niks neims said:
What is your plan of action if you show up with a ton of already depopulated boards and they refuse you at the gate, what do you think you'll get from next best buyer? Ask around - that is your real cost of risk... You'll be out $7000 for the material, you'll have your stash of about 10-15 kg of BGAs (hopefully rather high yielding, from older, large socket MB - best case scenario about 5.5g Au/Kg, so about $2000-$3000.... I never got that good of a yield, though) but what do you think you will get for the pile of partly depopulated large socket motherboards from other buyer? I, myself, would not feel comfortable paying much more than $0.5/kg for computer boards of unknown quality that have been messed with in any way - bottom of the barrel brown board price, in other words.... Now to manually depopulate 2000 motherboards (pick of BGAs) it will take you at least 50-70 man hours, what's your labor costs? Any way you add this up you stand to lose much more than $900 if they suddenly refuse to buy...
I think, you tend to see glass half empty.
Of course the right approach would be to find another buyer. If I have found one, there is no reason to believe that another one would not turn in.
But lets say that all buyers go on strike and refuse to pay full price for BGA-free motherboards.
In such situation, I believe, someone would pay 20-30% less.
They still have a look at each board by hand (albeit rather fast). At least my buyer or rather his sorter does.
But lets assume that noone have turned in.
Then I would strip all remaining chips to double gold recovery, also strip pin bearing sockets with a sort of small pneumatic hammer. Also recover MLCC in the same way.
These pin bearing sockets sell well on auctions so a lazy guy don't even need to piddle with separation of pins. Many buyers pay much more than gold content is worth.
Gold fever on ebay is hilarious.
I observe what is sold there and elsewhere and for how much.
I have designed and tested ridiculously good deals on ebay while dealing with mobile phone scrap.
Actually so good and yet absurd somehow, that I will not disclose details publicly not to make competition to myself.
There is no way that I would fail to turn profit or at least get my money back, even if my main buyer refused a deal and no other one was found, albeit at the cost of considerable labor.
In any case I have a plenty of time to waste and I love to destroy electronic devices so this wasted labor is not of a great concern.
In fact, currently, I am in the middle of the negotiations with a member of this very forum that hopefully will attempt to have a go at refining some lots of small-socket motherboards for me, if the deal goes well, I will be more than happy to recommend him to you (with his permission). I really do feel there is a business opportunity right now for a middle-to-small size (still, professional scale, of course) e-scrap refiner - the insane charges and fees of larger guys really rubbed me the wrong way
Always good to know someone who can do something useful
As for longer term business opportunity, I have my doubts.
If it ever became feasible for a small guy to successfully compete with *the faceless*, he will soon enough find regulatory burden growing.
There will be ever increasing reporting requirements, necessity to secure ever expanding catalogue of permits, demands to invest in safe zones around his business due to enviromental concerns declared at a whim, requirements to account for PM for tax reasons (and this would call for verifiable assays of his small few hundred kg lots, $500 a go etc).
Small guy will make small money for few years before he becomes tedious for bigger men and then he will either go out of business or go out of social structures widely known as the West, European Union, United States, OECD etc.
Small guy has no business there. Free market here is an illusion and "democracy" becomes to be a joke.
