Massive amount of silver in conn 721

[war_child]

LOL! Thanks Rob. I saw this organ sitting on craigslist for over a month. I thought only Hammond organs were worth a scrap. Not until I read your post did I decide to go wrestle this beast. Even after I read your post, and I began tearing this thing down, I didn't recognize the silver bus bars. I thought this organ was NOT containing the silver bus bars you spoke of. I didn't know anything about them, and in all honesty, I may have thrown them away if you had not informed me. Thank you Rob! I'll snap some more pics of the rods and how they are arrayed in the organ. There appears to be 15 of those plastic covered bars inside the organ, under the keys. I haven't checked the pedals yet.

Many Thanks
mike

 

[Alondro]

My only experience is with hammonds really. I did a whirlitzer that had a bunch of gold legged plastic transistors But after learning a bit more I wouldn’t do another. Those little black capped ones don’t hold much AU. Takes thousands to really tally up very well.

I got a bunch of old Hammond boards that had about 200 gold-legged transistors. The older metal-case ones from Texas Instruments, which also have gold INSIDE. They also had these little tuner knobs and other bits which were all silver plated on every single metal part. It gives a fair amount of silver, since the parts are so tiny that the percentage of silver by mass is relatively high compared to large silver plated items. A large surface area per volume always gives much more PM. It's why I like old components made up of lots of tiny bits.

 

[Alondro]

On this note, the boards from a Hammond I got all had these iron ceramic cylinders with pretty hefty copper coils inside that just pop out after gentle heating to melt the adhesive holding the copper in place. I was thinking of a use for the iron ceramics, since they're all the same size and have lots of air space... as sort of a semi-insulating layer and balancer for the bottom of my brick smelting furnace I use for copper and aluminum. I can rest a cast iron plate I have atop them, and make a perfectly flat seat with buffering quartz sand from our nearby sandpit beneath. This way, I can keep it off the ground and prevent heat loss. The air in the hollow spaces of the ceramic cylinders will conduct less heat.

 

[Christian333]

The placard says it's a Model: 552 Type: 001 and this thing is very different from the Hammond I scrapped earlier this year. For one, the Hammond had large ic chips on large boards. This organ has no ic chips anywhere, that I've found so far. The Conn also has mechanically actuated switches connected with cables sheathed in a tube- it reminded me of bicycle hand brakes. There are many switches with steel reeds that have silver contacts on them, but the tiny silver (I'm guessing it's silver) contacts are much smaller than I found on the Hammond. I tried to point them out in the picture.

I got the top half broken down so far; I'll get the lower (back) torn apart tomorrow. Here's some pics of the demo process so far.

The placard says it's a Model: 552 Type: 001 and this thing is very different from the Hammond I scrapped earlier this year. For one, the Hammond had large ic chips on large boards. This organ has no ic chips anywhere, that I've found so far. The Conn also has mechanically actuated switches connected with cables sheathed in a tube- it reminded me of bicycle hand brakes. There are many switches with steel reeds that have silver contacts on them, but the tiny silver (I'm guessing it's silver) contacts are much smaller than I found on the Hammond. I tried to point them out in the picture.

I got the top half broken down so far; I'll get the lower (back) torn apart tomorrow. Here's some pics of the demo process so far.

The placard says it's a Model: 552 Type: 001 and this thing is very different from the Hammond I scrapped earlier this year. For one, the Hammond had large ic chips on large boards. This organ has no ic chips anywhere, that I've found so far. The Conn also has mechanically actuated switches connected with cables sheathed in a tube- it reminded me of bicycle hand brakes. There are many switches with steel reeds that have silver contacts on them, but the tiny silver (I'm guessing it's silver) contacts are much smaller than I found on the Hammond. I tried to point them out in the picture.

I got the top half broken down so far; I'll get the lower (back) torn apart tomorrow. Here's some pics of the demo process so far.

Hope this is a good place to post a bit of component identification. Some capacitors without precious metals have resell value. Some axial mount resistors have gold plated end caps. The orange capsitor arrays may have silver and palladium plated to the ceramic substrate. The T0-92 transistors usually have two gold bond wires, potential for precious metal plated substrate and microchip die braze.

 

[war_child]

Yup, I think it's a great place to post those pics. I bookmark different posts that show specific components to watch for, like tantalum capacitors. I haven't seen any pics like the two you posted of those transistors, or whatever they are, with the gold ends. Looks like I'm going to have to start cracking open components more often.

I got a whole griddle full of those little red "sausages", but I don't see myself selling anything on Ebay. If they have PM's that I can recover, I'll probably hang on to them. If not, they can go to the scrap yard with my low-grade brown boards/power boards, unless someone here wanted them enough to cover shipping. I've seen the long, thin, flat, yellow components on many different boards. I haven't done much research, but I thought them to be worthless. Am I incorrect?

Here is what I salvaged so far. It's 15 rods from the upper portion of the organ. Should I expect any more from the foot pedal area? I may be able to finish tearing it down this weekend. I'll clean it, weigh it & report the findings. I see at least one of these rods suffered a severe zap at some time. Looks like it got melted straight through. I noticed a few of these rods have some kind of pesky, yellow, waxy buildup on them. I don't remember the 70's very well, but I think a little Spick n' Span may get that right off of there

Thanks again for all the help & info. I have to ask: where do you think I could sell this stuff? I'm in the 48044 area code

mike

 

[Rob666]

LOL! Thanks Rob. I saw this organ sitting on craigslist for over a month. I thought only Hammond organs were worth a scrap. Not until I read your post did I decide to go wrestle this beast. Even after I read your post, and I began tearing this thing down, I didn't recognize the silver bus bars. I thought this organ was NOT containing the silver bus bars you spoke of. I didn't know anything about them, and in all honesty, I may have thrown them away if you had not informed me. Thank you Rob! I'll snap some more pics of the rods and how they are arrayed in the organ. There appears to be 15 of those plastic covered bars inside the organ, under the keys. I haven't checked the pedals yet.

Many Thanks
mike

Your very welcome, if you take the plastic off of them you will see that they are indeed silver. I myself started with the Hammonds and really what I was scrapping well before them was old telephone exchanges from motels that were either abandoned or in the process of demolition. There is a wire spring relay that they used a lot in the 60s and 70s I believe mainly the 70s that has palladium and gold contacts. The palladium contacts are sandwiched between gold contacts. When I first scrapped one palladium was $600 an ounce and I calculated that each contact had the equivalent value of 97 cents. So today's prices they would be about 5 bucks a piece. Each switch or relay would have 12 or 24 contacts. So the first one I found was at a abandoned motel. Yes I was pretty much trespassing but what the heck I don't regret it . Would I do that today no I wouldn't but I still don't regret it. Anyway the second one I got was from some construction workers I saw them tearing up another motel so I asked them if I could look around they said yes so I lucked out and sure enough there was a rack with about 40 relays on it so I asked for it and I cashed some in came back the next day with a hundred dollar bill and got the rest after those two switchboards I had successfully sold 19 ounces of palladium from them. I realized also from taking them apart that those parts are like giant erector sets and so I made some cool art from the parts. There used to be a place called the black hole in Los Alamos New mexico that had a lot of Los Alamos laboratory surplus and I went there a couple times before they went out of business and I had got a circuit board that had nothing but gold plated pins on it. I say gold plated because 99% of them are but check this out when I soaked the pins in nitric acid the aftermath was that each pin was still fully there like it was just a soft shell I have never seen anything like it ever and I probably never will. I paid about $1.50 for the board and when I dumped what I had I thought I was rich because of the pile in front of me. Gold is and can be very deceptive at times all my knowledge is from years of disappointment and despair basically except for the rare few good finds like the one im describing here. So when I dried out my pile I had 12 grams of 22 karat gold . When it was wet it was a mountain of gold but dried was a different story. The nitric ate those pins from the inside out and left a perfect shell of the pins. 12 grams from one circuit board is like a dream come true could you imagine if we could find a bunch of those same boards. Anyway I kind of wrote a novel and what I was going to originally say was that yesterday I bought a conn 521 series. dont quote me on that because I may be wrong it was from 1971 anyway. And it was way smaller than the 721 so the busbars were about half the size roughly and I got just a couple grams over 500 grams of silver im going to try to post a picture because I have them in a little treasure chest in 5 baggies that weigh 100 grams a piece it looks really cool and is heavy as hell for a little treasure chest. I'm about to go sell it because my mom lent me the cash to buy the organ. You said that there were 15 busbars. Wow let me know how many grams you get out of it. It looked like a beast the 721 was a beast also the one I did yesterday not so much but there is wire from the pedal that is probably 50 % palladium and 50 % silver. I did an organ a couple years ago that the busbars were just that 50/50 palladium and silver I had got a total of 69 grams but I got ripped off when it came to sell it. I only got $900 for 69 grams of it when palladium was at $2400 an ounce I should of got paid for an ounce of palladium I believe but when there are only a couple of people that actually buy it in scrap form its kind of messed up because they know that they can be a little shady and there's nothing you can do about it because its not enough to send off to a refinery and I don't know how to extract or refine platinum metals but at the end if the day $900 is still a pretty sight when you are basically finding it in the trash

 

[Rob666]

 

[Rob666]

see where it says ag 97.62. That is the purity of the silver

 

[Rob666]

Yup, I think it's a great place to post those pics. I bookmark different posts that show specific components to watch for, like tantalum capacitors. I haven't seen any pics like the two you posted of those transistors, or whatever they are, with the gold ends. Looks like I'm going to have to start cracking open components more often.

I got a whole griddle full of those little red "sausages", but I don't see myself selling anything on Ebay. If they have PM's that I can recover, I'll probably hang on to them. If not, they can go to the scrap yard with my low-grade brown boards/power boards, unless someone here wanted them enough to cover shipping. I've seen the long, thin, flat, yellow components on many different boards. I haven't done much research, but I thought them to be worthless. Am I incorrect?

Here is what I salvaged so far. It's 15 rods from the upper portion of the organ. Should I expect any more from the foot pedal area? I may be able to finish tearing it down this weekend. I'll clean it, weigh it & report the findings. I see at least one of these rods suffered a severe zap at some time. Looks like it got melted straight through. I noticed a few of these rods have some kind of pesky, yellow, waxy buildup on them. I don't remember the 70's very well, but I think a little Spick n' Span may get that right off of there

Thanks again for all the help & info. I have to ask: where do you think I could sell this stuff? I'm in the 48044 area code

mike

Any gold and silver exchange will buy that silver if they run a test on it with a assay gun i believe is the correct term its 97% silver get some dikes or pliers and take the plastic off the rods it comes right off. I have yet to see the vinyl or gold bussbars I read so much about and everybody seems to think its silver plate but it's not

 

[Golddigger76]

I just started tearing down a Conn Tampico Model 619 that looks almost identical to the pictures of the bus bars you posted and there does appear to be some nice silver wires in those long white plastic contact rods, I still need to test to confirm that. Also on mine all of the little needle contacts that have gold plated tips that contact the silver (looking) wire appear to be coated with a black silver oxide coating from the gold plating down to the plastic frame that holds them in place so those might add to the recovered weight. This organ has a huge amount of Switchcraft toggle switches that have several little rectangular palladium contacts, generally on those if the contacts are not round and black colored they will test positive for palladium, the rest are silver contacts. There is tons of large and small IC chips several of the bigger chips with gold plated legs, lots of nice tantalum capacitors. I will try to get some good pictures as I tear it down and maybe some actual recovery amounts from the higher grade component's.
I honestly don't see 25 ounce of silver yet since the wires from the long plastic contact sleeves only weighed 2.068 ounces total. My opinion now is yes that is easy silver if that's silver wires but the Switchcraft toggles are most likely going to hold more value in their palladium contacts but I have not found any way to quickly remove the tiny rectangle contacts without taking the toggle switches apart.

 

[Golddigger76]

Something else to consider is if you search Google shopping for the Switchcraft contacts they have a average cost of $20-$30 each and you might be able to make more money with them and the other components on ebay. All of these parts were made 50 years ago or more and you can possibly get paid for salvage parts.
Refining is only a hobby for me so if it doesn't pay out great ot give me a nice amount of experience I try to not waste my time and money on chemicals.

 

[Christian333]

The placard says it's a Model: 552 Type: 001 and this thing is very different from the Hammond I scrapped earlier this year. For one, the Hammond had large ic chips on large boards. This organ has no ic chips anywhere, that I've found so far. The Conn also has mechanically actuated switches connected with cables sheathed in a tube- it reminded me of bicycle hand brakes. There are many switches with steel reeds that have silver contacts on them, but the tiny silver (I'm guessing it's silver) contacts are much smaller than I found on the Hammond. I tried to point them out in the picture.

I got the top half broken down so far; I'll get the lower (back) torn apart tomorrow. Here's some pics of the demo process so far.

The placard says it's a Model: 552 Type: 001 and this thing is very different from the Hammond I scrapped earlier this year. For one, the Hammond had large ic chips on large boards. This organ has no ic chips anywhere, that I've found so far. The Conn also has mechanically actuated switches connected with cables sheathed in a tube- it reminded me of bicycle hand brakes. There are many switches with steel reeds that have silver contacts on them, but the tiny silver (I'm guessing it's silver) contacts are much smaller than I found on the Hammond. I tried to point them out in the picture.

I got the top half broken down so far; I'll get the lower (back) torn apart tomorrow. Here's some pics of the demo process so far.

The placard says it's a Model: 552 Type: 001 and this thing is very different from the Hammond I scrapped earlier this year. For one, the Hammond had large ic chips on large boards. This organ has no ic chips anywhere, that I've found so far. The Conn also has mechanically actuated switches connected with cables sheathed in a tube- it reminded me of bicycle hand brakes. There are many switches with steel reeds that have silver contacts on them, but the tiny silver (I'm guessing it's silver) contacts are much smaller than I found on the Hammond. I tried to point them out in the picture.

I got the top half broken down so far; I'll get the lower (back) torn apart tomorrow. Here's some pics of the demo process so far.

Hope this is a good place to post a bit of component identification. Some capacitors without precioussmetals have resell value. Some axial mount resistors have gold plated end caps. The orange capsitor arrays may have silver and palladium plated to the ceramic substrate. The T0-92 transistors usually have two gold bond wires, potential for precious metal plated substrate and microchip die braze.

Yup, I think it's a great place to post those pics. I bookmark different posts that show specific components to watch for, like tantalum capacitors. I haven't seen any pics like the two you posted of those transistors, or whatever they are, with the gold ends. Looks like I'm going to have to start cracking open components more often.

I got a whole griddle full of those little red "sausages", but I don't see myself selling anything on Ebay. If they have PM's that I can recover, I'll probably hang on to them. If not, they can go to the scrap yard with my low-grade brown boards/power boards, unless someone here wanted them enough to cover shipping. I've seen the long, thin, flat, yellow components on many different boards. I haven't done much research, but I thought them to be worthless. Am I incorrect?

Here is what I salvaged so far. It's 15 rods from the upper portion of the organ. Should I expect any more from the foot pedal area? I may be able to finish tearing it down this weekend. I'll clean it, weigh it & report the findings. I see at least one of these rods suffered a severe zap at some time. Looks like it got melted straight through. I noticed a few of these rods have some kind of pesky, yellow, waxy buildup on them. I don't remember the 70's very well, but I think a little Spick n' Span may get that right off of there

Thanks again for all the help & info. I have to ask: where do you think I could sell this stuff? I'm in the 48044 area code

mike

The yellow capasitor array has been tested positive for silver by a former member in GEO's group, however he passed away before learning to test for PGMs, no one else has tested them. Expect to find more contacts in the foot peddle assymbly. I don't sell anything, if I can't process it for PMs, it goes to shred. You can try to sell on Facebook Market place.

 

[Golddigger76]

The Conn Tampico 619 that I am working on has only two rows of keys and under them are 4 of the silver buss wires that run the length of the keyboard so it has a total of 8 buss wires, probably why it has way less than Robb666's model 721 organ. In the petals on the 619 there's a little glass reed switch about 1" long that is opened or closed by a magnet on the end of each pedal and 25 pedals, something else that might have some values.

 

[Golddigger76]

 

[Christian333]

View attachment 50381

Reed relays can have gold and or rhodium, even both.

 

[Golddigger76]

I will definitely test the reed relays also to see what they are made of but I'm not sure that I will try to recover any pgm's because only having 25 pieces would not yield enough for me to do right now so they will probably be stashed back until I have enough for a nice size recovery.

 

[Golddigger76]

I did make time to get all of the cards, components and wiring harness out of the Conn 619 today and by the time I was finished I could have sworn that I just got done taking apart a 1960's space shuttle lol. These are very well engineered and complicated machines for the time period they came from. As far as E-scrap goes they are WAY better than any modern computer period. Tomorrow I will try to post some pictures of what I removed from it.
There's not much information out there about what organs are made of and what is available that I could find is mostly right here on this forum. I would not be willing to pay much for one that I was not sure if it had any valuable metals in it but for free haul off I would definitely spend the gas money and my time to find out. There is a massive amount of different components in these that would make it affordable for you to practice and gain experience for a wide range of metal refining so my thoughts are if you find one for free or maybe up to a hundred dollars why not. You are not going to make fists full of cash on probably any of these but they are definitely alright as long as you don't mind putting a ton of work in breaking them down. They usually have anything you can imagine to get some cheap experience when you are first learning how to refine or even for an experienced refiner to learn something new. If anyone does one that is a different brand or model please post about it on the forum to add to the list of organs, I will start doing the same.

 

[Rob666]

View attachment 50374Any gold and silver exchange will buy that silver if they run a test on it with a assay gun i believe is the correct term its 97% silver get some dikes or pliers and take the plastic off the rods it comes right off. I have yet to see the vinyl or gold bussbars I read so much about and everybody seems to think its silver plate but it's not

Yup, I think it's a great place to post those pics. I bookmark different posts that show specific components to watch for, like tantalum capacitors. I haven't seen any pics like the two you posted of those transistors, or whatever they are, with the gold ends. Looks like I'm going to have to start cracking open components more often.

I got a whole griddle full of those little red "sausages", but I don't see myself selling anything on Ebay. If they have PM's that I can recover, I'll probably hang on to them. If not, they can go to the scrap yard with my low-grade brown boards/power boards, unless someone here wanted them enough to cover shipping. I've seen the long, thin, flat, yellow components on many different boards. I haven't done much research, but I thought them to be worthless. Am I incorrect?

Here is what I salvaged so far. It's 15 rods from the upper portion of the organ. Should I expect any more from the foot pedal area? I may be able to finish tearing it down this weekend. I'll clean it, weigh it & report the findings. I see at least one of these rods suffered a severe zap at some time. Looks like it got melted straight through. I noticed a few of these rods have some kind of pesky, yellow, waxy buildup on them. I don't remember the 70's very well, but I think a little Spick n' Span may get that right off of there

Thanks again for all the help & info. I have to ask: where do you think I could sell this stuff? I'm in the 48044 area code

mike

Those look like gold from the wires that contact them has dripped into them probably not enough to make a difference. When I went to sell the latest ones I think I may of got burned because the guy was acting kind of funny he would not let me see the readings from the assay machine as if I had some crazy expensive metal and I was getting bugged by this and I was tired so I wasn't thinking clearly and when he put the nitric on the bars it turned green which is not a good sign but it doesn't really mean much because the assay gun. I don't know if im saying that right from the last ones said 97% and the other 3 % was copper so yes it would turn green but that doesn't mean that it ain't good right because of the other 97% containing silver im no expert though so I could use a little advice here, I know
more than most the average person but I've learned over the years that metals are fascinating and tricky I think they call it fools gold for more than one reason. So anyway where I live this place I took them too has the assay gun which costs like $35,000 and I had borrowed money from my mom to buy the organ and when he tested it and it turned green I knew there was no chance anywhere else would buy it because they rely solely on a chemical test and I had to pay my mom back so I settled for $250 but he wouldn't let me see the readings so now I'm like what the hell and I hadn't realized then but he didn't even weigh what I had. I know from my weighing it that I had a little over 500 grams but what does this sound like to you because I know that places like that who purchase gold and silver dont take risks so it seems that maybe the only thing I can think of is that I had the gold buss bars I read about so much but I hardly doubt that they would make them 10k and places like that dont buy anything less than that so I'm confused. There is no way possible that those are really gold because I got a little over a lb and thats impossible that they would make them like that I don't understand why he wouldn't weigh them though that right there is extremely unbussiness like right

 

[Rob666]

The Conn Tampico 619 that I am working on has only two rows of keys and under them are 4 of the silver buss wires that run the length of the keyboard so it has a total of 8 buss wires, probably why it has way less than Robb666's model 721 organ. In the petals on the 619 there's a little glass reed switch about 1" long that is opened or closed by a magnet on the end of each pedal and 25 pedals, something else that might have some values.

Huh do you have pictures of the wires that is interesting once I had taken apart an organ that had wires that were 50% silver and 50% palladium and I hada total of 69 grams

 

[Rob666]

Huh do you have pictures of the wires that is interesting once I had taken apart an organ that had wires that were 50% silver and 50% palladium and I hada total of 69 grams

I think that it might just be those that I had before. When I did I was taking apart 3 different ones so I don't know which they came out of but 50% palladium and 50% silver ones blow the silver ones away with the price of palladium. When I sold those I was disappointed because I got $900 and I was expecting to at least get the price of 1 ounce of palladium considering I had a little over 2 ounces and only 50% was palladium. It really upsets me when I let myself get taken advantage of like that because it seems to happen a lot and I need to stop taking less when I know the value of what I have but it is sometimes hard to sell that stuff because a refinery has a certain amount that you have to have and nobody wants to take a chance with scrap, they all want bullion or they won't even mess with it and thats what happend there. The guy that bought it knew that I knew nobody else would buy it and thats why he low balled me and I took it because $900 is $900 he could of at least gave me $1000 right