
Even when whole-unit resale isn't viable, individual components often are. Memory modules, NVMe drives, GPUs, server NICs, fiber transceivers, and certain processors all have active aftermarket demand. A "scrap" server might yield several hundred dollars in harvested parts that go to legitimate downstream buyers, with the chassis going to commodity recovery.
How to maximize recovery
- Don't sit on it. Equipment depreciates monthly on the secondary market. The refresh-then-store-for-six-months strategy wastes value.
- Inventory before disposition. Know what you have so you know what it's worth.
- Wipe properly, don't destroy unnecessarily. If the unit can be resold, a defensible Purge is more valuable than a shredder.
- Use a partner with transparent revenue sharing. "We'll dispose of it for free" usually means they're keeping all the recovery value.
Our ITAD service gives you per-asset valuations up front and shares recovery revenue back to you transparently. That's the model — not a black box.
Need help with this in your business? Contact CCRAMM Technical Services — we respond to inquiries within one business day.