I went to the scrap yard today and pulled 5 boards with lots of gold plated pins. Three were appox 6" X 14" and two were approx 12" X 14". All had about half of the board populated with pins. The downside is that they all had heavy female connectors on the other side and the man at checkout wanted 20$ per pound!!! Considering the 5 boards weighed 12 lbs I declined and left them at checkout. Unless they were super thick plated I had estimated less than 2 grams yield (uneducted guess) for all of them. Did I do the right thing? The checkout man insisted he could get that price from a refiner when gold was a lot cheaper and wouldn't budge off the 20$/lb. I saw an '81 date stamp on the boards and left out in the elements they had fair moisture saturation.
Junkyard disappointment
- Thread starter Duxthe1
- Start date
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Some of the junk yard guys think everything they have is worth 3 times what it really is, especially if you want it. I ran into a guy awhile back that declined a $1000 per pound offer on some telecom boards, (I wouldn't have paid him that, but I could tell that he thought they must be worth a lot and wasn't going to sell them to me at any price) he probably still has them, waiting for someone to give him $1000 a pound for them. :|
element47
Well-known member
Senor Junkyard probably did you a favor. What you SHOULD have done is to ask him if he would therefore BUY such boards for $10 a lb from YOU! LOL.
I don't think you can buy stuff that way, I really don't. The theory of junkyards is that at best, only 1/4 of what they have is salable at a price that exceeds their costs. Therefore, all profits must be loaded onto what is good and the rest is glud. To put it another way, if you wish to buy "trash" and turn it into "gold", once that trash is in the hands of another who wishes also to turn trash into gold and who is probably 17,000 times as experienced as you are, your odds go way down.
By the way, to answer your question, IMHO yes, you did exactly, precisely the right thing leaving them there, and if anything your 2 gram yield estimate is probably a tad generous and maybe double generous.
I don't think you can buy stuff that way, I really don't. The theory of junkyards is that at best, only 1/4 of what they have is salable at a price that exceeds their costs. Therefore, all profits must be loaded onto what is good and the rest is glud. To put it another way, if you wish to buy "trash" and turn it into "gold", once that trash is in the hands of another who wishes also to turn trash into gold and who is probably 17,000 times as experienced as you are, your odds go way down.
By the way, to answer your question, IMHO yes, you did exactly, precisely the right thing leaving them there, and if anything your 2 gram yield estimate is probably a tad generous and maybe double generous.
What kind of boards do you look for in junk yards im not trying to cut in on any of your junk yards i live in northeast oklahoma so don''t worry about that. Im just new to all of this and have tons of salvage yards and scrap yards around me.
The yard I frequent usually has consignments of metal scraps from fab shops and the like but there was a bin of e-scrap that I found the boards in. Had 1/2 hr in getting them free. Still bummed about having to leave them there but thanks for confirming that I did the right thing.
