Beginner, currently in the process of acquiring material

[Anonymous]

Hello, my name is Derek. I am in Bedford MA. and have started accumulating scrap electronics for gold recovery. So far have acquired ~10k lbs of PCB and CPU scrap. I am doing this in my spare time for a charity The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. I figure if I can put in the sweat equity on the labor side of stripping down everything and then getting to the reclamation process I should be able to give a sizable contribution to the foundation every year.

My plea for help is in the following areas. One is sourcing. I fear I have been slaughtered financially thus far by acquiring on ebay. Currently I am about $5k in the hole. Is there a trusted source out there, that sells at a reasonable enough rate to make the venture profitable?

Second is instructions on basic reclemation technique. Is there a recipe out there for the home user ( I will be doing this in my yard) using basic materials, propane, chemicals I can get from the hardwarestore etc. that are somewhat idiot proof? and that even a beginer can do by following the recipe verbatim?

Sorry for the long post. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Best,

Derek

 

[butcher]

Be careful of Gold fever.
you may find yourself even deeper in the hole.
ebay or buying electronic scrap is not the answer and if you have not done this enough to get good at it making chemicals disposal ect. it will most likely not be profitable and can cost you.
electronic scrap you should get free to even think profit, and have a few years of doing this to get experienced.
but every gold miner thinks someday he's gonna find that vein of gold, truth is he will not, or the chances are against it,and it's hard for him to see that. Derek not trying to pop your bubble just being truthful.

 

[Rag and Bone]

No offense but it sounds like you are deep in the woods on a snipe hunt. You will be hard pressed to make enough money to cover your time and expenses in addition to giving to charity. It's not reasonable to recover everything yourself. If you are processing thousands of pounds of materials you will have enormous licensing and waste issues to deal with. How will you deal with low value items like monitors and printers?

If you find a good refiner you can pre-process the scrap (removing heavy, low value materials) and cherry pick the high yield parts to process yourself. Good deals on e-scrap are tough to find on ebay.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you both for the candid advice. Your answers are helpful and I appreciate an the honesty and candidly for myself something I have been fearing. This whole thing of refining from scrap seems like it may be a Giant waste of time.

The comment on the refiners, are there any decent ones out there that you all have used an been satisfied with?