300 LBs of gold boards, worth $8/lb?

[reflector]

hi, all.

i have an opportunity to buy a few hundred pounds of gold boards from a local company, but i'm wondering if they contain enough gold to make it worth the price.

about half of it is "blank" gold motherboards, no chips installed, all the holes are gold plated and it's a multi-layered PCB board, it weighs 1 LB 6 ounces.
photo of front and back are below

the other half are backplane boards, some decent gold plating, gold pins, and all the holes are gold-plated as well. it weighs 3 LB 6 ounces.
photo of front and back of the backplane are below.

i am wondering if it's a worthwhile buy at $8/lb, anyone have any thoughts?

i know there's some gold between the pcb layers so just doing a cyanide wash wouldn't make sense.

i would probably be having it processed through a local trustworthy refiner, crushed and melted down.

i know another guy who has processed gold boards who's told me that he was getting a return of $12/lb on the gold boards he processed through a refiner not long ago.

if anyone has experience with the return on similar boards, feedback would be appreciated.

thanks!

 

[samuel-a]

i am wondering if it's a worthwhile buy at $8/lb, anyone have any thoughts?

Too high. IMHO

 

[reflector]

i am wondering if it's a worthwhile buy at $8/lb, anyone have any thoughts?

Too high. IMHO

ok.

what would you pay?

any guess as to what the return is?

i'm not looking to make a killing on these, i just want to make a safe 25% margin, and start building up a relationship with this company.

 

[samuel-a]

we are located at different markets.
Loacally, i couldn't pay more then 0.6 a lb and probably get for it 1.2-1.4 a lb from an e-scrap exporter (maybe with 3000 lb i could get a lilbit higher)

I don't know the market where you are located, all i know is that the market for un-populated boards in the US is more developed.
But anyway, 8$/lb is way too high in my opinoin.

 

[silversaddle1]

Here in western Iowa you could fetch around $4.75 a pound for the backplanes. The unpopulated boards I don't know. I really don't think you will make any money on them at $8.00 a pound.

 

[patnor1011]

Do not forget that value of copper is significant (major) part of price for any board. Gold is just icing on that cake.
8$/pound from hobby gold recovery point of view - run away. What is fair price? You must find out yourself by running sample and calculation. Time, chemicals, waste minus whatever you can reclaim.

 

[samuel-a]

Do not forget that value of copper is significant (major) part of price for any board.

Hi pat, Even so,
Cu hovers around 40% of scrap mobo's and cards.
that's about 1.6$ worth of Cu (at market price) for one pound of scrap, and that is the avarage for populated boards.

Even big boys will not make money on this deal. :shock:

Edited

 

[reflector]

we are located at different markets.
Loacally, i couldn't pay more then 0.6 a lb and probably get for it 1.2-1.4 a lb from an e-scrap exporter (maybe with 3000 lb i could get a lilbit higher)

I don't know the market where you are located, all i know is that the market for un-populated boards in the US is more developed.
But anyway, 8$/lb is way too high in my opinoin.

i'm in silicon valley.

if you really are getting only 1.2 - 1.4 per lb for this type of board, i would be happy to pay you double that, $2.50 per lb.

sounds like you are reselling, though, not having it processed.

i am hoping someone on this forum has some experience processing these types of boards, and might know what the return is.

 

[Aristo]

There is quite a variation on the recovery on this type of material. Keep expectations low.
The safe way forward is to get a sample and run it prior to making any purchase. You would be surprised how little gold there is on similar"gold" boards.

 

[patnor1011]

Do not forget that value of copper is significant (major) part of price for any board.

Hi pat, Even so,
Cu hovers around 40% of scrap mobo's and cards.
that's about .7 - .75$ worth of Cu (at market price) for one pound of scrap, and that is the avarage for populated boards.

Even big boys will not make money on this deal. :shock:

40% eh?
454g /100 x 40 = 181.6g of Cu from pound of board.
9000$ / tonne = 9$ for kilo = 0.009$ for gram
181.6 x 0.009 = 1.63$ copper worth in 1 pound of boards.

You said hovers... That is correct because if board is populated that percentage would be 50-60% so we possibly talk about 2.04-2.45$ from one pound of boards.

People tend to think that they get bit more for boards now than before, because gold is higher. That is only half of story as copper price went up too.
Another thing is that most of recyclers (and I am talking about bigger operations not like most of us do) send their scrap to copper smelters. They are not board smelter or gold smelter - copper smelter. We tend to see gold, think gold but electronic recycling is not aimed at gold recovery. That is just byproduct - one worth going after but just byproduct of bigger picture.

You are right on that even big boys will not make money on that price. I would say that 2$ / pound for unpopulated boards may be more than enough if I will have to pay. They may be mixed in bigger lots of populated boards but that is about it.

I see questions like how much for this boards, that boards again and again. Answer is that you hardly make profit if you pay for electronic scrap trying to process it yourself. You can only make money if you buy boards cheaper and sell them for few $ extra. That is the only way to make money from "boards".
If you buy them and want extract gold dont forget to calculate your time, chemicals, hardware and waste disposal. Your end product (button, powder) will probably not cover your costs. It all depend how much you pay for material or if you pay at all.

Most of people here do this as hobby and cherry pick nice and easy pieces and sell the rest. These people are making money.
Some people here try to squeeze the last drop and leach kilos of boards and pins and spend liters of acids, scour ebay looking for yellow.... They have fun. Sometimes not.

 

[reflector]

There is quite a variation on the recovery on this type of material. Keep expectations low.
The safe way forward is to get a sample and run it prior to making any purchase. You would be surprised how little gold there is on similar"gold" boards.

thanks, that is sensible advice.

but even keeping expectations low, i would still like to try to figure out what a safe buy rate is.

 

[reflector]

thanks for the response, patnor.

i'm not really doing this as a hobby, nor intending to process the materials myself, i just don't have the time nor skills to do that on a large scale, better to outsource to a professional, IMHO.

i will be taking the materials to a smelter, xstrata copper.
in fact, i will be having my very first lot of materials processed this week, about 20,000 lbs of motherboards, cpus, and memory.

i will have some info coming back when i get the settlement report in 30 days.

my best guess based on info i get from associates who process is that standard PC boards will return (after processing fees) about $5/lb, cpus might be $25-$250/lb depending on type, and memory will be about $20/lb.

not quite sure where gold boards will fit in that range.

i've been trying to educate myself about gold content of various electronic scrap, been checking out the gold content list that aflacglobal posted:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28911037/Gold-Content-List-in-CPU-Chips

also came across this list which seems like it may be copied from the one above:
http://www.ozcopper.com/computer-cpu-gold-yields/

 

[Aristo]

In your first picture, if you remove the gold plated strips on the outer edges, I have seen those strips run at $8.00/lb with gold at around 1300. There is a wide variationon plating, so buy low: $1.50/lb.

 

[samuel-a]

Well said Patnor.

Thank you for the correction, i took the price of pound as it ware a kilo, sorry about that.
I'll edit my post.

 

[patnor1011]

my best guess based on info i get from associates who process is that standard PC boards will return (after processing fees) about $5/lb, cpus might be $25-$250/lb depending on type, and memory will be about $20/lb.

That is pretty close to company in Europe (Umicore) who pay about 8,5 euros for kilogram.
That is 12.18$ so 5.5$/lb
It looks to me that you get good deal.

To your board I can say only what Aristo already said. From my own experience I know that even they look nice - result may be different. I once had few kilograms similar boards but much smaller. Unpopulated boards for smoke detectors. They were full of holes and nearly covered with plating. It looked on some spots like they are painted with gold. I ran them in AP thinking that I got jackpot but result was disappointing. Only some foils rest of plating just broke to super fine flakes and powder. I am sorry I have no pictures and exact notes. If I was you I would not pay more than you usually pay for computer boards. I would be actually tempted pay less as in populated board where you have the same amount of plating but it is covered with solder and components + extra plating on pins.

 

[reflector]

To your board I can say only what Aristo already said. From my own experience I know that even they look nice - result may be different. I once had few kilograms similar boards but much smaller. Unpopulated boards for smoke detectors. They were full of holes and nearly covered with plating. It looked on some spots like they are painted with gold. I ran them in AP thinking that I got jackpot but result was disappointing. Only some foils rest of plating just broke to super fine flakes and powder. I am sorry I have no pictures and exact notes. If I was you I would not pay more than you usually pay for computer boards. I would be actually tempted pay less as in populated board where you have the same amount of plating but it is covered with solder and components + extra plating on pins.

that is a good point, however, you should also consider the source.
smoke detectors are generally inexpensive devices, the manufacturer would not be looking to use heavily gold laden boards in their devices.
a network storage company will be willing to pay more for materials cost.

but yes i will heed your advice, and try to buy low.

 

[Claudie]

Smoke detectors are a good example of electronics that contain radiation. Yes, I said radiation. You should use caution on some items like medical or x-ray equipment too. You never know what's in there.
Claude

 

[goldsilverpro]

Smoke detectors

http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/sources/smoke_alarm.html

 

[macfixer01]

Smoke detectors

http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/sources/smoke_alarm.html

For some entertaining reading, search Google for info about The Radioactive Boy Scout. He purposely collected smoke detectors to remove the Americium. Seemed like just a typical adolescent mistake when I first heard about him. What he's done since though makes me wonder if he's mentally unbalanced?

macfixer01

 

[Claudie]

Read about the Mayapuri radiological accident, it fits in perfectly with scrapping. :shock:
http://www.jplabs.com/india%20major%20radiation%20accidents.pdf
It is number 9 in this list.