What is a good price to pay for an old motherboard

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Zolotov

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 21, 2017
Messages
62
I found a guy that has about 200 motherboards. The old ones, probably ranging from years 2005 to 2012. How much would you offer him for these motherboards per piece to make a sure profit on gold extraction?

TIA
 
That's impossible to say. It all comes down to your cost.

If I can extract all gold from a motherboard for a dollar per kilo (not saying that I can) then there is no guarantee that you can do it. Labor cost, chemicals, waste treatment, interest on investment, rent for facilities, transportation cost... Do I need to continue?

And then "motherboards 2005-20012" isn't a well defined product with known concentrations of gold, it has to be sampled to get to that.

My best advice, not more than what you can resell the cards for if you don't want to do the refining yourself. Look at boardsort or similar sites to get an idea.

Göran
 
g_axelsson said:
That's impossible to say. It all comes down to your cost.
sorry, I probably said it wrong. The question is more like "How much gold could you extract of a motherboard in average" ? Because knowing how much gold there is I can add my costs and calculate the profitability.

But most of those motherboards are of low cost, made in China and Taiwan. They are not from Intel , Dell or HP. Not server boards, just regular desktop boards, without any RAM, CPU or any other component.
 
If all the bga and black chips are picked ,the value is near zero.
"just regular desktop boards, without any RAM, CPU or any other component."
You say old boards, the buyers call them" new generation boards", and they are low yield boards.
Henrik
 
canedane said:
If all the bga and black chips are picked ,the value is near zero.
This is one example of a board of that type:
13-185-057-05.jpg

blackchips: about 2 or 3
BIOS chips: 1
chip with pins on all four sides (big, but not the CPU) , usualy VIA or NVIDIA: 1
one cpu socket, usually gold plated
memory module sockets
some capacitors, crystal

All the chips are in place. No CPU, no memory.
What would be the scrapping value of such board?
 
As of today $1.70 per pound of that style board. With batteries and large heat sinks removed. That is according to boardsoart.com which is well known on this site. You should do some searches there and here using motherboard and values.
 
The last batch I sold I got $1.75 a pound. Heat sinks, batteries and CPU removed.

Unless you can gear up to process truck loads at a time I seriously doubt you will make any money at all.
 
chuckgambale said:
As of today $1.70 per pound of that style board.
Thanks! This kind of tips are invaluable on my initiation in this business.
Do you know if this is the price with or without CPU ?
Because, here is the description and it is kind of ambiguous:

Small socket motherboards are a lower grade of PC motherboard.
These boards have CPU's such as Pentium 4, Athlon, Sempron, Celeron D and others.


As with all boards, we require the batteries to be removed before we can purchase them.

If there are batteries on the board, large or small, please remove them.
 
rickbb said:
Unless you can gear up to process truck loads at a time I seriously doubt you will make any money at all.
As a signle person, I can process one ton per two weeks. One ton have 150 grams of gold, but if I extract only 100 that will be very good for me. Is 1 ton what you mean by "truck loads" ?
 
It will cost you so much in time and materials that your perceived 100g will be dropped dramatically in real terms. You can sell those straight out the door and get more for maybe half a day's work invested.
 
anachronism said:
It will cost you so much in time and materials that your perceived 100g will be dropped dramatically in real terms. You can sell those straight out the door and get more for maybe half a day's work invested.
Thanks for your advice. However, here are some other thoughts for you to think about:
You can make money by these methods:
1) By adding value. You process a product or service to convert it into another form which increase its value.
2) By volume. You replicate the same product and focus on delivering it to more customers.
3) By reducing costs while producing the same value and volume.

What you are suggesting is to stop the chain of product transformation (final product is gold) , or in other words - stop adding the value. Yes you will reduce costs this way because I am not going to invest my time in the product anymore, but the value is not going to be added too. So, there is no gain for me in following your advice, can you see it? If you would suggest some idea that would reduce cost while adding value and also the volume, then it would be a much better idea. This is what making money is about, going not just 1 dimension (the three steps above), but 3 dimensions at the same time.
 
Zolotov said:
chuckgambale said:
As of today $1.70 per pound of that style board.
Thanks! This kind of tips are invaluable on my initiation in this business.
Do you know if this is the price with or without CPU ?
Because, here is the description and it is kind of ambiguous:

Small socket motherboards are a lower grade of PC motherboard.
These boards have CPU's such as Pentium 4, Athlon, Sempron, Celeron D and others.


As with all boards, we require the batteries to be removed before we can purchase them.

If there are batteries on the board, large or small, please remove them.


Pricing would be with no CPU installed. References such as small socket or large socket refer to the dimensions of just the pin area of the empty CPU socket (not the outer dimensions of the whole socket). That gives a general idea of the age of the board and type of support chips it contains. Usually small socket is considered 1.5 inches and under, and large socket is 1.75 inches and over.
 
Zolotov said:
anachronism said:
It will cost you so much in time and materials that your perceived 100g will be dropped dramatically in real terms. You can sell those straight out the door and get more for maybe half a day's work invested.
Thanks for your advice. However, here are some other thoughts for you to think about:
You can make money by these methods:
1) By adding value. You process a product or service to convert it into another form which increase its value.
2) By volume. You replicate the same product and focus on delivering it to more customers.
3) By reducing costs while producing the same value and volume.

What you are suggesting is to stop the chain of product transformation (final product is gold) , or in other words - stop adding the value. Yes you will reduce costs this way because I am not going to invest my time in the product anymore, but the value is not going to be added too. So, there is no gain for me in following your advice, can you see it? If you would suggest some idea that would reduce cost while adding value and also the volume, then it would be a much better idea. This is what making money is about, going not just 1 dimension (the three steps above), but 3 dimensions at the same time.

Sure I can see and understand your thinking. Then again you have to consider the time and cost of time involved of "adding value." When you've spent all that time and "added" all that value what is the real net gain?
Whilst I am sure you have a way of making it a real gain, many people don't really achieve a real gain when the other factors are taken into account. If you don't think my advice is good advice then that's perfectly alright I don't take any offence at all but to add some background for perspective: I process tonnes of board product every week, and the only things I refine personally from this equipment are the small seriously high grade components such as ceramic chips, and telecoms connectors. The rest goes into containers and straight to the refinery. I call it cherry picking, but it means both that my time is spent as effectively as possible, and the real profits are maximised.

Regards

Jon
 
anachronism said:
I process tonnes of board product every week, and the only things I refine personally from this equipment are the small seriously high grade components such as ceramic chips, and telecoms connectors. The rest goes into containers and straight to the refinery. I call it cherry picking, but it means both that my time is spent as effectively as possible, and the real profits are maximised.

Your advice is very important to me because it is coming from the expert in this industry, and I am going to keep an eye on the expenses, so my profits aren't evaporating. Thank you very much.
 
I do not understand that adding value point you are trying to make. Maybe I am thick but for me gold do have set value and you will not add value to it unless you process it itself into jewelry for example.
If you take motherboard it will have value itself and you cant add anything to it. You either process it or sell. You can buy cheaper than real value and perhaps sometimes sell for more than its value but I do not get how you can add any value to it apart from keeping it in storage for 50 years and trying to offload it as collectors item. With scrapping, recovery and refining there is no adding value of any sort I can think of.
 
Zolotov said:
As a signle person, I can process one ton per two weeks.
Please explain/show photos of how you process half a ton of e-scrap every week.

There are many internet personalities saying things like this on forums.

It is getting hard to believe that they are all people who actually Do PM recovery/refining.
 
aga said:
Please explain/show photos of how you process half a ton of e-scrap every week.
There are many internet personalities saying things like this on forums.
It is getting hard to believe that they are all people who actually Do PM recovery/refining.

I never did any processing yet, it is all estimations. I have just entered this business and I am testing it for income. But when I'll do my first ton I will let you know what was the real time.

I don't count chemical processes as time consuming because they require little time in comparison with other work. The most time consuming process is depopulating the board (besides going out looking for it), because a ton of motherboards will contain 2,500 pieces. So you have to process a motherboard in 1 minute to make 60 motherboards per hour, accumulating 600 motherboards per day if you work 10 hours, so roughly in 4-5 days you could process all of them. But you would probably ask, how do you depopulate a board in 1 minute? This is how, with electric scraper (or hammer, I am not sure what is the name of this tool in english). You can check it on this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jxSKaIRhAQ
 
You will not be able to apply this kind of math. No matter how good you are you will not depopulate motherboard in one minute. Not to mention that you will be able to keep on doing it for 10 hours straight. It is not possible. You do have to account for extra time picking up stuff and sorting it......
Another point is that this is just crude very selective depopulation where you are missing many of the goodies.
If I would guess I could say you will have hard time to completely depopulate and sort hundred kilo of motherboards in a week, doing it few weeks and still keep your sanity. Not with that tool you mentioned. Believe me I know what I am talking about as I attempted to do so and still trying yet it is simply impossible quest.
Purchasing motherboards, depopulating it the way you mentioned and then trying to recover gold with acids is not a business, it is a slavery and can be done as a hobby but not as a viable enterprise. And thinking about tons done in a month by single person is a gold fever induced dreaming.
I am in no way trying to discourage you. I did not believed others when they told me exactly the same and tried it only to conclude that they were right so I am simply passing on knowledge and experience on you. You are entitled to disregard it and try it all by yourself but I can bet that you will come to the same conclusion. Some things simply look good on paper but reality is much different.

I would like to disagree that chemical processes are not time consuming, it is clear that you did not done much and your experience is very limited. Every chemical process is time, resources and attention consuming if you want to get it right.
 
patnor1011 said:
You will not be able to apply this kind of math. No matter how good you are you will not depopulate motherboard in one minute. Not to mention that you will be able to keep on doing it for 10 hours straight. It is not possible. You do have to account for extra time picking up stuff and sorting it......
Well, I currently work on other stuff, and I write all time I consume, per minute. I have done 10 , and 12 hours of work per day (with rest periods in between) and I have no problems working 10 hours a day. I only don't account the time I have to go to the bathroom , because that would be just sick, to register the minute you spent there. But if I take a time to eat something, or rest, I log the end time, then I log the start time. So, 10 hours is not unreal for me, I mean pure work time, measured with precision of a minute. Try to account the time you work. If you talk with a friend, stop the timer , when you finish, start it, just for you to know your real productivity. Most people works 3 to 4 hours a day. I mean, real work, the work that is useful, specially those who work in an office of a large coropration.

patnor1011 said:
I am in no way trying to discourage you. I did not believed others when they told me exactly the same and tried it only to conclude that they were right so I am simply passing on knowledge and experience on you. You are entitled to disregard it and try it all by yourself but I can bet that you will come to the same conclusion. Some things simply look good on paper but reality is much different.

Then there is something wrong, and I want to find out what it is. I am living in a 3rd world country , we don't pay taxes here, we can buy any acid we want (cheap) and do whatever we want, except polluting public spaces , obviously. So, here I am witnessing an explosion of gold extraction from electronics. More and more people is entering. They all work as single entrepreneurs, none of them have any "Inc" society, they probably hire other people but none of this employment activity is reported to the government. All this started 3 years ago, and the market has grown a lot. Now everybody is selling his electronic junk, throwing it away is considered stupid. So, if the market has only grown, and the price per kg of mobile motherboards almost didn't rise (in dollar terms, i mean, adjusted for inflation the rise from first year to now was only %5) , then it means everybody is in profits. Because you can't operate 3 years, and grow while having other entrepreneurs doing the same as you in the same geographical area.

My observation is, people is making profits. Now, if I don't make any, then I am the guy who does something wrong and I want to find out what it is.
 
patnor1011 said:
I do not understand that adding value point you are trying to make. Maybe I am thick but for me gold do have set value and you will not add value to it unless you process it itself into jewelry for example.
If you take motherboard it will have value itself and you cant add anything to it.
If the activity you are doing is gold extraction, then you should see the laptop as gold ore. Not as computer. If you see it as computer, then there is a lot of other values you can create from. You can also see the laptop as a killing instrument if it is very heavy. Or as a mirror, if it is of silver color. The amount of added values is infinite if you start switching industries. But if we are looking at it from the point of view of gold recovery, then it is considered mining. The final gold of mining is getting the metal , i.e. the value. If you create jewellery from the gold you extract, then you are entering a new business. Because you could have bought it anywhere as do million of other jewellers. Yes you can create value buy holding the laptop and selling it to the collectionist. But that is again, another business, nothing related to mining. Don't mix business types, because you will lose energy. If you collect, and make jewellery you are going to compete in 3 industries and that's very difficult to win when you fight with 3 enemies instead of just one. Even if your business of mining gold from laptops is successful and you enter another business, like jewellry, it should not be mixed with mining. Because you may lose money, a large healthy company could be keeping afloat a bad jewellery business.
 
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