Hello - seeking advice!
- Thread starter strangehour
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Some of that vintage stuff can bring in good money if sold as is.
It looks collectable.
It looks collectable.
Please do not try and get PMs out of these museum pieces. If you want to make money just sell them as they are. They will sell for much much more then the resources in it and it's a lot less work.
If you are able to buy the lot then I am interested in buying
The guys are right vintage electronics can have much more value to collectors than any precious metals in them and if you want to acquire precious metals then sell that material and buy gold to hold onto.
strangehour
Active member
Selling
strangehour
Active member
Hello thanks for the response - I have already worked my way through the more valuable pieces - the remaining pieces - besides some of the Apple stuff are not as desirable as they may seem. Trust me I’ve been weeks digging up sold lists and tracking eBay - i have a decent amount of experience doing that atleast. If it’s appropriate I can post the link to my eBay store (will wait for permission on that ) Most of the remaining items are test equipment and 60$ external floppy drives. And I’ve found through discussion with buyers that a lot of the time these items are being bought from me for PM recovery.
strangehour
Active member
Some of it certainly has been. A couple of old Intel computers, hard drives etc. and some of it I still have yet to sell. The majority of what’s left however is simply test equipment - which doesn’t have as much heat in the market as the computers do. I’m more interested in figuring out how to properly estimate the PM content of the 800lbs of vintage circuit boards -
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strangehour
Active member
I suppose I should start a new thread describing exactly what’s going on. lol is there an appropriate place to talk about such a thing ? General discussion perhaps?
The for sale section I guess
Its good that you have sorted before putting in the screwdriver. Did you look into the PCB boards itself? I know that the PCB boards with the IC chips with the gold cap and window fetch more then scrap value. I know this because I am actually looking for them myself
I have had great results processing the vintage HP boards as shown in your IMG_8979 in Acid Peroxide (AP). You'll have to research that term.
1) *Please first remove (and perhaps save) all of the components on the boards (there are several ways to do that).
2) Drill one small thru hole near the edge of each board (slightly larger than 1/4 inch diameter)
3) Buy a few feet of 1/4 inch diameter plastic tubing from the hardware store.
4) String 4 or 5 depopulated boards onto the tubing and tie a loose knot at the end.
5) Soak them in a bucket of HCL for a few days to remove the remaining solder.
6) Lift them out a perform a clean water rinse.
7) Then soak them in your AP bucket for a few days to loosen the gold foils. The green solder mask on the underside will dissolve
8) Continue processing (as detailed here by the moderators).
*Never put the entire populated board in AP - you will produce a serious mess (like I did when I started).
I can attest that the more work you do in advance, the cleaner gold drop you will have and with higher purity in the end.
1) *Please first remove (and perhaps save) all of the components on the boards (there are several ways to do that).
2) Drill one small thru hole near the edge of each board (slightly larger than 1/4 inch diameter)
3) Buy a few feet of 1/4 inch diameter plastic tubing from the hardware store.
4) String 4 or 5 depopulated boards onto the tubing and tie a loose knot at the end.
5) Soak them in a bucket of HCL for a few days to remove the remaining solder.
6) Lift them out a perform a clean water rinse.
7) Then soak them in your AP bucket for a few days to loosen the gold foils. The green solder mask on the underside will dissolve
8) Continue processing (as detailed here by the moderators).
*Never put the entire populated board in AP - you will produce a serious mess (like I did when I started).
I can attest that the more work you do in advance, the cleaner gold drop you will have and with higher purity in the end.
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strangehour
Active member
Yes - my head has been buried in my laptop trying to identify ICs and cpus - crystal diodes - etc etc - it’s been a crash course you could say - I have a collection of gold top cpu - it’s been more difficult figuring out which small DIPs also contain PM that are sandwiched between the ceramic bodies and weighing that value against their collectibility - especially because it’s always in flux - shifting I mean.
I have an offer from someone. To buy the entire lot - I’m just unsure about the price. My gut says it’s too low and my brain says I’d be an idiot to refuse -
Martijn
Well-known member
Unless you have the time to investigate what you have and cherry pick the goodies before selling, along with the knowledge how to process those parts, i would say go for the whole lot sale.
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Is it purely that you think it should be worth more, or is there more substance to it than that?
strangehour
Active member
I have quite a few of them separated out if you are interested. Cheers
it certainly is worth more - that’s why I’m getting the offer from a refiner. He too believes it’s worth atleast double the amount I’m asking or else why would he even bother - my hang up is that it might be worth more than double.
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Do you know he is not a collector as well?
What you could do is trying to put the lot for sale without too much effort and with good images.
Collectors tend to see the value much faster and are willing to take a couple of hours calculating what each item would cost them buying seperately.
Put it up for bidding if that's possible. You can always decline all bids and still sell it as you please.
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Firstly refiners don't necessarily work on doubling their money. That's not a worthwhile assumption to make when valuing this stash. Let's suggest that it's worth 25% more than he is offering you, would that be reasonable given his risk, time, labour and expenses to process?
Secondly what actual data do you have that shows they are worth so much? You've answered that - it's none. So you could potentially be over valuing these boards anyway.
Thirdly- what's a good deal? Making a boat load of easy fast profit and moving onto the next one or getting hung up on someone else making a margin on stuff you've sold (that's already making you a great wedge?)
If the judgement call is based around the perception that someone else will profit well, then that's not a sound call. My call would be to take a good offer that makes you a few thousand dollars, close the deal off and move to the next. Whilst wishing your buyer well, because if you get another batch then you've already got a decent market.
I agree with Jon on this , to get the values from your stash is not easy or fast , if you know the value and the offer is half of that then counter offer at around 75% of value and expect to settle around 65-70%, that leaves a decent margin for your buyer and you with money to buy more.
kurtak
Well-known member
This is all fine & dandy for recovering the gold plating on the board
But what about all the other gold associated with these boards ???
Because these boards have a HIGH population of IC chips as well as other components that contain gold the above process would only recover (plus/minus) about 1/3 of the gold - AND - with 800 lbs of boards this process would take a VERY LONG time - not to mention the HUGE amount of chem waste that would be created in order to recover the (about) 1/3 gold value of these boards
And - that is just looking at the gold value of the boards - it (the AP process) also does nothing to recover the palladium &/or silver values - MOST of which are found inside the components ON the boards - which again the AP process does not recover
So my question is -----------
After doing your suggested process - what do you do to recover the rest of gold associated with these boards as well as the Pd & Ag which value wise is HUGE compared to going after just the gold plating value with the AP process ???
Kurt
