hello everyone. i was just curious if there was a way to get gold off of gold filled jewelry as well as computer components without having to get it into pure form, but still getting all the gold off. like if i were to do a batch of gold filled and lets say it 10k gold filled. could i get it off and melt a 10k nugget instead of doing the other processes to get it into 24k? because wether or not its in 24k or 10k form I'm still gonna get the same amount out of it. so my main question is what could i do to get gold off of ram,gold filled,cpus and everything else to where all the gold is off, to where I'm getting the gold off of it in the karat form its in without the extra steps of getting it into pure form. sorry if its hard to understand what I'm asking and thank you
Getting gold off but not in pure form
- Thread starter Ian18206
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jimdoc
Well-known member
Ian18206 said:
You may as well sell it as-is.
If you are going to put any effort into it, you may as well do it right.
Jim
NobleMetalWorks
Well-known member
Even if you could get the gold off, sweat it off or whatever, you are still passing on 90% of the work to a refiner, who is not going to give you spot prices for a bar of gold that is only 10k. You have to remember that they are now going to have to incur the cost of refining it, paying employees, spending electricity, etc etc etc. The reason we refine is to get a premium for our effort and final product.
There are people who melt globs of unknown metals with 1% gold and sell their globs on ebay. But to refine those globs would take more effort and energy after they are melted into a glob, than what the gold in them is probably worth.
So not only are you NOT going to get the same prices as you would when you refine, but you are making it more difficult to refine whatever metal you melted.
It makes no sense.
If all you want to do is sell your precious metals, to turn a profit, just sell your material to a refiner. You will end up making good money, building relationships with people who can refine for you and in the end probably make a lot more money than trying to figure out a way to get around having to do the work for the kind of pay you want.
Scott
There are people who melt globs of unknown metals with 1% gold and sell their globs on ebay. But to refine those globs would take more effort and energy after they are melted into a glob, than what the gold in them is probably worth.
So not only are you NOT going to get the same prices as you would when you refine, but you are making it more difficult to refine whatever metal you melted.
It makes no sense.
If all you want to do is sell your precious metals, to turn a profit, just sell your material to a refiner. You will end up making good money, building relationships with people who can refine for you and in the end probably make a lot more money than trying to figure out a way to get around having to do the work for the kind of pay you want.
Scott
Pantherlikher
Well-known member
If only it were that easy. Everyone would be doing it huh....
In answer to your question there are methods for recovery of the values such as the sulphuric cell for gold plated jewellery and the AP process to recover foils from edges and some types of pins. There is no easy way of doing this without using acids in one form or another but you can avoid actual refining but then you will need to melt the resulting values and have an assay done to know exactly what you have before you sell it, one reason many members refine there recovered values. If you don't want to work with acids simple, collect sort and send the materials to one of our respected members for toll refining, they will do the work for you and keep a percentage of the values for their services, nothing wrong with this approach either we have members who do just that.
I hope this helps clarify different approaches to what we do or can do.
I hope this helps clarify different approaches to what we do or can do.
Another main reason for refining to pure is to know what you actually have. I guaranteeing if you send 5 kilos of gold filled to a refinery your yield will be considerably different than if you refine it your self. They can not really mickey with a 125 g pure gold bar to screw you, well at least not too much, where as they can have you for lunch on a 5 kilo lot of gold filled. I believe there are posts on this forum where members have received zero return on gold filled from refineries.
If you know exactly what you have, it is harder to cheat you out of it.
If you know exactly what you have, it is harder to cheat you out of it.
Thanks for your replies. The only reason I asked was because I'm getting low on money and was trying to get the gold off and make a quick profit. Another thing that doesn't help is that it's been raining, and I process everything outside. I completely understand that it's more worthwhile to get it into pure form. I was just looking for quick processes so I can get the gold off faster under the conditions that I'm under. I don't have much right now besides the gold filled, maybe 8 lbs of non ceramic processors and 200g of fingers from ram and pci boards. What would be an expected yield from this? And I also have maybe 70 motherboards and was wondering the best approach to get all the precious metals off. And the last question was that in one reply you said I might as well send them off to get processed, where would be the best place to do that? Thank you everyone once again
NobleMetalWorks
Well-known member
Ian18206 said:
There are refineries that will refine boards, but you should send large quantities to make it worthwhile, and you might have to wait awhile for a payout. What you might do if you want to generate some income right away is sell your boards instead of having them refined. If you sell your boards, you might want to talk with Boardsport on this forum. Although I have never sold to Boardsport, I have seen nothing but positive responsive from other well respected members.
When I was a kid I was caught complaining by my grandfather about not making enough mowing lawns. He just told me to mow more lawns. Then this man who had lived through the great depression told me something I have remembered since. "You can't go broke if you are making a profit". In other words, don't chase the dollar to the point you loose money doing so, take the profit while you can. Sell what you have for a fair price, then use those funds to purchase more material, and before you know what happened, you are buying and selling more and more material.
I have been selling 1lb bag of gold plated pins on ebay for $69.99 and going through 10-20 lbs a week. I could sell them for $99+ and make more money, but I would have a more difficult time selling them and may not sell the entire lot within a week, thus limiting me to how much I can purchase the week after and in the long run not making as much profit as I do selling them at 69.99 per lb. I also process pins, but I have found that my time is better spent processing other types of material, so instead of not buying pins when I can't run them myself, I purchase them, sell them, build my ebay score, make a profit still, and I make a lot of contacts with other people in the scrapping/refining business. The people I buy from make money, I make money, the people I sell to make money and everyone is happy. This has worked so well for me that some people who purchase pins from me are now buying other things from me. So this gives me the ability to purchase scrap I otherwise may not have, take what I want to process and then pass on the excess material to people I have already established a relationship with that are seeking that type of material.
Scott
steyr223
Well-known member
Slight interruption.
Scott pal buddy,um what's your yield/lb of them
there 69.00 pins.
Steyr223 rob
Scott pal buddy,um what's your yield/lb of them
there 69.00 pins.
Steyr223 rob
thanks scott for all the help as well as everyone else. I'm still reading hokes, and i understand if i were to start processing something its best to finish it, rather than only do 50%. I'm going to try and process everything properly and if it goes well i will post some pics up of the buttons. once again thanks for the help. 
kadriver
Well-known member
Ian18206 said:thanks scott for all the help as well as everyone else. I'm still reading hokes, and i understand if i were to start processing something its best to finish it, rather than only do 50%. I'm going to try and process everything properly and if it goes well i will post some pics up of the buttons. once again thanks for the help.
I was able to get 8.3 grams of pure gold from 202.3 grams of clean gold filled scrap jewelry items (plus about 1/2 troy ounce of silver).
I'll bet I could have melted the gold filled jewelry into a button, then sold it as-is to the refiner to generate some quick cash.
But then I must rely on the refiner to tell me how much gold is there since it is melted in with all that base metal - the refiner could make up a number and take part of my gold and I would never know the difference.
kadriver
