Dead late 2012 macbook pro - what to do with it?

[Donnie]

So, don't worry first as I already have my new macbook air so that's not a concern. Basically had a late 2012 macbook pro and it was only the last few months where it was really getting a bit slow, I'd upgraded the hdd to ssd and moved the hdd to a new caddy where the old dvd drive was, also upped the memory to 16GB etc and it's been a great laptop for nearly (nearly) a decade.
So it's sat to one side for the last month or so just idling and I picked it up the other day only to find the trackpad is cracked! On further investigation there's also swelling of the case and a quick google leads me to believe its the battery has swollen, so I should be thankful it didn't explode or go on fire!

Now rather than binning it I guess I could salvage the drives and sell on the memory, not sure if there's any milage in salvaging any more of it is there?

 

[JonathanRyan]

Yeah, the battery has gone - it's swelling up and cracking the trackpad. It's probably not dangerous but it is possible it can catch fire. When it happened to mine I just put it outside until I could get it down to the recycling centre.

Apple seem to change their memory every 10 mins so decade old memory probably isn't worth much. And TBH unless you buy them from Apple, drives are pretty cheap. I'd recycle it all asap.

 

[LongLensPhotography]

If it is not really dead you could just swap out the battery and sell the thing. Don't forget to wipe the drives properly.
there is too little money in such old RAM or drives separately to be worth the effort. Best case is you can get it working for little money or remove battery and sell as spares.