# Fully Gold plated telecom boards



## ahmadbayoumi (Feb 13, 2018)

Hell Dears,

Some one is offering me some fully gold plated Ericson telecom boards exactly like the ones in below pics:

He wants me to quote them per kilogram .. so how much does this worth PLS?


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## Joko sulistyo (Feb 13, 2018)

That is ENIG .I was try to recover gold from the boards like that.The yield make me disappointed.

Sent from my ASUS_Z008D using Tapatalk


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## nickvc (Feb 14, 2018)

I’m no expert on e scrap but I’d say there is as much if not more value in the components than the obvious plating.


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## anachronism (Feb 14, 2018)

nickvc said:


> I’m no expert on e scrap but I’d say there is as much if not more value in the components than the obvious plating.



More.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Feb 14, 2018)

So It doesn't worth a lot .. but how much exactly such boards could be ?


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## anachronism (Feb 14, 2018)

They are better than server or PC boards overall. I apologise in advance for not being specific however I make my living from refining this equipment and I'm not disclosing the exact figures on a forum. You can have the boards assayed or send a load into a refinery and then you will have your own data which I am sure you will then use to your own commercial advantage.

If anyone else wants to pitch in their figures than that's their business. 8) 

Jon


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## ahmadbayoumi (Feb 14, 2018)

anachronism said:


> They are better than server or PC boards overall. I apologise in advance for not being specific however I make my living from refining this equipment and I'm not disclosing the exact figures on a forum. You can have the boards assayed or send a load into a refinery and then you will have your own data which I am sure you will then use to your own commercial advantage.
> 
> If anyone else wants to pitch in their figures than that's their business. 8)
> 
> Jon



Many thanks Jon for your reply 

I'll highly appreciate if you could PM me with a rough estimate or even a range for such kind of boards as it's very important to me and since I'm in Egypt and you are in England so, there will be no conflict of interest here .. but finally, it's your right and no hard feelings


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## Aristo (Feb 14, 2018)

Ask for a sample, shred it, assay the whole board and you will get the answer.
It is silly to ask for data that you will use for your commercial advantage. I am sure many will not hesitate to advise you on how to do your assay..


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## nickvc (Feb 14, 2018)

I’m sure there are companies advertising to buy such boards and many with photos and prices so you could base your price on them.


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## goldsilverpro (Feb 14, 2018)

The full gold plate on the boards is likely very thin, like most modern boards of that type. It's usually about 3 millionths of an inch thick, more or less - about 4 cents, more or less, per square inch of plating. It could be thicker but the odds are against it, due to the advent of ENIG plating, electroless nickel topped of with immersion gold. Immersion gold is kin to cement silver. It cements the gold, without a power supply, onto the bright shiny electroless nickel. As the area starts getting covered with gold, the plating rate decreases. When totally covered, the plating almost stops, since the exposure of the solution to the nickel is blocked by the gold. In other words, with immersion gold, the thickness of the plating is limited. On the other hand, the electroless nickel thickness is unlimited, since it deposits by a catalyst chemical added to the solution and not by immersion (cementation).


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## Aristo (Feb 14, 2018)

I have processed several tons of these specific boards. From a recovery standpoint, they are definitely not as good as they look...


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## ahmadbayoumi (Feb 26, 2018)

Many thanks for all who had replied to my query 

However, and as no one needs to disclose the fair price for such items, I'll ask the question the other way around.

Is it a fair price to pay almost 17 USD per Kg of these boards ?

Hope to get an answer now :wink:


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## niks neims (Feb 26, 2018)

ahmadbayoumi said:


> Many thanks for all who had replied to my query
> 
> However, and as no one needs to disclose the fair price for such items, I'll ask the question the other way around.
> 
> ...




Well I it is very hard to answer because I have no idea what are the weight of the board in picture or dimensions of it... You could actually do the math yourself - ENIG is worth little less than 0.01 EUR/cm2 ? there are few nice BGAs on there (normal, mother-board sized - 0.6-0.7 eur/a piece), plus some IC chips... I would think no more than 5 eur a piece for boards like that from gold recovery standpoint...

-Artūrs


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## anachronism (Feb 26, 2018)

There's not a lot of point in guessing if you don't know the weight of the boards Arturs. That can get you into a lot of bother with pricing mate. 

People naturally look at a number and remember it.


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## niks neims (Feb 26, 2018)

anachronism said:


> There's not a lot of point in guessing if you don't know the weight of the boards Arturs. That can get you into a lot of bother with pricing mate.
> 
> People naturally look at a number and remember it.



I actually disagree with you - the guessing game is so much fun! especially if it is not your money on the line 

Of course, EVERYONE should take it for what is it - a guess - more or less educated, but still, just a guess...

From my own experience - as a rookie buyer - you sometimes are looking for ANYTHING to help you to gauge the value of immensely variable e-scrap... That is exactly what I was trying to do for OP - a little Insight in thought process on how would I go about pricing those boards. That probably seems trivial for a seasoned guy like you, Jon, but I got the feeling that OP was urgently asking for ANY kind of input, and, as I already mentioned - I see the guessing game as fun! It looks like random asking-and-guessing is frowned upon here, but in my opinion there could be a whole subforum dedicated to it - post your items, get some guesses, correct or not, but you`ll probably learn a thing or too, and most importantly - good fun all around 

-Artūrs


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## anachronism (Feb 26, 2018)

Yeah but...

Guessing may be fun - I like it too however when it goes wrong and the boards are worth half what you guessed and the guy has bought them based on your guess what do you say to him? 

I've just had a refinery return come back today where three tonnes of a particular batch of boards were "short" by over 100ppm gold per tonne. That's a lot of mistake to make but it does happen. I've gone to umpire on the three tonnes but if I'm still short by the £9000 from my own error then it's my error and I've got nobody else to blame. That leads me on to the point below. 

You mention that I'm seasoned- well, seasoned means that the guesses you make are seasoned by your successes AND failures. Therefore the margin of error in a guess becomes much smaller. So I'll take an educated guess based on my own experience when it's my money but never with someone else's money.

Regards

Jon


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## niks neims (Feb 26, 2018)

Ok, man, I hear ya, hope you get your 9k back 

I should hope no-one is making serious business decisions based on what is written somewhere online on open forum, no matter how prestigious this source may be...

-Artūrs


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## anachronism (Feb 26, 2018)

niks neims said:


> I should hope no-one is making serious business decisions based on what is written somewhere online on open forum, no matter how prestigious this source may be...
> 
> -Artūrs



Why on earth not? I've made plenty of good ones based on what's been said here- as I'm sure many other folk have. 8) Don't you realise the caliber of some of the posters on here? Well no you don't otherwise you wouldn't have said what you did mate.  

Jon


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## niks neims (Feb 26, 2018)

C`mon now, you are yanking my chain buddy, you clearly knew what I meant:



anachronism said:


> You cannot base a business model upon the yields posted "on t'interweb" as we say in the UK. Why? Simply because 99% of the posted yields are rubbish. They are rubbish because the guys who really know the yields won't post their results because it would remove commercial advantage, and the vast majority of what you see is similar to Wikipedia data which is often completely unsubstantiated.
> 
> To do this you would need to invest a few hundred thousand in buying refinery product, striking up a refinery deal, and over the course of a number of months determining your own yields BEFORE even considering the route of refining yourself
> Jon



Still, I am glad you brought this up:


anachronism said:


> Don't you realise the caliber of some of the posters on here?


PM to you sent 

-Artūrs


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## anachronism (Feb 26, 2018)

You do raise a good point Arturs- but then I was referring to a whole lot more than yield figures. Also most "pros" will understate a yield rather than overstate it so decisions can be made if the individual source has proven their knowledge historically. A "pro" is far more likely to rubbish a spurious claim than back it up, you just have to weed out the wheat from the chaff. 

Oh and for the record when I was referring to high caliber I wasn't meaning me.


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## snoman701 (Feb 26, 2018)

They are only worth what the next buyer will pay for them, unless you have a way of effectively recovering an amount of metal that makes refining more profitable than selling them off.

Knowing an idea of value is dangerous, and will force you to make bad business decisions.

I've got a pile of this junk. I grade it as "too nice to sell for other successful cheapskate business owners are willing to pay". 

Boards that grade like this and higher remind me of Steinbecks "The Pearl". You think they are worth a bunch, and they drive you to do stupid things.


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## ahmadbayoumi (Feb 27, 2018)

Thanks all for your replies  

I'm asking about the fair price of such kind of material because I need to start to refine and recover the PMs out of such boards and I'm not intending to sell them off to another one. 

I will buy another 30 KG of these kind of boards for almost 14 USD/KG and I'm willing to lose some money just for sake of information so that I'll define the fair price by myself for future deals.


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## anachronism (Feb 27, 2018)

ahmadbayoumi said:


> Thanks all for your replies
> 
> I'm asking about the fair price of such kind of material because I need to start to refine and recover the PMs out of such boards and I'm not intending to sell them off to another one.
> 
> I will buy another 30 KG of these kind of boards for almost 14 USD/KG and I'm willing to lose some money just for sake of information so that I'll define the fair price by myself for future deals.



That's fair. There's no harm going into it with an open mind like that. One thing though -= you won't need to buy 30Kg to get the yield figures.


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