Went to "Weird Stuff Warehouse" over the weekend...
If you live near the bay area I highly recommend you check them out.
They have everything from old cameras, switches, routers, PC pick-n-pull, monitors, every cable under the sun, to electrical components.
My favorite stuff was the electric building supplies. 
(I LOVE TOGGLE SWITCHES)
... oh cool, a robot arm...
I use these things a LOT in my projects.
this is getting to be a bad habit.
I volunteered at a place like that for a while - Community Computer Alliance in Columbus, Ohio.
I was tempted to pocket stuff all the time but . . .
1. 99% of it was garbage that would be sold by weight as scrap.
2. The stuff that was good was salvaged by disabled people to be sold as a non-profit charity.
They specialize in selling PC's and networking to the poor and schools for under $100 for a complete system. But they recycle anything electrical. All I ever got from CCA was a good feeling from helping and a sore back from lifting old CRT monitors.
