# Cherry picking



## skippy (Jun 11, 2013)

There has been quite a few times of mentioning of cherry picking boards on the forum and I am wondering how economical it is, or if it's just a way to get material to play with. If you can separate the NS bridges, fingers, the pins, maybe some tantalum and palladium capacitors, maybe you can get some money back from/out of your boards quickly, but then you are left with devalued boards and I don't know how well those might pay out, either from a smelter or another buyer. 

I'm considering it as a way to allow me to accumulate boards from other recyclers while allowing me to recoup the invested cost in the meantime.


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## gold4mike (Jun 11, 2013)

For me, cherry picking is keeping the ceramic processors, cutting edge fingers from cards, keeping the boards that have the gold corner flat packs, similar to N/S bridge chips and old backplane boards with lots of pins.

I try to pay little or nothing for my stuff and then sell the lesser quality items, keeping the easily processed stuff for myself. I still sell RAM but might reconsider that in the future. You can store a lot of value in a small space with RAM.


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## joem (Jun 12, 2013)

I keep ram, CPU, single finger from double finger boards, long IC chips, and copper balls


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## gold4mike (Jun 12, 2013)

I forgot to mention IC's (joem reminded me). Many motherboards, printer boards, older video cards, have chips in sockets. I pull all of them no matter how big or small.

Try not to damage the board they came from. Buyers frown on mutilated boards.


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## Claudie (Jun 12, 2013)

joem said:


> I keep ram, CPU, single finger from double finger boards, long IC chips, and *copper balls*



What's a Copper ball?


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## joem (Jun 13, 2013)

Claudie said:


> joem said:
> 
> 
> > I keep ram, CPU, single finger from double finger boards, long IC chips, and *copper balls*
> ...


wound copper wire on a ferrite core
scrappers here tend to call them copper balls. My kids like to smash them with hammers to get the copper out for me. I save all the bright copper to pay for my yearly car insurance


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## Claudie (Jun 13, 2013)

I thought that was probably what you were referring to, I just never heard them called that before.


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## gold4mike (Jun 13, 2013)

My electrical engineer buddy calls them toroids (torroids?). He likes the large ones.


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## oldgeek (Jun 13, 2013)

Has anyone here done any research on the difference between cherry picking, and just sending whole boards to someone like Boardsort? I have done a fair amount of just selling whole boards (usually less the fingers) , and was wondering just how much money I was missing out on by not processing the easier items to work with myself.


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## gold4mike (Jun 13, 2013)

I have always saved edge fingers from cards and I believe I do just a bit better by keeping them and running them for the gold content. Boardsort (and others) pay around $70/pound for fingers and I usually get $100 or more worth of gold off of a pound of them. 

It's hard to quantify the cards because I've saved several hundred pounds of cut cards for their BGA processors and pins and haven't found the time to remove the components and run them.

I cut the edges off of 20 pounds of RAM once and determined it was close to break even so I just leave them on and sell RAM whole now.

I've run 8 types of ceramic CPU's for yield data and found that I get roughly 10% more value in gold than I do selling them but it does take time and acid to run them. 

Scrapping computers has been my hobby since I gave up go kart racing and I'm not really doing it for the profit.


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## meatheadmerlin (Dec 18, 2013)

I do scrapping in general and take whatever I get to process, mostly found on curbs and such, just about anything with metal from furniture and mechanical gizmos and odd hunks of metal, through appliances of all sizes, to a wide variety of consumer electronics. I am also at the bottom a good number of people's upgrade chains and called for their metal disposal.
I'm really just starting out in refining, but have been scrapping metals for over 20 years. It hurts to think of all the high quality stuff I've let go too cheap in that time not knowing it's true content and value, but I've come a long way since I first started and always seem to learn more that I can be doing to increase my returns.
At my level, it is still more economical to sell PC boards whole. I would lose money to cut the fingers and pins off if I wasn't going to totally depopulate the boards. I need to find a better buyer; my yard is behind the times and I've gotten better board prices from eBay sales before.
To me, cherry picking is done on the low grade boards I get from the many other items I take apart with circuit boards that my yard pays a cheap price for, which is just about anything not from a PC. It's amazing just how many consumer products and toys have circuit boards in them.
I have a good pile of boards sitting around since I stopped taking them in quite a while ago to learn more about what they contain and also since my yard pays dirt for them. I'll be trying to pull off any flatpacks and good looking ICs (hoping they don't have aluminum bonding); surface mount capacitors and resistors; tantalum capacitors; LEDs and transistors (not sure if this is really worth it yet); and copper windings, relays and aluminum heat sinks. I am saving the small LCD screens from stuff too; I've heard there are values in them and I don't have a buyer for them yet otherwise. 
I also pull the excess steel and plastic off to not get penalized for it. I wait and take sheet steel in by the truckload and have a place that takes my PC and appliance plastic for recycling. The smaller steel bits go in larger steel containers I end up with to reduce the handling of it.
I have found what appears to be gold plated contacts on boards from children's toys and cordless phone handsets. These I am saving to begin playing with a sand bath and AP. I've also found what look like the same kinds of contacts as in keyboard mylars in educational-toy touch-sensor pads, although they are usually loaded with adhesives. Those mylars also show up in microwave touch pads, but sometimes they are a carbon/black color instead.


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## Pantherlikher (Dec 18, 2013)

I'm still trying to figure out what cherry picking is....(joking)
I destroy anything and everything you can imagine.
If it uses electricity, I've torn it down to the boards. No depopulating yet but soon as my shed and garage is being over run.
Anything with a touch pad I have the sticky mylar in boxes.

Currently, I'm getting sick of cutting the lights from Christmas strings the wife doesn't like...White lights or strands that are older or not working.
I also have yet another free 50" projection TV,snow covered,in the driveway comming inside in the morning to tare down. Lots of crap steel, wires and boards.

And alas, 10-15 computers and flat panel monitors await in piles for me to see if they're worth fixing for the kids or SCRAP em.

I take curling irons and hair dryers apart down to the silver, sometimes all silver, plated switch buttons. Old clothes irons are great for 3-5 all silver contacts. 

All this is now forcing me to rethink cherry picking alot... as I sit here in my garage over flowing with containers of just about everything. 

B.S.
... Never enough time to get through it all...


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## patnor1011 (Dec 19, 2013)

I was selling torroids on ebay.
Either unsoldered, with copper on them or just cores without copper.
They sold in no time.
I think it was 10 pieces of plain torroid + 10 pieces of unsoldered for 4£ + postage.
I sold well over thousand of them.


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