I can't seem to find worthy input. There's so very much scamming that I've had to weed through. This industry is rife with some of the worst scamming attempts I've ever seen. That and then ebay has things marked up beyond their gold value and somehow they're still selling! I've bought 20kg of pinless cpus for $200 USD to experiment with and nail down the process. I'm pretty sure I won't be making any profit on that. Got some overpriced simcards at 40 bucks for a half pound. More proof of concept. Now that's done I need affordable input. Tia
I buy my stuff from scrapyard workers, they have been instructed what to search for and how much they will get from me if they gather that stuf (RAM, CPU`s, Extension cards etc). Each item has its own price and I pay per piece. (0.1 USD per pinless and small pins big heatsing processors, mostly for the copper value, gold is the extra profit)
It works for me and I get quality material (even stuff i never saw before, rarities) every time for a few years now.
It took me also quite some time to build this partnership network, but it works.
Also every week there is a big flea market where i buy cutlery for silver (calculated that the plated stuff must never exceed the pricetag of 0.35USD/gr to worth the effort of recovery and making profit by staying under spot) , i also accept (for free, with me handling the shipping ) old TV`s and other electronic stuff (microwaves, washing machines etc) from people who don`t know what to do with it (
its a very good and constant source of copper for the long run). Other materials also go to the scrapyard but not worth mentioning the money for it (plastics, iron, and so on).
Sometimes its a lot of work but for example you can collect 100-200 kg of copper in no time (1-4 month, if its a bad month) which has a scrap value of 1400-1700 USD which is enough to reinvest in quality stuff and materials. I do have at this point 200kg of mixed copper, and i want to hit 1 ton (whenever that will be, since i have little time to invest in this right now. I do sell my copper separated and as is.
You could go in your neighberhood and leave business cards and talking with people, that you are collecting used or broken stuff from their houses
if they no longer need it (never buy that stuff
), they can call you and you`ll pick it up for free from them (so they don`t have to take it themselves to the scrapyard), belive me your phone will ring, A LOT.
The key is that you have to pick up everything (from blenders to old TV`s to washing machines and more, so they keep on calling you for everything).
If you just collect and resell the stuff you can also make some money out of it.
Remember, there are others like you that would buy that stuff for cheap, if you`ll get it for free and sell it for money you already made a
PROFIT
There is no free cookie, you have to work for every penny you earn even if you have your material for free, the question is if you make your homework with the calculations and targets before you make any purchase whether it is worth your time and effort or not.
For example if you buy RAM fingers from eBay for 200USD / lb (which can contain between 0,8-2 g Au/lb) with the use of acids and labware and lighthing and heating and YOUR TIME (sorry for caps) versus the purchasing of a 3g Au without any other major involvment, you`ll get the idea that not everything is worth chasing after.
Always have your calculations ready, and focus on 1,2,3 items and search for those and those only, everything else will be extra profit IF you can get it for free.
I always recalculate my prices every 3 months, i give the corrected prices to my guys (sometimes less and sometimes more, but always fare with them,)
There is no universal recipe for this, but you can get close enough to reality if you do your calculations and set a clear target to yourself then respect that target (purchase price mostly)
I hope this helps,
Pete
From the start, another guy who lurk around and piss of the owners just by sole existence 
