strangehour
Active member
I’ll try and keep the post short into the point but a little backstory might yield credibility so I will go into some detail about it. I was on Facebook marketplace aimlessly looking around as I usually do with my free time when I found an ad for some old testing equipment long story short, but I went over to the 87 year old man’s house he showed me his basement which had been filled with the contents of his work over the last 30 years of his retirement. You had been civilian engineer developing software for the military ordinance deployment simulations is what he called them.
Anyways, he was getting a divorce at 87 years old and needing to move so we struck a deal that if I helped him pack stuff into his pod the driveway I could keep what was left. It took me seven days and $1200 to get everything out of the house into a storage unit. I have since sorted out the contents of the unit organized it to some degree and I’m currently finishing up weighing out the loose circuit boards. As it stands, I can say with high degree of confidence that there is 600lbs of pre 1985 circuit boards (a lot of HP and tektronix - with some military spec as well) that have had heat sinks and transformers removed. I expect once I finish determine which pieces are worth more than their scrap value and add their contents to the 600lb figure I should end up with anywhere between 800-1000lbs.
No wire - no aluminum heat sinks - no transformers.
I’ve had to learn a lot in the past two months in order to determine value. I just recently turned down my first offer for the entire lot. I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly how much this would yield in terms of PM recovery but I sincerely believe there is a lb of gold here.
I’ve come here seeking advice - since I can’t find any definitive information on the yield of this many vintage boards (even the power supplies from this era have gold on them.) I see a lot of figures of between 1-5 oz per ton of modern boards / but what about 800lbs of some of these pictured below.
If you’d like more photos or to discuss further I am all ears. Currently I’m leaning towards processing the boards (removing and organizing components) and trying to sell to a refiner for a percentage of yield - however finding someone to trust with that is very difficult.
This lot is for sale - and I just turned down 7k this morning.
Thanks in advance
Also yes I am aware of some items being more valuable than the PM content - I have mostly dealt with those accordingly already.
Anyways, he was getting a divorce at 87 years old and needing to move so we struck a deal that if I helped him pack stuff into his pod the driveway I could keep what was left. It took me seven days and $1200 to get everything out of the house into a storage unit. I have since sorted out the contents of the unit organized it to some degree and I’m currently finishing up weighing out the loose circuit boards. As it stands, I can say with high degree of confidence that there is 600lbs of pre 1985 circuit boards (a lot of HP and tektronix - with some military spec as well) that have had heat sinks and transformers removed. I expect once I finish determine which pieces are worth more than their scrap value and add their contents to the 600lb figure I should end up with anywhere between 800-1000lbs.
No wire - no aluminum heat sinks - no transformers.
I’ve had to learn a lot in the past two months in order to determine value. I just recently turned down my first offer for the entire lot. I’m having a hard time figuring out exactly how much this would yield in terms of PM recovery but I sincerely believe there is a lb of gold here.
I’ve come here seeking advice - since I can’t find any definitive information on the yield of this many vintage boards (even the power supplies from this era have gold on them.) I see a lot of figures of between 1-5 oz per ton of modern boards / but what about 800lbs of some of these pictured below.
If you’d like more photos or to discuss further I am all ears. Currently I’m leaning towards processing the boards (removing and organizing components) and trying to sell to a refiner for a percentage of yield - however finding someone to trust with that is very difficult.
This lot is for sale - and I just turned down 7k this morning.
Thanks in advance
Also yes I am aware of some items being more valuable than the PM content - I have mostly dealt with those accordingly already.
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