How do I get info off my iMac hard drive now that it's out of the computer?

I was in a car accident recently. I'm okay, but I'm afraid my iMac did not survive. Before taking it to the insurance company to drop off the computer for reimbursement, I brought my computer to my local Apple Store to see if they could extract the data from the hard drive. (I've had this thing for years, so one can see that I would like to have what's on it.)
The Apple Store regretfully told me that they did not do this type of work and referred me to a nearby tech store that specialized in extracting data. I went there and they quoted me $80 for the hard drive's physical extraction and then another $30 for the information to be transferred onto a USB drive (or the equivalent). I was called a day later to be told that the mission was impossible, but I could go somewhere else that would charge me $1699 without tax and without a guarantee that they could actually perform the job.
Let's face it - that's a lot of money.
I went home and researched how to get my hard drive out of the computer and did so without much hassle. I've since then turned in the other parts to the insurance company as they were broken and useless.
Now I have a hard drive sitting on my counter without any idea how to get the information off and onto an external storage unit. Is there any way I can get the data myself?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.

Whether or not you are able to recover the data off the drive yourself will depend on if the drive suffered any impact damage in the crash. You can buy USB SATA or IDE adapters (Intel and almost all G5 use SATA) that will let you connect your hard drive to a computer (like a flash drive) to see if you can recover the data. If the drive has suffered physical damage if may not mount.
If you know someone who has one of these adapters you could try using theirs, otherwise you could buy one but you take the risk of the data on the drive being non recoverable. Regardless, both are much cheaper than $1699!
(Alternatively, if you know of someone with a Mac Pro or PowerMac G5 they may be able to install the drive in their machine and try to boot from or mount it and copy the data off.)

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