I broke down and actually paid for some cell phones

[cyberdan]

Up till now I had always gotten my e-waste for free. But, I was at a yard sale last saturday and this guy had a big box of older cell phones. I asked how much for all and he said $100, I immediatly came back with $35. I don't know why cause I really didn't want to pay anything. I tried to lift the box and with my bad back I knew it was too heavy and didn't want to take a chance. He tried to get me to go a little higher so I acted uninterested and started looking at other things he had and he said OK on $35 and he put the box in my car.

I got home and counted them. It seemed like more because of the weight but there were 147 phones. 95% were the older non-flip ones.

I sold the last batch of phone boards on ebay for $80 (53 phones) so I figuer I will split this into three auctions. Now all I have to do is tear them all down.

 

[Anonymous]

How much gold is in cell phones? Is it worth going after? Do you have to cyanide strip or can the pieces be melted as is?

 

[texan]

I have less than 25 cents apiece in my cache of about 10k cell phones....If I can't buy them for close to that I walk. Every type of phone is a crap shoot until I break one down and see how it's put together.....the "golden" age of phone I look for is up to about 2004 or so.

As far as processing goes look at some of my posts and you will get an idea of what to do as well as what is inside of some of the chips. I use the AP process. I have been learning the chemistry of this hobby for about a year and have been doing small beaker size amounts until I get the process down. I am just now starting to ramp up to larger/faster amounts. I am married, doing 2 careers and a couple of other hobbies so my time has been limited somewhat. Of course the more gold I show my wife the more cooperation I get...funny how that works out.

Texan