plating cell chips

champ110 · May 21, 2007

http://cgi.ebay.com/GOLD-PLATING-CHIPS-SCRAP-FOR-RECOVERY-GREAT-YIELD-SCRAP_W0QQitemZ270121397280QQihZ017QQcategoryZ3360QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

what is your opinion on these as a possible source. if i recall a few of you have run plating cells so your opinions would be greatly appreciated.

AuMINIMayhem · May 22, 2007

oooohhhh.. it's a battle to the finish line..

AuMINIMayhem · May 22, 2007

crap... I lose.. woulda been a good buy too..

I'm curious.. if anyone here on the boards bought it, would they post the results for the rest of us to see?.. That would be really cool if they did..

goldsilverpro · May 22, 2007

I think you would have lost money on that deal. This is pretty tricky on the part of the seller. It's a pig in a poke.

The seller hints that the rack build ups came from plating jewelry. Most costume jewelry is only plated about 10 millionths of an inch thick. The nickel is probably about a mil thick. This is a ratio of 100 to 1, thickness wise, nickel to gold. Gold is about twice the density of nickel. This brings the ratio, weight wise, to about 50 to 1. In 7.5 ounces (I'm assuming troy ozs.?), there would, therefore, be only .15 tr.ozs. of gold - $99. Although my figures are ballpark, in order to just break even, my estimate would have to be 300% in error. I don't think that's possible.

If the weight is in avoirdupois ounces (the seller doesn't say), this reduces the value to $90.

I've run lots of this stuff (I owned two gold plating shops) and it never comes out very good.

YOU WON!!

lazersteve · May 22, 2007

As a general rule for ebay:

Steer clear of unknowns and mystery items. Assume the worst case scenario, especially when buying mystery precious metals scrap.

I agree with GSP... WE WON!!!

Steve

AuMINIMayhem · May 22, 2007

whew.. although, I still got a bit of egg on my face for bidding on it in the 1st place..

yeah, GSP, I did email the seller and when I asked him "how many grams does that work out to?" his reply was "I odn't understand your question.. I emailed him back saying (basically) hey, dummy are you talking Troy ounces or what?... never did get a reply.. hmmmf... probably shoulda been a good clue there...

catfish · May 22, 2007

Hey Mayhem:

I wouldn't miss diner waiting on this guy to get back to you. hang in there man.

Catfish

AuMINIMayhem · May 23, 2007

yeah.. no kidding.. see my new post (under help needed, necklace), I'm pretty excited about this one..

We'll see how it turns out..

M-G-P · May 23, 2007

the same seller is selling now what you all think?
http://cgi.ebay.com/PIN-BOARD-5200-...oryZ3360QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

looks better then the other stuff
still not sure if I would bid on it or not :!: :?:

AuMINIMayhem · May 23, 2007

I'm curious about his claim of silver being on the board.. silver IS one of the best conductors of electricity, however, no tarnish?.. I dunno.. again this guys is curious to say the least... I definately have my eye on the stuff he's got up, contacted a few buyers of his stuff to see whether or not they had decent yields or were satisfied with him as a seller.. I'll post if I get any responses..

goldsilverpro · May 23, 2007

I doubt that there's any silver on the board. Not because of the lack of tarnish but because that silver is very, very rarely used on circuit boards. The silver migrates through the board material and causes shorts.

The board material is very thick. The guy says, "How much can that weigh?" These type boards are quite thick. Look at the top right photo. At 1/8" thickness, there would be 25 cubic inches of board material plus the copper and solder laminated on it. If the board material were twice the density of water, it would weigh about 2 pounds.

I guess the question is, "Are the pins worth $79/pound, or more?" He has 4 of these up and hasn't got a bid yet. Of course, it's only been 1 day.

Maybe someone like Steve has some boards like these and can give you more exact numbers. I don't think my guesses are that far off, however.

lazersteve · May 23, 2007

I just weighed out 50 pins of similar quality and size, they weighed 4.5 +/-0.5 grams.

He states it's over 5200 pins from this you can calculate:

5200 / 50 = 104 x 4.5 = 468 grams of pins APPROXIMATELY...

Just over a pound of pins, 3 grams of gold MAX!!! Don't forget you've got to ship, pick, and process those little guys too!!!

Steve

goldsilverpro · May 23, 2007

Man, I'm getting good at this. My guess was only 3% off.

catfish · May 23, 2007

Champ:

If I were you, I would pass this one up. First of all if you were able to win the bid at 79.00 plus 13.51 shipping would put into the board at $92.51.

I think Steve is very close to the actual amount of weight of the pins are. I estimate approximately 1 pound of average coated pins.

The actual gold yield will be any where from 0 to 1.0% max. Of the total weight. By the way the only 1.0% pins I have run into are old military pins. These pins are from a back plane of a PBX switch. There is not much gold in this type of pins. I have several back planes from Old AT&T PBX’s that have very little gold and I would give them to some one if they would pay for the shipping.

Next you have to either extract the pins individually or cut the fiber glass boards up into small pieces with a table saw of etc. By the way the pins most of the time is placed in the boards hot and you can’t pull them.

At ~450 grams of metal and a probably yield of .5%, you would get about 2.25 grams to 4.5grams if you were very lucky. There would be many hours of work just getting the pins ready for recovery or refining. Not to mention the cost of the chemicals.

The best price you could expect to get for the finished gold (99.5) is about 98% of $20.90 market price. (20.50) at 2.25 grams that would be $46.12 and at 4.5 grams would be $92.00.

Once you do the math, you will loose money. This does not take into consideration, the cost of your chemicals and your time.

We have an old saying down in Louisiana, (To much sugar for a dime).

The average price for very high yielding pins is about $60.00 total already separated. Average yielding pins are about $30.00 to $40.00 per pound. (Separated pins)

Unless you just need something to do.

Catfish

PS You may want to hit him with a question. Just how much does he think they will yield? This is not his first sale.

alexmaywood · Jun 4, 2007

Hi!
It came for 470 g (1lb 1oz) of separated pins. Steve was amazingly right. However, I got this board from another source and payed much less then $79. It rested for a long time and recently I decided to process it. Now all the pulled pins (it was really boring job to pull them out!) are in muriatic acid. What yield will be of them - that probably I could tell in the next couple of weeks.
Alex

lazersteve · Jun 4, 2007

alex said:
It came for 470 g (1lb 1oz) of separated pins. Steve was amazingly right[/url]

Alex,

Welcome to the forum and thanks for posting.

It helps when you have a ton of scrap of all sorts on hand to sample and test. I keep all my scrap separated and clean. I try to keep good records of what yields are on each specific type of scrap. I'm in the process of getting my yields spreadsheet sorted out for the forum. I check ebay daily and it never ceases to amaze me how much people are over paying for the gold yield they will get. I hope this forum will help educate everyone on the proper price to pay. Maybe it will work in our favor to help driver the scrap prices back into the correct range.

Steve

plating cell chips

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