As a poor-student-ish activity in a US college town, I used to systematically walk trash pickup zones of the city streets the night before the zone's pickup, looking for useful household items that people customarily set beside their trash bags for some poor student type to grab.

Occasionally, it would look like some scavenger had come along before me, and cut the connectors off computer cables, and took only the cable. Not even cut the cable off an appliance to which it was attached, but simply a cable with connectors on both ends.

For example, one time it was for a complete vintage Mac setup, which someone had taken some care to set out with all the required items... but the cables were missing; only their cut-off connectors were there.

One time, I actually saw a/the person doing this. He looked just like a comfortable gray-haired engineer, calmly standing on the sidewalk with a heavy wire cutter, snipping the connectors off a computer cable someone had set out on the curb. I was so surprised, that I didn't say anything to him.

Around here (Melbourne, Australia) it's not "occasionally", it's extremely common, and often happens very soon after stuff is put out.

That's more commonly done by the original owner to render them inoperable. You're right that the scrap value in those is absolutely miniscule; and many are actually copper-coated aluminum these days.

I did that the other day but for a warranty replacement. The company wants to make sure you're not getting a free second item but also don't want to pay for return shipping so they require a photo of the item that includes the serial number and the snipped cord visible so they know it's non-operational.

I've done this in the past few years for a broken fan, blender, immersion circulator, vacuum, wireless charging pad, and probably some other items I'm forgetting. (For whatever reason, I tend to be lucky that things tend to break slightly before the warranty is up.)

Are you sure that's not it? Why are you even assuming the items are functional? Most broken items still look fine, they just don't work properly.

>Are you sure that's not it?

Well, I'm not certain, but there are plenty of comments about it in local hard rubbish groups.

>Why are you even assuming the items are functional?

Obviously I can't know for sure, but I have seen cases where someone has put out a fridge with a note saying "Free - it works! :)" and...cord is cut. etc.