First time PM find - holy grail? Identification?

[nalexandrov]

Hey, Iv been looking into gold refining for a while. After talking to a guy at the gun show who does it I decided to check out my big box of random scrap electronics for gold connections, etc. Its been sitting under a table for 2 years or so. It had some very old communications equipment, incredibly heavy for its size. I had grabbed it from my Universities electronics department as they were throwing it out. I originally wanted it for the heavy rackmount cases and heatsinks. Some of the more digital type boxes had gold coax connectors with silver wiring running between them. Recovered 40g of silver wire which tested well (self made nitric acid/potassium dichromate), non magnetic. Prob about 2lbs of various gold plated parts, connectors, a few processors and gold shielded chips.

I would be interested in knowing a few things:
The items seem to be silver plated, is it even worth recovering silver plated items when you could stumble upon a sterling silver item at the thrift store for a few dollars which would weigh thousands of times more then the silver in these electrons? In some of the pictures you can see where I tested an items surface and also the base material, surface was more blood red, still a red type reaction from the base material.

What are the ceramic? disks encased in the silver coated box? They seem to be isolated from the box? Cracked one open, does it look like an interesting material?

How much gold would you guys estimate is in 2lbs of military grade connectors, shielded chips, etc?

Are the MMC's always worth it for platinium?

 

[Militoy]

The center insulators in the "pucks" look like delrin or teflon. The glassy reddish material doesn't look like ceramic to me - more like some kind of cycloaliphatic insulating resin. Your wire may very well be silver plated - but I would be surprised if the aluminum hogout was (or the other metal pieces). I would expect to see a whole lot more tarnish on a silver-plated surface.

 

[nalexandrov]

thanks for the advice.

The box seems to be silver plated, It went blood red with the silver test, its not tarnished probably because it was sealed in a metal box and painted shut, maybe in an inert gas blanket? The test had no effect on aluminum/SS in the time period I tested.

 

[Militoy]

Well - the red IS a pretty clear test for silver using Schwerter's solution. And no way would I call the appearance of the cavities 'copperish' or 'brassish', leading to a brown reaction. One thought occurred to me on the 'ceramic' pucks. They don't look like any ferrite I've worked with in 35 years - but just in case you might check them with a rare-earth magnet.

 

[nalexandrov]

they are non magnetic, seem like some type of oscillator crystal or something.

 

[Sodbuster]

They don't look ferrite to me eather. They look like some kind of a piezoelectric ceramic.

Could be Lead zirconate titanate (PZT), or it could be one of the Perovskite based ceramics. I don't know and I'm no expert on piezoelectrics.
PZT is a hazardous material.

Do be careful and check these links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_zirconate_titanate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perovskite

Ray