Hi my name its johnny AKA dabber

[itsdabber]

I'm a 19 year old from Albuquerque new Mexico and have always have always been interested recovering gold from circuit boards.

As of now I'm stuck in a debate of processing circuit boards or just selling the circuit boards

Right now I'm just stacking circuit boards and reading as much as I can to debate what I should and shouldn't do.

Thanks to all reading
-Johnny

 

[Yggdrasil]

I'm a 19 year old from Albuquerque new Mexico and have always have always been interested recovering gold from circuit boards.

As of now I'm stuck in a debate of processing circuit boards or just selling the circuit boards

Right now I'm just stacking circuit boards and reading as much as I can to debate what I should and shouldn't do.

Thanks to all reading
-Johnny

Welcome to us.
That mate, is the discussion that most of us have.
Money wise, it is usually the best to sell all boards except the high yield boards.

 

[itsdabber]

Welcome to us.
That mate, is the discussion that most of us have.
Money wise, it is usually the best to sell all boards except the high yield boards.

Ok, mostly motherboards and whatnot?

 

[Yggdrasil]

Ok, mostly motherboards and whatnot?

All ordinary boards will usually pay better when sold.
Some speciality cards, military and and server class boards will be worth saving for later procsessing.
Rams, good CPU's and such too.

If you plan to start processing, search the forum and study these links closely.


1. Read C.M. Hokes book on refining jewelers scrap, it gives an easy introduction to the most important chemistry regarding refining.
It is free here on the forum: Screen Readable Copy of Hoke's Book
2. Then read the safety section of the forum: Safety
3. And then read about "Dealing with waste" in the forum: Dealing with Waste

Suggested reading: The Library

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/gold-refining-forum-rules.31182/

 

[GoIdman]

I'm a 19 year old from Albuquerque new Mexico and have always have always been interested recovering gold from circuit boards.

As of now I'm stuck in a debate of processing circuit boards or just selling the circuit boards

Right now I'm just stacking circuit boards and reading as much as I can to debate what I should and shouldn't do.

Thanks to all reading
-Johnny

Hi, welcome to the forum.

What I do with motherboards is I take off only the flatpacks (mostly 1 or 2 per board northbridge/sothbridge) and sell the rest. I get a little lower price for it (10-15% less than normal) but i compensate with the flatpacks (they yield better).
I do the same with graphic slot cards exception that on some cards I leave the fingers on since some of it is ENIG and not worth the effort and look better when sold.
If you have the chance, IMHO start looking and buying RAM sticks, since they take less space and you can stack a large quantity in relative small place, and either process it or resell it for higher price (value stays with you in time even if not processed). RAM sticks are my failsafe backup, I stack them in case something goes wrong, i mess up an investment or buy someting overvalued and I need a quick buck to balance, they sell like hot cake for a very good price.

My opinion is:
1) Calculate the price of your parchase accordingly: The time needed to recover and refine the values (how much time you invest to gain the valuables versus how much money you could earn in the same period of time), the materials needed to recover and refine the values (acids labware, equipment in genera, water, electricity, gas etc), calculate an amortization time for your equipment (time period that you have to change your equipment), leave a 15% margin for unexpected surprises (anything that could go wrong, etc.).
Example, just for the sake of the description: Ebay auction sells 4 lbs of close cut fingers for 300USD (expected very optimistic yield 10gr 24k gold). If you need 4 weeks to process 4 lbs of fingers with AP ( 10 hours to refine and melt to button), you use 1 gal. of muriatic for 10USD, 1oz of hydrogene peroxide (from a 64 oz worth 23USD) worth 0.34USD, Bubbler, 2x3 gal plastic bucket for 10 USD, beakers and other ustensils approx. 30 USD amortization, electricity/gas/water bill approx. 100 USD, +15% margin of the value of 10gr of gold (67USD). Not everything is mentioned but you`ll get the idea. So you have reached an input of 300 +10+0.34+10+30+100+72.5+67 (10x minimum wage/hour) you`ll end up with a 10gr of gold button for 589.84 USD whereas a 10gr Perth mint bar at APMEX is 670.76 USD. You have a "profit" of 80.92 USD on this purchase. IF the same auction would be 600USD you`ll end up with a loss of 219.08USD.

2) Know what you are buying and the real value of it!

3)Choose a maximum of 3-4 tipes of material and learn to be an expert in recovering and recycling that material! Its better to be an expert in 1-2 things than be average in many things!

4)Diversify your sources of purchase of materials: Start searching for scrapyard workers (they would help you if they find some interesting stuff for a little extra income), garage sales, flea markets, and so on, you`ll get the idea. Don`t be dependent of one source for your material.

5)Before any recovery and refining operation, make sure you`ll posess all the knowledge and you have all the necessary PPE and other safety equipment to safely reach the final goal of melting your button without poisoning yourself and half of the neighbourhood.

6)It could sound harsh but the graveyard is full of peaople who said "i`m cautios, that can`t happen to me/with me"... Allow time to yourself to learn and build up a healthy hobby/businees before attempting anything. You`ll get this wrong only once, and probably won`t have the chance to do it again!

The more you learn the more you will see that this e-waste recovery and refining univers is bigger and more complex than a youtube video will show you! Rome wasn`t buit in a day, why would you do it in less?

I hope this information helps you in some extent.

Be patient with youself, learn and ask questions if you don`t understand something (processes, definition etc.), read Hoke`s book, be safe on your journey.

Pete

 

[itsdabber]

Hi, welcome to the forum.

What I do with motherboards is I take off only the flatpacks (mostly 1 or 2 per board northbridge/sothbridge) and sell the rest. I get a little lower price for it (10-15% less than normal) but i compensate with the flatpacks (they yield better).
I do the same with graphic slot cards exception that on some cards I leave the fingers on since some of it is ENIG and not worth the effort and look better when sold.
If you have the chance, IMHO start looking and buying RAM sticks, since they take less space and you can stack a large quantity in relative small place, and either process it or resell it for higher price (value stays with you in time even if not processed). RAM sticks are my failsafe backup, I stack them in case something goes wrong, i mess up an investment or buy someting overvalued and I need a quick buck to balance, they sell like hot cake for a very good price.

My opinion is:
1) Calculate the price of your parchase accordingly: The time needed to recover and refine the values (how much time you invest to gain the valuables versus how much money you could earn in the same period of time), the materials needed to recover and refine the values (acids labware, equipment in genera, water, electricity, gas etc), calculate an amortization time for your equipment (time period that you have to change your equipment), leave a 15% margin for unexpected surprises (anything that could go wrong, etc.).
Example, just for the sake of the description: Ebay auction sells 4 lbs of close cut fingers for 300USD (expected very optimistic yield 10gr 24k gold). If you need 4 weeks to process 4 lbs of fingers with AP ( 10 hours to refine and melt to button), you use 1 gal. of muriatic for 10USD, 1oz of hydrogene peroxide (from a 64 oz worth 23USD) worth 0.34USD, Bubbler, 2x3 gal plastic bucket for 10 USD, beakers and other ustensils approx. 30 USD amortization, electricity/gas/water bill approx. 100 USD, +15% margin of the value of 10gr of gold (67USD). Not everything is mentioned but you`ll get the idea. So you have reached an input of 300 +10+0.34+10+30+100+72.5+67 (10x minimum wage/hour) you`ll end up with a 10gr of gold button for 589.84 USD whereas a 10gr Perth mint bar at APMEX is 670.76 USD. You have a "profit" of 80.92 USD on this purchase. IF the same auction would be 600USD you`ll end up with a loss of 219.08USD.

2) Know what you are buying and the real value of it!

3)Choose a maximum of 3-4 tipes of material and learn to be an expert in recovering and recycling that material! Its better to be an expert in 1-2 things than be average in many things!

4)Diversify your sources of purchase of materials: Start searching for scrapyard workers (they would help you if they find some interesting stuff for a little extra income), garage sales, flea markets, and so on, you`ll get the idea. Don`t be dependent of one source for your material.

5)Before any recovery and refining operation, make sure you`ll posess all the knowledge and you have all the necessary PPE and other safety equipment to safely reach the final goal of melting your button without poisoning yourself and half of the neighbourhood.

6)It could sound harsh but the graveyard is full of peaople who said "i`m cautios, that can`t happen to me/with me"... Allow time to yourself to learn and build up a healthy hobby/businees before attempting anything. You`ll get this wrong only once, and probably won`t have the chance to do it again!

The more you learn the more you will see that this e-waste recovery and refining univers is bigger and more complex than a youtube video will show you! Rome wasn`t buit in a day, why would you do it in less?

I hope this information helps you in some extent.

Be patient with youself, learn and ask questions if you don`t understand something (processes, definition etc.), read Hoke`s book, be safe on your journey.

Pete

Thank you pete I really appreciate it ill definitely take everything you said into consideration! Great idea with the ram sticks as well! Do you collect cpu chips as well?

 

[GoIdman]

Yes, I do collect cpu',s mostly the ceramics, those I save for myself, the rest of it (green fibers, brown fibers, black fibers, with copper heatsink) I just stack and resell for a bit of profit ( i buy them dirt cheap and resell for double price, so that i lower or eliminate the purchase price of my other items). I do buy boards sometimes, but my suppliers go after the easy money and they supply me with mostly RAM and CPU's. They get me some weid stuff too from time to time wich I buy from them just to keep them going.
This works for me, no headake, no waste. I have fixed a stock target for myself and when I reach that target I process 30% of the stock, the rest is sitting for easy sale in case I need cash.
I did however gather a nice collection of ceramic CPU' from Intel to TESLA.

 

[itsdabber]

Yes, I do collect cpu',s mostly the ceramics, those I save for myself, the rest of it (green fibers, brown fibers, black fibers, with copper heatsink) I just stack and resell for a bit of profit ( i buy them dirt cheap and resell for double price, so that i lower or eliminate the purchase price of my other items). I do buy boards sometimes, but my suppliers go after the easy money and they supply me with mostly RAM and CPU's. They get me some weid stuff too from time to time wich I buy from them just to keep them going.
This works for me, no headake, no waste. I have fixed a stock target for myself and when I reach that target I process 30% of the stock, the rest is sitting for easy sale in case I need cash.
I did however gather a nice collection of ceramic CPU' from Intel to TESLA

Ok, interesting i recently bought about 5 pounds of ceramic cpu chips and will probably keep them myself. I was considering selling this 386/486 stack to boardsort before I considered refining them myself. What do you consider a comfortable amount of cpu chips if you dont mind me asking. I have probably another 20 cpus to scrap. I wont be doing anything till i read hokes book.

(Although im very eager to try)

 

[GoIdman]

Ok, interesting i recently bought about 5 pounds of ceramic cpu chips and will probably keep them myself. I was considering selling this 386/486 stack to boardsort before I considered refining them myself. What do you consider a comfortable amount of cpu chips if you dont mind me asking. I have probably another 20 cpus to scrap. I wont be doing anything till i read hokes book.

(Although im very eager to try)

Those are high yield cpus, keep the valuables to yourself, you can always sell to boardsort for quick cash if you have to, only sell middle and low grade stuff to recover cash and reinvest in quality stuff.
Don't rush to recover and refine, some stuff is more valuable as it is.
Don't forget that some cpu's or as that matter som slot cards or boards have also collectable value, always check and separate rare stuff from the pack.
Research is always a part of this project, and you will be surprised some stuff is highly collectable.

Pete.

 

[nickvc]

I gather that most ceramic cpus sell for more as collectibles than you can recover from refining in some cases by a considerable amount so you could sell and buy karat scrap if you want easy material to refine.

 

[Goldwasser]

What I do with motherboards is I take off only the flatpacks (mostly 1 or 2 per board northbridge/sothbridge) and sell the rest. I get a little lower price for it (10-15% less than normal) but i compensate with the flatpacks (they yield better).

Just be careful when doing this by checking with your buyer first to see what the price ramifications are before harvesting bgas and flatpacks. Most buyers are going to downgrade harvested boards much more than 15% suggested here. Goldman's situation (not doubting, just observing) is not common for the majority of buyers that I know of. For instance, at boardsort we only pay $0.40 per pound for motherboards that have had flatpacks and bgas pulled.

So make sure you do the math if you are looking for the most profit, or at least to avoid losing money in shipping costs selling harvest boards.

Just an friendly heads up for a person who may just be getting into this.

 

[GoIdman]

Just be careful when doing this by checking with your buyer first to see what the price ramifications are before harvesting bgas and flatpacks. Most buyers are going to downgrade harvested boards much more than 15% suggested here. Goldman's situation (not doubting, just observing) is not common for the majority of buyers that I know of. For instance, at boardsort we only pay $0.40 per pound for motherboards that have had flatpacks and bgas pulled.

So make sure you do the math if you are looking for the most profit, or at least to avoid losing money in shipping costs selling harvest boards.

Just an friendly heads up for a person who may just be getting into this.

You are correct, older motherboards have more valuable stuff beside the flatpacks, those are the ones sold for cash, the modern motherboards I resell for almost nothing (as you wrote 0.40 usd) just to get rid of the ballast. Some boards are just not worth chasing after.

Pete

 

[patnor1011]

Just be careful when doing this by checking with your buyer first to see what the price ramifications are before harvesting bgas and flatpacks. Most buyers are going to downgrade harvested boards much more than 15% suggested here. Goldman's situation (not doubting, just observing) is not common for the majority of buyers that I know of. For instance, at boardsort we only pay $0.40 per pound for motherboards that have had flatpacks and bgas pulled.

So make sure you do the math if you are looking for the most profit, or at least to avoid losing money in shipping costs selling harvest boards.

Just an friendly heads up for a person who may just be getting into this.

Hi,
I am just curious and perhaps you can help me to find answer to something I was thinking about. I am fairly convinced there is a difference between desktop and laptop ram yield. I did not run any test other than visual observation but to me it seems that laptop ram must be more valuable than desktop one. While there is bit more plating on fingers of destop ram which is longer there is nearly identical number of IC chips on both. I think that there is more gold in IC chips on ram than what we get from fingers therefore laptop ram seems to be more valuable than desktop one simply because of size difference since laptop one is usually thinner and about one third of size of desktop ram. I may not be correct but this is what simple visual observation leads me to think about. Can you perhaps add something to this or correct me if I am wrong thinking that laptop ram may be at least 2x more of desktop ram in terms of value which it holds?

 

[Goldwasser]

Can you perhaps add something to this or correct me if I am wrong thinking that laptop ram may be at least 2x more of desktop ram in terms of value which it holds?

That is a very interesting question, one that I do not know the answer to. I can only offer you my opinion as we have never segregated our RAM beyond gold shielded/unshielded and silver.

Having said that, I not sure there is much of a difference, certainly not 2x. After reading your reply, I grabbed a micrometer and sampled a hand full of various RAM sticks. I found that they were all around 1.2 mm in thickness with a variance that would seem negligible in terms of how it would affect the returns. Any subtle differences in thickness could be lost in the noise.

The fingers on a laptop stick are definitely different. It seems some desktop and laptop RAM of the same DDR type have the same amount of "pins" (fingers) but the pins per mm on laptop appear to be more. The pins (fingers) are smaller, but the gap between them is smaller as well. Just a casual observation with no measurements or counts made. That could potentially influence the outcome but I'm not convinced it would be much, and again, the noise level is high when we deal with larger volumes.

The noise I speak of is created by other variables that carry much more weight in terms of moving the value needle. Double sided ram? Chip count? DDR2? 3? 5? Server? Desktop? Are we considering all values? Cu, Au, Ag, Pd? Do the sticks have an abundance of SMD capacitors?

With so many variables you would need to super sort the material to such an extreme that any additional gain would be met with a much greater loss in the way of time and effort. At $23 per pound, we cannot afford to let it sit for long so we wouldn't have the opportunity to find out unfortunately.