# Is there any gold in video games card?



## Zolotov (Mar 4, 2017)

In my search for computer scrap I casually found video game scrap. A guy that sells video game consoles told me he has about 2 cubic meters of old video game cards. I have no idea what game cards are those, I am not a gamer and I don not play games (ever) so I have no clue at all. I googled about this subject but there is no search results about someone getting any gold out of game consoles. I saw a card and looks like it has DRAM modules on it, and a lot of ICs, so there is definitely some heavy electronics in them, but I am not sure if there is gold. Have someone extracted gold from video games and what is the yield per motherboard?


----------



## Geo (Mar 4, 2017)

Any electronics that have video graphics accelerators will have some gold.


----------



## Sen (Mar 4, 2017)

I cannot begin to give you any idea how much gold but the short answer is yes, most, if not all will have some gold. Older cartridge games have gold fingers. Older cartridge systems might have gold played connectors or old IC chips but I cannot gaurentee gold content. Newer CD systems will be more like modern computers with some gold connectors and ICs.


----------



## Zolotov (Mar 4, 2017)

Sen said:


> I cannot begin to give you any idea how much gold but the short answer is yes, most, if not all will have some gold.



That's what I want to believe too, but I haven't found a blog post or a video about a guy who extracted some gold from Nvidia graphics card, or a video game console. And how much did he get exactly (in grams). Because you can easily google yield per CPU and you have the data about how much gold each Pentium CPU gives. But about Xbox for example, there is not such info. So maybe GPUs are not so gold rich that would worth the effort? 

BTW, a guy told me GPUs have platinum and not gold, but I don't know if this is true.


----------



## justinhcase (Mar 5, 2017)

Surely just about any retro gaming kit will be worth much more than there metal content.
I had some bloke come down from Bristol to collect a box I had put aside.
His offer was very surprising and it was nice to get shot of every thing together.
Half where beyond repair but he says parts are becoming very important to his cohorts. 
Nintendo classics in particular e.g Stadium Events $13,000 - $41,300; $10,000 for the box alone or 1990 Nintendo World Championships (Gray and Gold Editions) Price Range: Gray: $4,000 - $6,100; Gold: $15,000 - $21,000
Atari is not bad ether E.g. Atlantis II $5,000 - $6,000.
Do your research first ,you never know it only takes one odd one and the right collector to make your year.


----------



## Zolotov (Mar 7, 2017)

justinhcase said:


> Nintendo classics in particular e.g Stadium Events $13,000 - $41,300; $10,000 for the box alone or 1990 Nintendo World Championships (Gray and Gold Editions) Price Range: Gray: $4,000 - $6,100; Gold: .



Well, the cards I saw are not that old. They have memory modules in groups of 4 or 8 , dont remember exactly but they are soldered onto the motherboard and you can not remove them. They have chipsets like those from NVIDIA or VIA. They are pretty much like a computer motherboard, with aluminum heat sinks but they lack a CPU. These are above 1Ggz machines, not 16 MHZ like Nintendo. So, I think I should buy and try them and post the results here. It will be good as a beginner test, if there is no gold there, I will not lose anything.

p.s.
the cards are also non-functioning, but they are holding them for parts
If integrated circuits have gold, then there must be lots of gold in them because all boards are heavily populated with black boxes (the ICs).


----------



## Zolotov (Mar 7, 2017)

I just saw this guy, and the boards are from:
XBox 360
Play Station 3

I also met another guy who said me he sells his boards for $2 bucks a piece for gold recovery. That's a very dangerous price for me to make profits, so I skipped this deal.


----------



## Geo (Mar 7, 2017)

Both of those have excellent graphics acceleration. Per piece is minuscule overall but as far as boards go, I would say they are in the middle range between good and poor. The connectors are flash plated but the chips are all really good chips for gold recovery.


----------



## Zolotov (Mar 8, 2017)

Geo said:


> The connectors are flash plated but the chips are all really good chips for gold recovery.


thanks! then I am going to attack the game's sector, because it is very unattended in my area. I actually already have more game motherboards prospected than CPU motherboards. Few people pay attention to game consoles.


----------



## nickvc (Mar 9, 2017)

Zolotov this sounds harsh but asking what others get from e scrap is a waste of your and their time, they might be experts or newbies but the only data that matters is what you can recover.
If you can see gold or identify parts that contain gold then it's there, how much or little of that gold you nor others can recover is another matter altogether.
As Goran has said start with easy to process material such as fingers and get that right then look to other more complex recoveries, do not get blinded by the thought of gold just been there to claim as yours, it comes at a cost, education, time, mistakes, losses and chemicals, I'm not saying you can not do this but you need to do more than keep asking what an item is worth, you need to read and understand what you read first before you try any processes, you will not lose any gold unless you throw it away which is very easy if you do not follow the process and understand what is happening.


----------



## Zolotov (Mar 9, 2017)

nickvc said:


> Zolotov this sounds harsh but asking what others get from e scrap is a waste of your and their time


Not harsh at all, thanks for inputs. But I am doing what you guys said. You said 2kg is too little, go out an get more scrap and this is what I am doing. I have 15kg already, with another 15kg pending , waiting for it, maybe tuesday will finish and start with the chemicals. Now as I go and see the offers, I have to know what scrap is more valuable than another, that's the reason of my questions. When I get my first processing done, I am going to know what thing is more valuable than another.


----------

