What should I do with this old Army switchboard?

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Joined
Jul 16, 2019
Messages
7
Location
Georgia
So I inherited my great grandfather's property and I found an old army switchboard out behind the tractor shed. I think this is possibly gold capped conduit boards or some such?

Kind of hard to find any info on it.

I know I already removed 88 solid brass pulley wheels from one side of it which are cool for industrial art and design but I'm curious if this is gold like it appears to be and what I should do with the 120 little rectangles? I read somewhere that 60s military equipment had the highest gold content because they triple plated them for longevity supposedly so I'm curious if anyone thinks this is worth extracting the gold? (If it is gold)

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I'm new to the forums obviously but hello. I'm Sarah. :)
 
Ok so I broke one apart and I think it's gold but it might be hollow for the copper wire that was attached to it. But I think there are like 50 of these on each little rectangles and I have 120 rectangles so I have 6000 of these little pin cap looking things?

What should I do with them?
 

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Welcome to the forum Sarah.
Most telecoms equipment is considered to be high grade amongst e scrap so looking at your photos I’d say you were right to think you were looking at gold there, military grade scrap is also usually much better than any other as it has to work when needed.
I’d say the boards would be worth recovery and refining but take a look around inside and get some more pictures as there might be other items worth doing.
Those are high grade pins and well worth refining especially if as you say you have 6000.
 
Welcome to the forum Sarah. That is some nice equipment. I’d be a buyer if you’re on the west coast
 
jonn said:
Welcome to the forum Sarah. That is some nice equipment. I’d be a buyer if you’re on the west coast

I used to live in California but I'm in Georgia now. I have never scrapped gold before so I'm fairly lost as to what to do with all this honestly. Can I mail you a couple of these pins and you can tell me how much gold is in it and if it's silver inside? Obviously you could keep them I just don't know what to do with them.

I weighed one of the little gold pins and they weigh .76 of a gram a piece. So far I have gotten 60 of the rectangle blocks out of the switchboard box which is 3,120 of the little gold pins which weighs 2,340 grams. I cut one in half and I think that the inside of them is filled with silver. The gold easily scratches and doesn't flake off at all so it's not gold plated but gold filled??? I think based on the little bit of research I have done so far. I can't find any information on there being gold in old army switchboards nor can I find any info on the solid brass pulley system that I took apart. I plan on saving the switchboards and their plugs but the box was wooden and rotted from spending the last 60 years outside.

I don't know if it is wiser to sell the little gold pin parts or to refine the gold myself. Obviously I have never done this before and I don't know how expensive gold refining and scrapping is which is what lead me here.

Should I extract the gold myself or sell it to someone who has the proper equipment?
 
Pic of like 50 gold pins out of the block, a block with the pins and the brass pulley wheels which I have yet to clean. (They were enclosed in metal that rusted onto them.)

I put a lighter beside them for size comparison.

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So I have 88 pulley wheels of two different sizes and 3,120 of those little gold pin things extracted so far from the switchboard. Once it stops raining I will post more pics of the rest of the inside of it. It sucks it was left outside behind the tractor barn because I would have loved to keep it as an antique for it's uniqueness if the wood hadn't rotted away.

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I believe most of it's other parts is mostly brass that I've never seen anything like except in one picture on this forum someone posted of switch gear.
 
My great grandfather was a lifetime employee of Bell Systems, also my cousin was a computer consultant/computer instruction manual writer/GA Tech math professor in the 60's when Bell partnered with GA Tech to build the first computers and my great uncle was a satellite technician and ham radio enthusiast... So I have a barn almost hoarder full of vintage electronics that I didn't know had gold in them until I started browsing this forum about the switchboard.

Like there is an entire room stacked full of big Motorola electronics that I think are radio equipment and phone equipmenr and then odd stuff like a box of like 100 of these Teletype cords which I just cut the end off and I think these are gold too but I could be wrong. It's all 50s-early 90s equipment but mostly 70s and 80s stuff I think. I have my own radio station here on the property with like a 200 ft high radio antenna. (Or more, I'm just guessing since they shortened it)

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Sorry to be so naive to all of this but it seems like I might have a lot more gold laying around than I expected so if anyone would like to be my Obi Wan and teach me about gold refining I'd be much obliged. :)
 
PerfectlyFlawed said:
Sorry to be so naive to all of this but it seems like I might have a lot more gold laying around than I expected so if anyone would like to be my Obi Wan and teach me about gold refining I'd be much obliged
Sarah, you've got the beginnings of a very productive hobby there. Though even using the force, Obi Wan would struggle to teach you the ins and outs of recovering the metals from that stockpile.

As a hobbyist, I'll tell you there are two good options.

1: Spend many months learning which electronic components contain what metals. Then spend many more months learning to recover and refine those metals while you spend a bit more time learning to deal with all the toxic waste it creates. Then in a few years you can begin to turn all that electronic scrap into money.

2: Find a buyer for it all who will give you a fair price and use the money to fund whatever you like.

I'm all for number one, but then I absolutely love the hobby. The only one who can answer the question of which way to go is you.

Just a fair warning! Once you get into this craft you will likely be hooked for life, so just make sure you learn it here and learn it safe. All the processes involved are dangerous and produce some nasty byproducts.

Good luck with whatever your choice may be, and just be safe if you decide to join this little band of gold junkies! :lol:
 
Sarah look closely at the holes those pins were plugged into... they may well be gold plated as well.
 
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