Argos has become the first major British retailer to offer an on-the-spot trade-in service for old devices – so how much could one writer get for the old phones and tablets knocking around her house?

How many old mobile phones and tablets are languishing in your home? A quick inventory of my drawers, where gadgets go to die, reveals a stash bigger than Las Vegas’s neon boneyard.

There are five phones, a couple of them smart and stored inexplicably in their original boxes (a state of affairs that makes me look like a serious collector, but is really an example of senseless hoarding). There’s also an Asus tablet that looks, under closer inspection, to be an extremely small Etch A Sketch. It’s a shameful walk down technology lane, although it’s surprising how nostalgic you can get when confronted by your partner’s old Sony Ericsson K850. It also prompts some existential questioning, namely: why the hell am I still using a cracked, two-year-old Samsung Galaxy S3 when I could be posturing ironically with a Nokia 2730?