I do scrapping in general and take whatever I get to process, mostly found on curbs and such, just about anything with metal from furniture and mechanical gizmos and odd hunks of metal, through appliances of all sizes, to a wide variety of consumer electronics. I am also at the bottom a good number of people's upgrade chains and called for their metal disposal.
I'm really just starting out in refining, but have been scrapping metals for over 20 years. It hurts to think of all the high quality stuff I've let go too cheap in that time not knowing it's true content and value, but I've come a long way since I first started and always seem to learn more that I can be doing to increase my returns.
At my level, it is still more economical to sell PC boards whole. I would lose money to cut the fingers and pins off if I wasn't going to totally depopulate the boards. I need to find a better buyer; my yard is behind the times and I've gotten better board prices from eBay sales before.
To me, cherry picking is done on the low grade boards I get from the many other items I take apart with circuit boards that my yard pays a cheap price for, which is just about anything not from a PC. It's amazing just how many consumer products and toys have circuit boards in them.
I have a good pile of boards sitting around since I stopped taking them in quite a while ago to learn more about what they contain and also since my yard pays dirt for them. I'll be trying to pull off any flatpacks and good looking ICs (hoping they don't have aluminum bonding); surface mount capacitors and resistors; tantalum capacitors; LEDs and transistors (not sure if this is really worth it yet); and copper windings, relays and aluminum heat sinks. I am saving the small LCD screens from stuff too; I've heard there are values in them and I don't have a buyer for them yet otherwise.
I also pull the excess steel and plastic off to not get penalized for it. I wait and take sheet steel in by the truckload and have a place that takes my PC and appliance plastic for recycling. The smaller steel bits go in larger steel containers I end up with to reduce the handling of it.
I have found what appears to be gold plated contacts on boards from children's toys and cordless phone handsets. These I am saving to begin playing with a sand bath and AP. I've also found what look like the same kinds of contacts as in keyboard mylars in educational-toy touch-sensor pads, although they are usually loaded with adhesives. Those mylars also show up in microwave touch pads, but sometimes they are a carbon/black color instead.
