What would you do with 60 new un-needed Dell monitor stands
Posted by hevvypiano@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 109 comments
We've been doing a monitor refresh in the office, but everyone uses standing desks with monitor arms/clamps, so I have around 60 brand-new Dell-specific monitor stands that I can't use for anything else. I hate to just throw them in recycling where they may or may not actually be recycled. Any ideas?
wenestvedt@reddit
Some people use them as a place to hang their headphones.
andrew_joy@reddit
if they are still in box ..... built a fort around your desk .
ORA2J@reddit
I really hate how we got away from VESA for new monitors.
NotMe-NoNotMe@reddit
We just threw out about 100 power cables today. Still in their original Dell plastic bag packaging. I felt bad about being so wasteful, but we already have another hundred or so we’ll never use.
deathybankai@reddit
Like the bricks too ???
myutnybrtve@reddit
Art project. Epoxy. And few hours. Some photos. Then straightto the dumpster.
Que_Ball@reddit
Just for reference. It's not always visible on the main website but Dell will sell you the monitors without stands. If you have a sales rep they can add it to your Premier page to make re-orders easier, if no rep you can use the little chat on the site to ask for a quote and then you can ask them to create a premier page for you with that SKU discounted for future orders once you have placed that order and are in the system with a customer number etc.
So in future you can buy the package that does not include a stand. If you do find it on the website it will nearly always be more expensive since they never (almost) run a discount on this but the rep should discount it to just under the price it goes on sale for multiple times per year on the standard version.
OnlyWest1@reddit
I like having a rep. I just send them what I need and they shoot quotes over. Then i just pass to Accounting and I'm done.
patssle@reddit
They need to sell them without cables too. Just bought 50 monitors... 100 cables that are useless for existing monitor spots + 50 USB cables I won't use.
milesteg420@reddit
I thought about giving them out to trick or treaters on Halloween. Why have candy when you can have a nifty usb cable?
BinaryWanderer@reddit
I’d egg your house… nah, probably not but I would post in /r/mildlyinfuriating after leaving your house.
milesteg420@reddit
what if I gave you two cords instead of just one?
BinaryWanderer@reddit
Kinky.
4kVHS@reddit
You would give them out for Halloween? What will the children think? Lol
milesteg420@reddit
I can see why those kids are disappointed. VGA cables are a far cry from the joy that one would get from recieving a USB cable.
4kVHS@reddit
Who uses those stupid USB-B cables that come with most monitors? Only good for 2001 printers I think. Although the newer ones that have USB-C are actually useful.
milesteg420@reddit
uj/ Yeah, they are so useless. Honestly a vga might even be slightly more useful
rj/ They could be used for all kinds of crafts
thrownawaymane@reddit
Of all the things about the job this is the one I didn’t expect. Our cable section of the closet gets pruned once a year and could stand to be twice
SwiftSloth1892@reddit
Heard. Just dumped about a hundred collected vga cables the other day. And today the bins already overflowing again. I think I need larger bins.
sdeptnoob1@reddit
I'll take em lol. We just ordered like 200 display port cables due to running out too often.
Tonkatuff@reddit
Wow. Wish I knew this before our recent refresh.. or you know for the last 15 years I've ordered monitors with stands and felt bad tossing them out.
Clydicals@reddit
I wish I knew this last year haha but great to know.
bgr2258@reddit
This is what I try to do
miamistu@reddit
This is great to know, we've had to dispose hundreds of them.
hevvypiano@reddit (OP)
Ah, interesting. I didn't know this was an option, thank you.
pdp10@reddit
Ideally, they would be stored in the original display boxes, for use when the displays are moved to another purpose, decommissioned, or disposed of into the secondary market.
Second best, if the original boxes must go, pack the stands densely into storage boxes, for same.
Hotshot55@reddit
I've never seen a place that keeps monitor boxes.
OptimalCynic@reddit
The biggest problem I have with monitor boxes is remembering to take the monitor out before biffing them. It's a reflex at this point
zakabog@reddit
Even for smaller (23") monitors you're looking at dedicating most of a decent sized office to store the boxes for some $100 monitors. That's not worth it at all.
nanonoise@reddit
Store them in the CEOs office.
DYMongoose@reddit
Honestly, save them. The number of people we've had that suddenly didn't want their monitors mounted anymore left us searching eBay and cursing the day we binned the stands.
neckbeard404@reddit
Let your users take them home .
wrobilla@reddit
We send them to our ewaste recycler.
jasper-zanjani@reddit
You don't have to sell them as a lot you can have an ebay listing where people can buy individual ones. Not sure if there are restrictions for type of account but it's worth a shot
thrownawaymane@reddit
great way to pump an account for feedback. was much easier 10 years ago but of course I was in a different industry :/
qwertymartes@reddit
This
theducks@reddit
Not anywhere near perth Australia are you? There’s a charity which needs several hundred 😅
p47guitars@reddit
What kinda plastic is it?
Mwroobel@reddit
Stick apple logos on them and sell them as $999 studio display stands!
trw419@reddit
Scrap
sdeptnoob1@reddit
Try to ebay as a solid lot? Start low like 50 bucks and don't include shipping. Maybe someone will take em from you lol.
Or build a sculpture out if them and put it infront of the office.
turboturbet@reddit
ewaste recyclers use to buy them off us after a monitor refresh was complete.
IntraspeciesJug@reddit
I'd keep about 10 or 15 just in case but pitch the rest. I know it seems weird that happens to everyone with the stand-up desks.
awnawkareninah@reddit
Dumpster. Nobody needs them. Dell needs to start asking and shipping without. It's always waste.
jcpham@reddit
Basura
jcpham@reddit
Basura
BatemansChainsaw@reddit
One of our our techs sold all but a handful of them on ebay and made a good bit of dough for himself.
Magic_Neil@reddit
You MIGHT be able to scrap them.. you’d have to separate the plastic from the metal, and even then the scrap value wouldn’t be worth it to drive to the yard, let alone the time to disassemble. But better than a landfill?
enigmaunbound@reddit
Team Building Exercise 2025. Tape a $500 gift card. Have employees build a pyramid to fetch it.
codyturntrout@reddit
We throw away tons of them. Not worth selling not worth donating.
illestp@reddit
local metal recycler takes ours, worth it for us at least.
codyturntrout@reddit
Do you have dell monitors they are like 80 percent plastic as far as I can. Would be cool otherwise.
Landscape4737@reddit
Will they really be recycled as IT progressed that far?
breezecam@reddit
I'll buy them off you, DM me
SomeCrazedGunman@reddit
Put them together so I can mount one big Dell monitor
nuboots@reddit
Not all stands are created equal. If these are pan/tilt/swivel with height? Those are expensive. Someone might want a few. Might.
Dtrain-14@reddit
I will say we used to trash them, and that bit us in the ass when COVID hit because we sent everyone home with monitors and didn’t have stands so we had to buy stands. Big expense even for cheap ones x hundreds of people. If you have storage, store them until the next refresh. You never know.
Soft-Mode-31@reddit
Build a huge "card house" with them and sell it as modern art! Boom! :)
ohyeahwell@reddit
I pile them in a corner in the storage room, still in their foam wrappers.
Zozorak@reddit
Prior IT team chucked all of ours. Then turns out we could've used a good 10 of them 5 years later
ButternutCheesesteak@reddit
Some dude in India will find them in the trash heap and sell them to be smelted down. You're practically runn6a charity throwing them away!
blissed_off@reddit
Ironically I need one 😂
ThisIsAdamB@reddit
I was working tech support in a call center. 500 desks, a thousand displays, all mounted on arms. Half the stands were trashed or recycled before I got there. Then they decided to send people to work from home. Take home the pc, mouse, keyboard, and displays. Oh, wait, hundreds of displays with no stands. Hello, major online retailer? Please send us a bunch of pallets of heavy metal display stands that have to be assembled one by one. Do we trust the agents to assemble them? No, we do not. Do we trust the tech guys? Yes. Yes, we do.
That was a fun month.
SpecialSheepherder@reddit
If you have the space keep them for when the newer monitors get decommissioned. A working monitor with stand fetches 10-20 dollars more than a monitor without stand.
What happens to the old monitors, someone buying them? Ask them if they have any use for the stands (some are compatible with other monitors?).
occamsrzor@reddit
Huck them at trains
danceparty3216@reddit
ebay is pretty common at my place of work with extra stock.
Maybe interlock them into some sort of anti-tank structure vaguely like a Czech hedgehog to protect your office box fort to go with all the new monitor boxes?
chromebaloney@reddit
Yes, I think we should have more 'alternative use' ideas presented!
tdowg1@reddit
your local freecycle maybe? not 60 but maybe one or 2?
Fresh_Ad4765@reddit
Hang on to a few of them. I work in a large Pediatrics department and a few years ago everyone wanted their monitors mounted to wall arms. Recently everyone is complaining they are inconvenient but we didn't keep any of the stands.
chromebaloney@reddit
Just with the title my weird brain pictured strapping one to each foot for kind of low-rise stilts.
jooooooohn@reddit
eBay
bagpussnz9@reddit
Glad we didn't throw ours out. When your company goes through a m&a and your office is closed and all the remaining staff need to work from home they will need monitors
saltyclam13345@reddit
I’ve got a few totes in my stockroom where these are stored
Jeff-J777@reddit
We saved a few stands, broke them down and stored them in boxes. I have very limited storage space., so I don't have room to keep lots around. The rest I just pitched in our metal recycle bin and called it a day.
NorthAntarcticSysadm@reddit
Make a statue of godzilla in front of your data center or server room.
Keep a few on hand, just in case. You never know when you might need to pull a monitor or two off the arms and slap the stands back on them.
hkeycurrentuser@reddit
I have e-waste recycled 4000 of them. A little piece of me died with each one of them. Dell/HPE, if you're listening, I want an Enterprise SKU that doesn't have a stand from factory please. Save me, save you, save the polar bears.
TheDawiWhisperer@reddit
Make a mech or exo skeleton
vonkeswick@reddit
There is no other solution but this one.
RelativeID@reddit
Came here to say this. You have your orders, OP. Get to it.
ReptilianLaserbeam@reddit
I have a storage filled with boxes over boxes of monitor stands. I’m just waiting until we have enough old gear for final disposal, as usually recycling companies will charge you of the material weight doesn’t reach certain threshold
HerfDog58@reddit
Use them to display your LEGO builds. Sturdier than the ones that come with the kits if the Saturn V stands are any indication.
OrvilleTheCavalier@reddit
You can buy the monitors without stands, depending on the model.
scytob@reddit
nothing - sell them on ebay? recycel - i bet you local PC recycling folks will take them to go with all the monitors they get from out of offices with no stands (luckily dell stands work year in year out across different models for the most part)
rcp9ty@reddit
When you do a bulk order from Dell you can order the monitors without stands. We did it in the past but we had a big order of new monitors.
fdeyso@reddit
Keep some because you’ll eventually need some and they’re bloody expensive, on this note you can sell them 😅
u_b_dat_boi@reddit
create a ball of monitors.
iamLisppy@reddit
Trash
Eastern-Payment-1199@reddit
eBay 👀👀👀👀👀
Sinsilenc@reddit
We bought 200 new monitors for our new office. We kept 30 of the stands in a box. Other than that we had a electronics recycling company pick them up for us.
old_school_tech@reddit
As soon as you dispose of them, you will need them.
hevvypiano@reddit (OP)
Right?!
eruffini@reddit
Build a fort.
schnityzy393@reddit
I've thrown out the high hundreds, possibly in the triple zeros. E waste, junk, rubbish... Lose em they're worthless. Shame as they're really well built.
Ssakaa@reddit
Build an art installation in the hall outside the helpdesk
Banananana215@reddit
The vendor we purchase monitors from takes them back to resell or recycle.
movieguy95453@reddit
Keep a couple around just in case, throw the rest in recycling. It's unnecessary clutter to keeps them knowing you will most likely never use them. Since new monitors come with stands, it's unlikely anyone else will need them.
DrWieg@reddit
You know of the Human Centipede?
Time for the Dell Centipede.
ludlology@reddit
keep five, take the rest to your e-waste place of choice
zakabog@reddit
We have a few hundred Dell monitors, we threw out most of the stands.
adamelteto@reddit
When we got a bunch of used Dell monitors for free that used to be arm mounted, we bought replacement stands by the bulk. You may be able to sell them online, you never know, offer a quantity discount.
orion3311@reddit
I wouldn't say this is the right answer, but for mine (Lenovo) I left them seperated/as flat as can be, took a couple totes and filled them up. Kept whatever would fit into the two totes, and anything else, I hate to say, ended up in the dumpster. A local metal/scrap guy would take them.
Ivy1974@reddit
When I got divorced I took so much crap to this little apartment I moved into. I put an add on Craigslist said free computer equipment. A guy shows up and grabbed it all.
Wonder_Weenis@reddit
sell them to people who like to ride bicycles with no seat
Grass-tastes_bad@reddit
Honestly nobody will want them, recycle is about all you can do.
BurnAnotherTime513@reddit
Yeah. You can try to re-sell them on whatever platform... but do a search for the stands and see how many are already available.
I just store my spares with other e-waste junk and do a bulk pickup once or twice a year. Local e-waster comes and grabs everything.
PossibilityOrganic@reddit
What you do is horde them in a closet, for the next refresh, so you can pair them back up. So the next guy can do the same thing with his refurbished monitors:) Or you can just toss em.
zeptillian@reddit
If you have the space you can store them for when the monitors are replaced. Otherwise they are probably just trash.
Might be able to sell a few but 60? Doubtful.
TimePlankton3171@reddit
ebay
BeyondRAM@reddit
Resell them