# To sell or scrap



## cmbrose (Sep 20, 2007)

Well, this is my first post. I need some guidance on whether to sell as a whole or scrap for the gold. I have a HP 86603A RF Plug IN. It has quite a few gold connectors and a few nicely plated cards but what really catches my eye are 3 pieces on the side. There are 2 apmlifiers and 1 modulator. 2 of these pieces are pretty much covered in what looks like gold but I am not sure. Anybody have any info on these pieces and if I could get more for it on ebay. By the way, the last one I saw sold for $66. Any help would be appreciated. Chris


----------



## blueduck (Sep 21, 2007)

It appears you have a good amount of aluminum there in weight at least a few dollars, thre are a vast number of MLCC's there that are large and hold Pd in them which Steve says can be recovered with an AP mixture though I have not got that far yet, the foils on the fingers have gold, but the gold colored aluminum may not have any gold in it at all and I have not enough knowledge to either way..... testing is appropriate there or finding the data through the part number and manufacture codes......

I look at things differently than a lot of folks, if I am sitting around doing nothing then it pays to scrap out an item, if I am working on a project or hired out somewhere then to scrap has to pay that type of wages or better to tear it down.... if I have the room to let it sit and pile up then it is like dollars in the bank [my wife sez no more so I have not the room to pile a whole lot up around here so it begins to get torn apart , tossed in the appropriate bucket for later recovery or taken to the scrap yard to get a small return on things like aluminum and some metals, which gets rid of the pile mess and allows I can search for more "junk" parts and pieces in the dumpsters as I drive by]

I have been watching Ebay and the prices paid in the past few months for scrap parts are outrageous in my book, though the start of the wek things were looking very promising for some items again almost like the idiots who bid through the roof dont have no more to spend and found out it is not as easy to recover plus there are costs in doing so..... but a whole new bunch will jump in now that gold has hit nearly $750 today, likely to continue to over $800 by the end of the month if predictations come true, and if so maybe close the year out around $1200 and hit July next year between 1800 and 2400..... if these folks are correct.... making our hobby more than a hobby... but nothing happens like is predicted..... otherwise those folks would be called prophets, not profiteers.

If I had your chunk of metal and parts I would probably tear it down myself, it all depends on how heavy the AL is and how far you have to travel to sell it to reduce your pile of scrap... and how much you have for recovery of gold in your gold bucket of the same parts and pieces.

William


----------

