Hello from Michigan!

[ShLUbY]

Hello to everyone. Just a newbie here, familiarizing myself with precious metals recovery to try and earn a few extra bucks on the side! I have a little chemistry background from an inorganic principal and analysis class that i've taken, which will probably be a little helpful for me in this experience. I'm totally excited about this whole adventure of retrieving things of value from "junk". I've been watching ebay for some escrap to experiment with, plus stuff I have laying around the house here and what friends and family will give me. I'm feeling the beginnings of gold fever and I'm hoping that I will have some luck in my journey. Glad to be here with all the knowledge and experience, and looking forward to chatting with you all!

Blake

 

[nickvc]

Welcome to the forum
Forget eBay it's not a winning proposition.
Lose the gold fever there are no easy bucks in refining.
If perchance you really want to know more take the guided tour and read and study.
In maybe 6-12 months you might be able to recover and refine simple items and maybe cover costs.
I wish you luck but do not think this is easy,if it was everyone and their dog would be making millions.

 

[Long Shot]

Hi Shluby and welcome. To back up what Nick says (and sorry Nick, you peed in the guys Cornflakes a bit)- I have been a member of the forum since April 2014 and have been interested in this for quite some time before I joined. I have yet to attempt a refinement as have been busy collecting and studying. Please be aware that there are dangers and ramifications if you do things wrong. Please take the advice of the senior members here and do some reading before you jump in with both feet. It is like jumping of a cliff into unknown waters if you don't look first. There is plenty of free information and publications here and you should get them and read them BEFORE you do anything. I will agree with Nick in that, unless you get some sort of awesome and rare deal from eBay, it is a dead horse. There is much more to be found free if you are patient and look around. Dumpster diving is one of my favorites. Heading out for a wee drive on the night before garbage collection is another. If your friends and family are connected to the electronics industry - another great source. One thing to be aware of is that there is a great and wide variety of stuff in electronics to be recovered. Some is better to be harvested and sold while others pan out good in refining. Tantulum caps for example are better sold than attempting processing - Etack here on the forum buys them either as is or separated. If it is a hobby for you than you will likely enjoy it. From what I have read, getting into the business end of it is another ball game altogether and is expensive. Anyway, I hope this helps you a bit and enjoy your journey.

 

[Harold_V]

(and sorry Nick, you peed in the guys Cornflakes a bit)-

That's not peeing on cornflakes---it's a call to reality. Anyone who jumps in to this refining hobby/business needs his head checked if it's strictly to make money. That's not to say it's not possible, but the learning curve is long, and problems great.

I started refining in '74, before it was legal to do so without a federal permit. Once refining was legalized (January of '75), word got around that I was refining, and, thanks to an ex-brother-in-law, one manufacturing jeweler asked me to refine for him. From that day forward, it was only in 1984 that I had more than I could deal with as a part time venture. I turned to full time refining and never looked back, selling the business when I retired.

From this one should take away the idea that while a living can be made, it may not happen quickly. From the beginning, I was perfectly content to do what I could, as it came in, so failure was never a question. If I didn't refine for others, no big deal, as I had a respectable income from my full time work (my humble machine shop). However, once I closed the doors on the shop, it had to be profitable. I can clearly see that had I expected the refining operation to be my sole source of income, I'd have failed, but the time spent allowing it to grow on its own merits proved to be profitable. Just took a long time.

Do keep that in mind when you think you can make some fast, easy money with gold. Some do. Most don't.

Harold

 

[ShLUbY]

Yeah I know that it's a learning experience, and that's what I'm in it for. I've been doing my homework on prices, and refuse to pay more than what say boardsort.com would pay for scrap. I always look for deals better than what they pay. I'll be saving stuff (green board/aluminum/copper ect.) to sell back to help cover purchase cost. Along those guidelines, yes i'm hoping to make a small profit the first time, but it's more of an experiment for me right now. I'm not thinking anything serious until i'm convinced that it's possible! As for the process... i'll just be doing the easy stuff first. I bought 5lbs of sim cards because I saw on this forum people were saying a firm average yield of about .85g/lb of cards. So i did the math, and if all goes correctly, i'll have made a few bucks, and more importantly, gained experience. My chemistry professor is going to help me put my first product into solution, and precipitate it. I'm very aware of the dangers of the chemicals and I hold a great deal of respect for them. I'm also planning to save my gold plating until i have enough that i feel it's worth the cost of chemical and time to put into solution and precipitate. I don't wait to refine 2g batches at a time; too time consuming and too wasteful. I'd like to at least have a nice load of plating before I process for refinement.

I will say I appreciate the reality aspect of it from you all. I'm all about reality! So i like to hear from experienced people, and their experiences. SO any opinions are welcome! I'm an open minded guy!

 

[butcher]

Working with large batches is useful for not loosing small amounts of gold in many small batches.

Working with a small batch is useful to experiment with, to learn a process, to find what works best or give you an idea of a problem you may run into...

Problem in a small batch you may lose some gold.
Problem with a big batch you may have a lot more values involved, or to potentially lose.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Experiments, therefore, will suggest themselves to him from time to
time. If he uses small samples, and works slowly, he will run little risk
of accident and be sure to learn much. Beginners always use too large
samples, which waste time and money, and often by their sheer bulk,
obscure the reaction.

Once you know what you're doing, then it is better to process in larger amounts.

Dave

 

[ShLUbY]

Experiments, therefore, will suggest themselves to him from time to
time. If he uses small samples, and works slowly, he will run little risk
of accident and be sure to learn much. Beginners always use too large
samples, which waste time and money, and often by their sheer bulk,
obscure the reaction.

Once you know what you're doing, then it is better to process in larger amounts.

Dave

Thanks Dave, i'll definitely reconsider my approach to this whole process. This is why I'm just going to save my gold harvest until I am ready to do some reactions, and i'll start slowly, and with smaller amounts to get the feel. Sounds like the 5lbs of sim cards I purchased will be a good thing to experiment with, should yield in the ballpark of about 4.25g... i would think that'd be a good first experiment.

 

[FrugalRefiner]

Don't get your hopes too high. It's better to be pleasantly surprised if you get more than you expected than to be disappointed if you get less.

Dave

 

[ShLUbY]

Don't get your hopes too high. It's better to be pleasantly surprised if you get more than you expected than to be disappointed if you get less.

Dave

this is what i call reality. i live in it haha

 

[escraptech]

Hello to the group I am currently working with 90000+ SIM cards, the old style 32 and 64 KB cards and have had 2 smelters give us the value. One pound of SIM card punch out = 1233 (of these cards.) This is a report from one of the smelters;

The punch out from the prepaid sim cards you guys where working on, is 2.313% Au as it sits in a pail on your shop floor.

I.e. 50 lbs. net x 2.313% net weight = 1.1565 lbs. of gold X 14.583 (converting in to troy ounces) = 16.86 troy ounces of gold in the 50 lbs. pail

Today that’s 16.86 x $1,217.30 = $20,523 gross value (before refining charges etc.) it’s worth $410 dollars a lbs. gross

Hopefully this helps somewhat. I know that is is hard to get the poundage that we got but even 20 lbs would be worth the effort.

 

[Palladium]

You sure that 2% number is right?

 

[escraptech]

Just dropped of 303 pounds yesterday will know in 45 to 60 days what the outcome is. The 2.3% came from 2 different sources and it was only .01 difference between the 2. Keeping my fingers crossed.