Best Refinery??? HELP!?

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sander

Member
Joined
Sep 1, 2013
Messages
15
Greetings,

I am in need of some advice on which refinery in the mid west is the best to deal with on lots of 3000+ lbs. I have a over 4000 lbs of mid-high grade circuit boards on hand right now and NEED to have some refined ASAP. I have dealt with SIPI Metals in the past and in my opinion got completely screwed. 3.5 oz's of gold recovered out of 2000 lbs. of motherboards, RAM, Processors, telecom server boards etc. what a joke. Anyways I am need of any recommendations any one has for a refinery to handle this kind of weight that is willing to give a fair shake or at least close to it.
Any info would be greatly appreciated!
 
sander said:
Greetings,

I am in need of some advice on which refinery in the mid west is the best to deal with on lots of 3000+ lbs. I have a over 4000 lbs of mid-high grade circuit boards on hand right now and NEED to have some refined ASAP. I have dealt with SIPI Metals in the past and in my opinion got completely screwed. 3.5 oz's of gold recovered out of 2000 lbs. of motherboards, RAM, Processors, telecom server boards etc. what a joke. Anyways I am need of any recommendations any one has for a refinery to handle this kind of weight that is willing to give a fair shake or at least close to it.
Any info would be greatly appreciated!

Umicore might take smaller lots of high grade material.
 
Did you read all the other posts on this same question? Lots of info here for you.
 
I have such a varied lot right now it is hard to get an assay that would cover most of the lot. I am actually going to have a couple boards assayed by an independent company out of new york that is not envolved in the purchasing or refining of electronics so their data would not be biased in any way.
They just performed a mass spec for us on some cobalt based material that quick and accurate.
I have read through quite a few posts dealing with this topic most are dated. I was hoping someone may have had some good experiences with one or some of the refineries that are out there.
SIPI told me that I could watch my lot being processed ONE time. That seemed a little strange to me. I am not sure if you can just watch the boards be sherdded or they sample your material in front of you also. I agree with some of the previous posts about SIPI that they just seem to make numbers up. There is a guy I met through a European based firm that processes low grade boards for medium value metals contained within Ni, Zn, Cu, Ta, Zr, Sn, Sb etc. He represents their US operations and actually lives 15 miles from me. I am going to meet with him either this week or next to see what his firm might be able to do for me regarding all of it. I am sure if they recover metals like cobalt and nickel, then gold silver palladium are easily recovered also. I found this concept of recovering these metals interesting because I know there is a lot of metal value lost when you just get paid out for the precious metal content. I am sure that places like SIPI certainly refine them further for the other metals as well and just do not pay for it.
I currently have boards dating as far back as 1976 with a good chunk of 1980's boards. I even have an original 1983 Apple Macintosh motherboard. I thought this board might be worth more to a collector then its scrap value but who knows. I don't want to lose a bunch of money due to dishonest business practices. I got a huge score a few weeks back with a local scrap dealer we purchase stainless and nickel based scrap from purchased 300 lbs. of circuit boards from one of their regular customers. I am not sure what they came out of but they were mostly motherboards with intel IC's dated 1981-82 some had removable Actel IC's and most had ceramic EPROM's all from the early 80's. Either way I paid $0.25/lb. for these boards that could easily fetch $3/lb. to an educated purchaser. Lots of gold fingered boards as well most of these had 5 VGA ports with one input that had 5 inch long gold pins on it. I processed a few of these using AP method and the gold just flakes off in huge clumps bigger then any other pins I have processed in this manner. These boards are just a small portion of what I am sitting on. I have a lot industrial boards that came out of industrial systems like Siemens among many others. I am going to take some pictures in the next couple days of what I am working with. I am paying good rates for these boards and even at the meager returns I obtained from SIPI I could still make a small profit.
I want to maximize my profits so any experience with refineries would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
So many people want all the meat and to leave the bones to the people doing all the work. All you are doing is aggregating scrap. You should have an understanding that the work you want done takes money to do. The refineries put that money upfront to do the work you want paid on.

Now I'm not saying that they should not payout on what they recovered as per your agreement. What I am saying is that the other metals IF they are getting paid on them and not docked for them are factored into what they are able to payout on.

Also its not always about finding the top dollar, but the best fit for your business. I use a refinery that charges a fair price but they are not the best. What I like is that even I an not there top tear customer they still treat me very well. If I have a question I can email the the men in charge and get the answers that I need to know(not always the one I want).

For boards the only place I can think of is Gannon & Scott. They don't take junk and consider MB low grade as well they should.

Just some food for thought.

Eric
 
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