Last time I was in the hobby, I spent easilly $15-$20k on my whole set up including livestocks. When I left the hobby, I parted it out and I got around $7k for everything over a period of about 5months, YES it took 5 months to sell everything. In the end, the $7k was already spent and gone as well. If I found a buyer for everything, I would wayyyyyyy rather sell for $4k because I wouldn't have to deal with 100people and take 5 months to sell everything, and be able to have $4k cash in front of me instead of $100 here $200 there. Again, the number was $7k that I recouped but over the period of 5 months, most of the cash was gone.
Just my experience.... And FYI, people think "high end" equipment sells faster, WRONG! I had pretty "high end" equipment (bubble king skimmer, tunzes, vortech, neptunes, etc...) most of the high end equipment had to be shipped out all over the country and took months to sell. Think about it, common sense, how many people are willing and wanting to drop $800 on a used skimmer compared to how many people are willing and wanting to drop $200 on a used skimmer? Lol
In parting out, there will be items (usually the cheaper and more affordable items) that sell in a blink of an eye, then there will be items that will never even sell. In the end, some years later, you'll probably just throw it away when you move and have no use for it because you're not even into the hobby anymore. I threw away light fixtures and heavy ballasts when I moved because they were such a pita to move and took too much space. And at that point just didn't want to deal with selling it and getting lowballed and wasting time to meet 10 different flakers on cl. LoL