Greetings from Northern VA

[greg.starke]

What a crazy journey that has brought me to this forum seeking answers about another avenue of business I may sprawl off into.

My name is Greg, by day I am a Senior SAP Basis consultant. While I find this a fulfilling and well paying career, I have known for a while that I want to strike off on my own. I started Starke Technologies in August of 2012. At first I was buying used computer servers from Ebay, parting them out, and then selling them back on Ebay. I knew that I wanted to work with hardware as that is where my true expertise is. I started to sell parts contracts to smaller operations that kept old out of maintenance equipment in production environments. Soon I realized that buying from Ebay was keeping my costs too high, so I searched (and found) for multiple alternative sources of surplus servers. I am now getting them for tens of dollars rather then hundreds, sometimes even for free.

Today I am selling whole servers, parts that are worth selling, and boxing the rest as scrap or on hold for parts contracts. This operation is still sitting in my garage, much to my wife's dismay as she would like to park in it again!

This brings me to why I am here on this forum. Through my research, I discovered that the boards I am boxing contain various precious metals (in the back of my head I knew that, I just didn't realize that it was possible to remove them on smaller scales), I watched a few youtube videos on how to do this and want to learn more. I will be the first to admit that I am a complete chemist novice. I have 11 years of schooling (MBA, BBA, AAS in electronic engineering, and 63 weeks of Korean) and not one class involved chemistry, but I do know business and this has the potential to be very lucrative given the low cost of scrap that I have an influx of.

Mathmatically, I believe that I can make far more doing the refining on a medium scale harvesting the precious metals myself (rather than selling them on Ebay). As I search to move out of my garage into industrial space, I have been taking this into consideration (that I will need a room with proper equipment, ventilation, safety protocols, and proper know how to do this).

As of now, I have a couple hundred pounds of scrap boards that I am sitting on, I am prior army, so I am a stickler on making sure I have the procedure, know the procedure, follow the procedure, and have a contingency for any issues that may arise.

My goal here is to learn as much as I can, study up and learn the terminology used in the precious metal extraction and refinement processes, practice and implement this procedure for my business, and then become an expert and a contributing member to this community.

I don't intend this to be the main focus of my business, this is by far an ad-hoc thing in the beginning, but something that long term could become a day to day operation as I grow. One of my long term goals is to move into e-waste extraction for private business and municipalities.

So that is a short synopsis of who I am, what I am doing, and why I am here.

Look forward to many hours of perusing this forum and learning!!

 

[necromancer]

and many hours it will be

welcome & enjoy Greg.

 

[glorycloud]

Welcome Greg.

Your resale experience will help you as you must surely understand what a profit and loss statement must be by now.
Reselling your boards with no resale value to others who will scrap them for their precious metals values will keep your
life and your families life and your neighbors lives chemical free. Your time is a precious commodity and once spent is
gone forever. Chasing after the shiny gold stuff can make one mad after gold and often delusional as to value of what
you are chasing after in terms of it's actual value when you factor in your value for time and the hazards involved in
the processes of recovering and refining gold from e-scrap.

Find out what works for you and what brings you joy in light of what it will cost you to get it and what it will cost
you and your family in time lost tilting against the windmill in the Quixotic dream of "gold" in e-scrap. 8)

Anyway, I wish you well in your pursuits of the American dream!

 

[greg.starke]

Thanks for the warm welcome!

I want to at least explore this for myself, I am too curious not to at least say I had tried. If worse comes to worse and the time spent / opportunity cost of the venture doesn't make sense, then I will seek some partnerships to sell off my boards on a regular basis.

First order of business is to find some chemical suppliers and start pricing this out.

Greg

 

[butcher]

Greg,
Welcome to the forum,

The education you can gain from this forum can be valueable in many ways, it can also be used to help in many different types of bussiness ventures that deal with precious metals, not all of them in dealing with electronic scrap, or getting a small button of gold from several hundred pounds of old circuit boards.


I would study before looking for chemicals, gaining the knowledge and understanding, this will give you more of an idea of which route you may wish to go, what is needed in that route...



It does take a little more time and patience to learn to hitch the old horse to the cart properly, but it is easier to drive the cart when the horse is hitched properly in front of the cart. That old horse does not work to well trying to push the cart, and fixing the cart is very time consuming.

 

[greg.starke]

UPDATE:

So I haven't done any refining, or even started to research this venture on my own at all. I have however begun to amass a large number of scrap boards that I am just sitting on. As a feeling, I put up four auctions on eBay.

Auction 1 - Scrap RAM 7.8 lbs
Auction 2 - Scrap RAM 8.2 lbs

Auction 3 - Scrap motherboards 24+ lbs
Auction 4 - Scrap motherboards 23+ lbs

I won't post the links here, forget if that is against the rules or not.

My RAM sold almost instantly, but I don't think it was for refining.

Yield:

Auction 1 - 90 shipped
Auction 2 - 118.00 shipped

I am happy with these amounts and I think I could live with just selling RAM from here out.

My motherboards however are not selling

Auction 3 - asking 115 shipped
Auction 4 - asking 110 shipped

These are server grade.

I will probably make a post elsewhere on the forum - does the forum allow for classifieds or linking of eBay listings? I will do some research, but so far I am liking the RAM yields, the motherboards I am hoping will sell soon!

If not, this may prompt my first foray at refining!

 

[nickvc]

Welcome to the forum Greg.
The first thing to remember is that refining is not for everyone, having a regular source is important which you seem to have but whether you actually refine it or simply sort and sell is a decision only you can make. Refining takes knowledge, time and the right equipment, it can be unpleasant and or downright dangerous, you will be left with hazardous waste products which need treating properly before you can safely or legally dispose of it.
Should you after reading and studying the forum decide to proceed then I suggest cherry picking what you refine and sell the rest on. Fingers and CPUs are good materials to work with whole boards not so easy, pins are also good but take time to strip from the housings, could your time be better spent elsewhere remember this is your job and not a hobby!
Start small if you do go forward and treat it as a hobby if you just want some gold of your own, if you enjoy it and can see a way to make it fit your business and benefit it then go into bigger volumes.
Fully understanding what your trying to do is highly important and for most people that takes months of study, even the seniors are still learning, forget looking for suppliers of chemicals and equipment as at the moment you have little to no idea of exactly what you need or why.
Take the guided tour and do the necessary reading and then decide if you want to proceed, if the material is free and you don't need the cash flow then keep back some or all of it to start your experiments with, it takes a lot of computer scrap, time and knowledge to acquire an ounce of fine gold.
I wish you luck but treat refining as a hobby to start and concentrate on making your business sucessful as it stands as it pays the bills.

 

[butcher]

I always enjoy reading post by nickvc, and like his wise advice.

I think many of our new members should read his post above, as many get the idea that going into business with recovery and refining electronic scrap may be easy or profitable, or they try to set up a lab and begin before they learn what they even need.

 

[greg.starke]

After the last few months and reading that, I am leaning towards just being a supplier of scrap material for a refiner. If I can find a few solid buyers, this will work out nicely!

Off to other parts of the forum!