A 'gold mine' of unused gold-plated parts!

[Alondro]

So a pile of these now rather rare and expensive parts practically fell into my lap today from a guy who does cleanouts. He was just throwing them all away, so I swiftly rescued them!

I want to sell them off rather than scrap them, because, as I say, they're totally new and unused. A large number of them are the gold-leg types of transistors, PROMs, and many other parts!

I'll post some pics when I have time to sort through the bag and locate the best-preserved ones.

I also may get some SPECTACULAR boards from him this weekend... from OSCILLOSCOPES!! I got a look at 3 of them and almost passed out from the gold-plated ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING on them!

 

[Acidrain]

Do you have show and tell pictures?

 

[anarxi]

Do you know how to interest a person?
How?
I'll tell you tomorrow...

 

[Acidrain]

I wanna seeeeee!

 

[Alondro]

A few of the items. I don't have too much time through the week, and there are a lot of little envelopes to look through with small parts!

 

[Alondro]

More of the goodies! But not even the best yet! The last pic is a nice relay switch with gold 'bar' contact buttons and gold-plated leads. It's in magnificent condition and goes into the 'collectibles' group.

 

[orvi]

That is some nice stuff. I wish you that it will be as good as old USSR scrap.

I like the style of the old US boards, how they were made, nice rounded traces and beautiful discrete components. Accurate amount of precious metals. Not excessive like in the east (as guys were unable to reliably produce functional components without it - or simply could not produce uniform thinner plating). I still have several nice boards saved, as they were too nice to scrap. Mainly due to Pd or Rh plated fingers - I don´t know which of them - but the finger is PM plated, and it is not gold nor silver.

BTW, relays like these for specialized equipment can sometimes have solid gold contacts. But I do not know much about wester electronics. If it was found where I live, and was some local "brand", there would be high chance that points will be AuNi5 alloy, or Au70AgNi. I once processed a lot of around 500 of such relays. Satisfaction guaranteed

 

[Alondro]

That is some nice stuff. I wish you that it will be as good as old USSR scrap.

I like the style of the old US boards, how they were made, nice rounded traces and beautiful discrete components. Accurate amount of precious metals. Not excessive like in the east (as guys were unable to reliably produce functional components without it - or simply could not produce uniform thinner plating). I still have several nice boards saved, as they were too nice to scrap. Mainly due to Pd or Rh plated fingers - I don´t know which of them - but the finger is PM plated, and it is not gold nor silver.

BTW, relays like these for specialized equipment can sometimes have solid gold contacts. But I do not know much about wester electronics. If it was found where I live, and was some local "brand", there would be high chance that points will be AuNi5 alloy, or Au70AgNi. I once processed a lot of around 500 of such relays. Satisfaction guaranteed

These parts were from a company (Tektronix) that makes very precise testing equipment. Much of what I've gotten dates to 1970. The company is still around today as a subsidiary of a larger corporation, and has a store in Philadelphia, PA, just off Bustleton Ave.

 

[Alondro]

Got the rest of the oscilloscope stuff Friday, including a few old computers. Got a pair of NICE Intel Pentium III CPUs. And some high-quality Hyundai RAM! Those are pretty much antiques, so they go into the collector's pile.

The motherboards are great too. They were high-end business desktop towers, so the pins are that nice dark gold color, which means heavier plating.

And here are pics! Got lots of little parts to remove. Conveniently, many of the gold-leg transistors and other parts are in slots in the board, not soldered in place, so I can remove them intact, which makes them vastly more useful for resale.

First pic is of a large and VERY heavy capacitor. Could this be a huge tantalum foil capacitor? It dates from 1969. The end caps are magnetic, and the ends are soldered closed with what looks like silver solder.

Second pic are the 3 control units from the device I haven't taken apart yet.

There's a pic of Tektronix switch assemblies that are in nice shape, and two Motorola gold-leg... uhm.... what are those things again? Anyway, they're intact and collectible too.

And the last pic is the incredible board that has gold-plated everything. And it's VERY HEAVY gold plate! I think I can expect well over a gram of gold from that single board.

 

[anarxi]

Gorgeous material, framed or hung on the wall.

in the first photo you can see the kilohertz designation -
Most likely it is a quartz resonator.
There are a lot of tantalum capacitors just on the board, both in metal and wrapped in clay.
check the Spectrol sub-triple resistors, there should be a slider made of good metal

 

[Alondro]

Gorgeous material, framed or hung on the wall.

in the first photo you can see the kilohertz designation -
Most likely it is a quartz resonator.
There are a lot of tantalum capacitors just on the board, both in metal and wrapped in clay.
check the Spectrol sub-triple resistors, there should be a slider made of good metal

A quartz resonator? Interesting. Never had one of those before.

I know there are a bunch of tantalum caps on there, at least the familiar cylindrical ones. What do the clay-wrapped ones look like?

And which resistors are the Spectrol ones?

Oh, what's the name of the two Motorola parts? They are the parts sitting to the upper left of the Tektronix switches.

 

[anarxi]

Motorola is transistors.
if you cut off a metal hat with a grinder, underneath there may be a gold-plated disk on which the crystal is soldered

 

[anarxi]

in photo 3242 on the right side there are three squares with a screw in the middle - a spectrol trimming resistor.
Next to them are black cylinders with a cut-off side, we call them “half-barrels”, these are also gold-plated transistors, they still make a lot of this shape now, but they are usually empty

 

[anarxi]

in the same photo at the bottom right there is a red drop-shaped tantalum capacitor.
On top there are black and yellow ones, like hornets, most likely inductors.
Also, I would check all the red and blue pads, they could very well be ceramic palladium capacitors.
There are also 3241 boxes in the photo, most likely this is a relay with the correct contacts..

 

[Golddigger76]

This is mostly the type of electronic equipment that I refine, tektronix made some great equipment during this time period, Fluke did to, great score !!!!

 

[Alondro]

in the same photo at the bottom right there is a red drop-shaped tantalum capacitor.
On top there are black and yellow ones, like hornets, most likely inductors.
Also, I would check all the red and blue pads, they could very well be ceramic palladium capacitors.
There are also 3241 boxes in the photo, most likely this is a relay with the correct contacts..

Thanks a bunch! Those Motorola transistors are almost certainly gold inside. The two external leads are gold-plated. But I might try to sell them since the leads are intact.

 

[naqade]

The kilohertz marking likely indicates a quartz resonator, and the tantalum capacitors on the board add to its quality. Spectrol sub-triple resistors often use sliders made of premium materials for precision. Gold's conductivity and corrosion resistance make it vital in electronics—check out "gold prices in Qatar" to see how its industrial demand impacts value.

Edit by moderator, broke link as this is not the for sale section.

 

[Yggdrasil]

The kilohertz marking likely indicates a quartz resonator, and the tantalum capacitors on the board add to its quality. Spectrol sub-triple resistors often use sliders made of premium materials for precision. Gold's conductivity and corrosion resistance make it vital in electronics—check out "gold prices in Qatar" to see how its industrial demand impacts value.

Edit by moderator, broke link as this is not the for sale section.

Welcome to us.
If you are soliciting anything, the for sale section is the place not here.

 

[haveagojoe]

Some of those transistors may be worth much more as they are than for their gold content. Vintage transistors are highly sought after by guitar effects enthusiasts for building fuzz pedals. Worth checking out some forums.

A brief search suggested these part numbers are some of the favourites:

2N321, 2N404, 2N404A, 2N508, 2N527, 2N1305, 2N1307

2N388, 2N1306, 2N1308, 2N1309, 2N1373

NTE (or ECG) 101, 102, 158

2SA or 2SB 22, 54, 75, 77, 172, 175, 178, 187, 201, 303, 324, 370, 405, 439, 516

OC44, OC71, OC75, OC77, OC81, AC122, AC128, AC151, NKT275

AC127, OC140