# Gold from over 15000 telephone cards



## archeonist (Mar 14, 2018)

Hi guys, I would like to share a little experiment on extracting gold from 15000 telephone cards. I know some of this has been done already (not in this amount I guess), and yields are also out there, but it is just for fun and I want to create a bit of realtime evidence on how low these yields probably will be.
All telephone cards are from 1994-2004 and each one was peeled off by hand :mrgreen: Because of the age of the cards the glue has been deteriorated so the chips popped right off.
The gold will be extracted using AP, for the foils, and pyrolising/incinerating the black epoxy dots on the back of each card for the bonding wires. I believe there are 8 bonding wires in each card so that would make a total of 15000 x 8 = 120000 bonding wires. 
First I dissolved the residual glue using acetone. This was nessesary to prevent foils to stick on the glue in the AP step 
The total weight of the chips was 1676 g


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## anachronism (Mar 14, 2018)

I'm excited to hear the results- just out of interest how long did it take to peel 15,000 by hand?


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## archeonist (Mar 14, 2018)

Here we have the AP process of the cards, it looks easy but it was a hell :evil: of a job to wash all the tiny foils from the cards. To reduce waste I used the filtratie over and over again after each filtration of foils.


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## archeonist (Mar 14, 2018)

anachronism said:


> I'm excited to hear the results- just out of interest how long did it take to peel 15,000 by hand?



It took hours, but I did it during winter watching television  It is just a hobby, not gonna make a profit here.


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## archeonist (Mar 14, 2018)

After setteling the foils it formed a layer of more than 200mL of foils :shock:


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## archeonist (Mar 14, 2018)

Next pictures show that a big amount of the foils consists of a brown non soluble substance. Examination told me that this substance consisted out of brown fibers that had probably came from a layer in the cards that deteriorated in the process. Last picture is after adding SMB to the gold solution. Tomorrow I'll weigh the gold and we know how much gold there actually is on the outside of 15000 telephone cards. Tell me what you think there will be 8)


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## archeonist (Mar 15, 2018)

Finally the results. 

My yield of gold from foils from 15000 cards was:
*3,42g*

Next I will incinerate the remaining cards to get the gold wires.


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## rickzeien (Mar 15, 2018)

Why not incinerate them with the foils on? Would the gold be lost?

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk


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## archeonist (Mar 15, 2018)

rickzeien said:


> Why not incinerate them with the foils on? Would the gold be lost?



No, gold would still be there. But I would never know how much gold there was from just the foils, and this was my goal. 

If 15000 cards give 3,42g of gold from foils, each card should have around 0,00023g of gold from foils.


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## rickzeien (Mar 15, 2018)

archeonist said:


> rickzeien said:
> 
> 
> > Why not incinerate them with the foils on? Would the gold be lost?
> ...


Thanks for the response. Following to see the results from the rest of your processing.

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk


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## Claudie (Mar 15, 2018)

> each card should have around 0,00023g of gold from foils


 :shock:


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## anachronism (Mar 15, 2018)

It's been said a number of times that they aren't worth the time to process. I guess some folk think that either they'll get a different result or that their time is worth nothing. Personally I listen to people whose opinions I value and I value my time.

Jon


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## Claudie (Mar 15, 2018)

> It's been said a number of times that they aren't worth the time to process.


Gold is where you find it and Gold is Gold in any quantity. 
Figuring yields this way helps others learn how much Gold they can expect from various scrap materials, so you see, it's not always about money. Plus, he has a piece of Gold for his time!


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## a_bab (Mar 16, 2018)

Good work, can't wait to see the results from the chips.
One last bit of info is: how much did the batch of cards weight?


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## archeonist (Mar 16, 2018)

anachronism said:


> It's been said a number of times that they aren't worth the time to process.



Yes Jon, that's correct. It's been said.. And my goal is to show that it is nothing. I had a great time doing this experiment.


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## archeonist (Mar 16, 2018)

a_bab said:


> Good work, can't wait to see the results from the chips.
> One last bit of info is: how much did the batch of cards weight?


 You mean, whole cards, or just the chips?


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## a_bab (Mar 16, 2018)

I meant whole card, you posted the chips weight already (1676g).
That way we can average the real yield against the actual bucket of cards you've got there


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## noos (Mar 18, 2018)

is it possible to skip steps here?


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## archeonist (Mar 18, 2018)

noos said:


> is it possible to skip steps here?


Like what?


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## g_axelsson (Mar 18, 2018)

noos said:


> is it possible to skip steps here?


Sure, use a drill press with a jig, drill the cards 50 at a time, incinerate, melt, sell as refiners bar to a copper smelter. You need a lot of cards though to get the economy of scale.

Göran


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## anachronism (Mar 19, 2018)

noos said:


> is it possible to skip steps here?



Yeah- - every step between taking them in and selling them to someone else. :lol: :lol:


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## Topher_osAUrus (Mar 19, 2018)

anachronism said:


> It's been said a number of times that they aren't worth the time to process. I guess some folk think that either they'll get a different result or that their time is worth nothing. Personally I listen to people whose opinions I value and I value my time.
> 
> Jon



Yep!

I broke a couple clients hearts when they heard yield results.
But, hey... Im a refiner, not a magician


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## Shark (Mar 19, 2018)

Topher_osAUrus said:


> anachronism said:
> 
> 
> > It's been said a number of times that they aren't worth the time to process. I guess some folk think that either they'll get a different result or that their time is worth nothing. Personally I listen to people whose opinions I value and I value my time.
> ...



I can understand that. Recently I was asked to show a guy how to refine CPU's. For his first run, he had one pinless P4. And the cap (heat sink) wasn't even one with the gold on it. The really sad part was he paid $5 for it, and it was already broke when he got, as scrap. He just would not accept that the amount of gold there would not even weigh on my usual scales.

With that said, I can appreciate the effort to show the actual amount of return from these. And would like to follow this all the way through to the end results. I just don't want to be the one doing it.


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## archeonist (Mar 19, 2018)

Shark said:


> Topher_osAUrus said:
> 
> 
> > anachronism said:
> ...



Nope, you don't want to do this. But it was fun. Now I have to take the time to incinerate the remaining chips and see how much gold wires are there.


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## anachronism (Mar 19, 2018)

If it was fun then it's good. 8) 

Jon


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## archeonist (Aug 31, 2018)

To complete this post:

Incineration of the remaining chips gave almost 2 grams of gold for 15000 cards. So the 15000 cards contained around 5g of gold.


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## Johnny5 (Sep 4, 2018)

Some years ago, myself and some other members were discussing whether it was "worth it" to process a low yield item, because of the length of time one had to invest to prepare it for processing. Someone had pointed out that, if you had nothing better to be doing, and it wasn't going to be physically demanding, then why not spend the time prepping the material. I knew a gentleman that had a hard time sleeping throughout the night, and would wake up at random times. He found prepping material to be tedious and boring, so he combined the two, and started prepping material at times when he found that he was having a hard time sleeping. He said it worked like a charm. 

Now in this case, you stated you prepped the cards while you were watching tv. So in theory you did not waste any extra time, and you were able to give some examples of real world yields. 

I appreciate you doing this, because there may be newbies that read this thread, and learn not to be taken advantage of, because of the time and effort you've taken to share this. 

On a side note to other members, making fun and ridiculing someone for helping others, is vile and childish, and has no place on the forum.


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## VK3NHL (Apr 27, 2019)

Great experiment.
Thank you for sharing..
Regards from Down-Under


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## macfixer01 (May 2, 2019)

Thank you for sharing your work. One question... If you look at the wiki for Sim cards, their internal photo only shows five gold bond wires actually connected. My guess is that some of the contact pads are either unused or redundant, such as multiple grounds or power connections? If this five connections is standard then that drops the number of gold bond wires to 75,000 in your batch, instead of the assumed 120,000?

Macfixer01


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