Osgeld:
then go to the local thift store and get a 3$ VCRthe VCR will give you motors, piles of wire, buttons and random crap
Wow I really should have done that, I took apart a lot of disposable cameras from a wallgreens for a lot of my components (he he, make sure you discharge the cap inside of them arn remove the batteries before trying to take them apart btw) but VCRs would be a goldmine. Perhaps DVD players as well (since VCRs are actually kinda hard to find nowadays).
Another good one is to go to gamestores and get old videogame controllers if you need buttons/thumbsticks. Cheap radios can do the trick too.
The real trouble with recycling parts out of old electronics though, is finding out what everything is.