My shipment to a refiner

[pcscrapper]

Just curious to find out what the value of these items, Now the memory stick didn't have any chips on them some may have some but lets exclude that, the modems boards are out of cable modems, and of course cdrom boards

what would the actual value be on these boards perhaps just the memory.

Your input is greatly apprecitated.


I’ve 414lbs of memory boards or unpoplated gold plated boards,

I’ve 497lbs of modem boards

I’ve 83lbs of cdrom boards,

If you need pictures of the modem boards I belive I’ve them, Let me know scott thanks.. in advance

 

[Smack]

If you've shipped it to a refiner like the title suggests then time will tell what the value is.

 

[niteliteone]

If you net over $200 after ALL expenses are deducted,(ie. cost of material +shipping +processing...) then you have done a lot better than I would have paid for that mix of low grade scrap.
Here in California, blank or unpopulated PC boards are considered Breakage that runs from $0.03 to $0.08 per pound with the gold plated in the higher limits.
All electronic waste is sent out of state for processing /recovery so the prices are lower than average

 

[rickbb]

Check the various web sites for buyers, several members here work for them and buy stuff. I use one that pays quite well for most of what you have.

 

[pcscrapper]

ok, I want to say thanks in advance for the replies but I'm missing something here, when I added up the price of what I could of gotten by selling out right it would of been close to 7 g, so I figure If I would to send it the blank memory boards reject that is that has silver/tin and under the contact area where the chips goes are gold plated and the fingers are gold plated, On the unpopulated boards, there is gold with in each inch of the board, and double sided,

along with that, there were CPU fibers boards minus the copper and the pins, and there were about 30lbs of ceramic eproms,

and of course there were cdrom boards, and modem boards highspeed modem boards that I could of sold to a company for 2.50 a pound, and the cdrom boards were going for 6 dollars a pound and the unpopulated gold plated boards would of gone for 8.00 per pound and memory board which has gold on both sides and silver/tin on both side would of gotten 11.00 per pound so basically close to 7 g, I got less then 4 grand,

My theory is that they took it and mixed it all together, and did the assay on it, and mixing the high grade boards with the low grade boards you're goning to get mostly low grade,

its like one pound of flour and half pound of salt you gonna git more flour then salt,

some of the ram had chips on them to as they didn't remove all the chip I can't caculate the mount of ram chips on them but i would say at lest 20lbs of them had em,

I basially lost on this deal, and I've yet to hear from my point of contact but did call the company and they will review it in the lab the whole bar and let me know monday,

any suggestion or anyone prefer a company that has good communication,

I also asked for My slag back and a full accountablity No slag, and no full accountablity.

Missing platinum out of the refine.

any input would be greatly appreacitated in advance and I do have photos of all the stuff that I sent up. Thanks in adance

 

[johnboyrox]

Did they call it a "shred and sample"? I recently sold a load to a refiner and their shred and sample process didn't pay off as well as I know it should have. I had a large load of motherboards. The vast majority of these boards were older multi-processor boards I had been cherry picking for better than a year. I had very good yield data on what I dropped off from previous endeavors. When I finally got paid, I got within a few cents on the dollar of the price that someone else offered to pay for them outright..."Shred and Sample" my rear-end. I think the reality of it all is that when they say they are refining these small (to them) batches, they aren't. They are just guess-timating. I think the stuff I was hoping to get refined state-side and keep the values in america, probably got sold out of country.

I am not arguing with them about their method. I just won't use them anymore.

 

[yar]

Did either one of you have your materials represented by someone ? Shipping material blind to a refiner leaves you open for them to do what they want and to pay what they want.

 

[pcscrapper]

am looking for somone on my next batch to represent Me,

I was told by the company that Its ok to toss in my processor into my motherboards and I said BS.

that will just bring down the value of my cpu to little to none.

so I'm thinking they think I'm just stupid,

I've pictures of what I sent and if someone could just give me a round about what I sent doesn't has to be close just about figure that would be great

also if You've someone that represent and has a track record of representing company would be interested in discussing the possiblity of having them on board Thanks in advance

 

[CBentre]

Just curious to find out what the value of these items, Now the memory stick didn't have any chips on them some may have some but lets exclude that, the modems boards are out of cable modems, and of course cdrom boards

what would the actual value be on these boards perhaps just the memory.

Your input is greatly apprecitated.


I’ve 414lbs of memory boards or unpoplated gold plated boards,

I’ve 497lbs of modem boards

I’ve 83lbs of cdrom boards,

If you need pictures of the modem boards I belive I’ve them, Let me know scott thanks.. in advance

Just curious on how you were able to get a refinery to process 1100lbs of boards? I've asked on this forum on more then one occasion for a company that would refine boards and the best answer was minimum of 20,000-30,000lbs lots. I also had a company I was dealing with offer to do it on 3000lbs lots but when it came time they refused to acknowledge it and then I made myself refuse to send them anymore. Am i missing something here. Thanks for your time...

 

[CBentre]

Ok never mind the last comment, just read your other post and I see who you sent your materials to thanks.

 

[johnny309]

Is a fact of the thinking.....everybody have internet....a ton of board contain...X gold..Y silver.......they want the same amount for the refiner,regardless the work,the costs...and they want the money fast.....
So...if you have 2 pounds of pins...sell those on E-Bay.....because nobody can hold 5 Tons in his backyard....2 times per month....
The middle man have to make money....if "HE" or "SHE" was not on the market.....everybody will still throw the boards on landfill.....
They are doing some money and everybody else....includind those with ...."I have a computer,how can I get the gold out?".....
If somebody misunderstood what I say....please PM me...no need to polute this forum.....

 

[pcscrapper]

Bottom line is that, there a few issues I've in place.,

one of the issues is this, these are ram boards, mostly without chips, but high grade ram board with gold fingers and gold plating on the contact where the chips go, they are reject boards, so ontop of those chips are silver/tin solder,

on the other part of boards that I've sent in are unpopulated boards with fingers, and gold plated, no silver just pure boards,

Modem boards from high speed internet has gold plating on the connectors and usb connectors and on the board has no metal, and gold outline tracing, and plenty of ic chips.

now cdrom boards has lots of chips on them, and if they are newer they will have more silver / tin solder then the old days lead solder,

along in that batch of highgrade boards I've included, Green CPU Fibers without the heatsink, and pins, and also IC ceramic chips with gold fingers,

its really hard to see that they only got 2 3/4 oz of gold out all of this, and only 0.18oz of palidum, no platinum, and silver I have to check it was like 130oz and copper was close to 200lbs,

the numbers just don't add up, and at the begining I asked for a full accountablity of everything and also asked for My slag back,

When I got the settlment report, I called the compant as I was kinda concerned about the value that they placed on this, and I asked them about My slag and they said, we were not informed that you wanted your slag back, and I then asked them, well where is it, and they said they don't have it, I informed them to check the email that I orignally sent and in that email it does states full accoutablilty and request slag back, all of sudden the company stated oh.. We've it on hold, another flag,

When I talked to my point of contact during the process I'm asked him a dumb question but inteligent question in my mind, I wanted to see if he would be honest, and he informed Me yes do by all mean toss your processors in with the motherboards, and I'm like I'm not that stupid, if you toss your processors in the boards, and they grind it mill it and so forth, lets say you've 4000lbs of boards and only 200lbs of processors what are you going to get most of... boards in the sample...

so the way they are doing sample is not the correct way, They should do sample base on product, processors sample it, motherboards sample it, modem boards sample it, ram boards sample it and so forth, yes its a bit more work but in the long run it will show the pure number

simply put, if you take a pound of flour and a half pound of salt what are you going to get out of that 8% sample... FLOUR. mostly.

thats where the break down.

now they have the whole ingot ... they out of break it down from there and pay out based on what they get out of that ingot, or bar, not sample. sample is the wrong way of doing it,

to wait 40 to 50 days to get a test result base on sample just doesn't pay out,

I'm fighting this, and I've picture and all of my items were all seperate, they should of taken my material better care of, and called me if they had any question, I've learned alot...

the other flag I had was They informed Me that I could not witness the sampling of my item, I felt that kind of odd, if they can sample it why can't I witness the sampling of it,

I've again learned a great deal and I'll continue to fight this, and I've seen other settlement and they got paid more for motherboards, and less poundage then I got paid for more weight and more high grade.

I'm looking for someone that be willing to assay the sample that they have sent Me, Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks to all those input,

and lastly... I will no longer deal with the company as I feel that they tend to mislead people, and to throw out the word too bad its what it's I say BS.

We all work hard for our money, taking the time to pack it, ship it, and to buy it from the customers basically I've lost money on this deal. I could of made more money selling it to a third party then to do it myself.

I'll from now on this day forward will use a thirdparty to represent my materials. so those that do this kind of work Please send me a private mesg. thanks.

 

[Smack]

Everything looks right to me but the silver. I didn't get to look at your material but I would think there should be 4 to 7 oz. there in Ag. If you want to make money, stop paying for your material unless it has all been taken down and sorted, cleaned and ready to go to the refinery. I pay for very little of the volume that comes in my shop.

 

[g_axelsson]

simply put, if you take a pound of flour and a half pound of salt what are you going to get out of that 8% sample... FLOUR. mostly.

I'm sorry for you if the refiner isn't treating you fair, but in one part they are right and your logic is faulty.

If you mix 1 pound of flour and 1/2 pound of salt and then take a small sample you naturally get mostly flour. More exactly 67%. But if the sample is well mixed and homogenous then it will show that in the mixture there is 67% of 1.5 pound of flour = 1 pound and 33% of 1.5 pound of salt = 1/2 pound of salt.
In the same way, if you toss your ram boards and processors with the motherboards it is still the same amount of gold. If a representative sample were taken (a good description is somewhere on the forum) it should show the total amount of gold in the lot. Of course it will contain mostly motherboards as that was the main part of the lot.
No amount of sorting will ever create more gold in your scrap.

If a refiner use the same process for memory sticks, processors and circuit boards then there is no reason to sort the material and you could just as well mix it in from the beginning.

Now, the main question is, did they take a proper representative sample from your lot and analyzed it or just eyeballed it and cheated you out of some of your precious metals. In that part I don't know anything. That is the reason that you should be at the site or send an independant representative to oversee the sampling and also keep a sample for your self if there is a dispute.

Göran

 

[eastky]

I have a depopulated stick of memory so I did some math for you.

My stick had 8 chips measures 5 and a quarter inches long and about 1 and a quarter inches wide. It has the gold plated flash pads on one side and the gold fingers. The gold is not very thick on the plated pads. The real gold is in the fingers.

Understand the whole memory stick isn't heavy plated just the fingers get a good plating of gold. If any of the memory had chips soldered to them then the chips removed there is a lot of weight in that solder. If the had chips on them and you cut them off leaving the legs of the chips on the board that is added weight and you yield of gold will go down quickly.

I weighed my stick of memory and then I cut off the fingers and weighed them. The stick weighed 11.7 grams with fingers.
I cut the fingers off and the fingers weighed 1.1 grams.

You stated you had 414 pounds of memory sticks my figures would be 38.717 sticks per pound times 414 = 16029 sticks of memory.

Just figuring the weight of the fingers in that amount of sticks it would take 411 sticks to get 1 pound of fingers with little to no green on them. That 16029 sticks of memory would give you 39 pounds of fingers.

Figuring 1.5 grams of gold per pound that would give you 58.5 grams of gold at $40.00 per gram equals $2340.00

I haven't messed with cd rom boards but I can say that including them in a lot of memory sticks would make your gold yield drop :shock: VERY :shock: quickly. I look at a cd rom board as being equal to a low quality board out of a small printer or fax machine. The board serves it purpose without being a component that will have a lot of precious metals involved.

You say you got close to 4 grand out of your lot I don't see where you did all that bad. What were the fees you paid and what was the percentages of the spot price they paid you on your metals recovered.

Everybody and their brother has gotten into the gold from computer idea. Just because someone is paying $10.00 a pound for memory doesn't mean it is feasibly to do so. The bigger a company is the lower the profit margin can be.

Don't be blinded by what other people are paying for scrap.

 

[Anonymous]

Eastky thank you. You worded what I was trying to say perfectly. I would not have been articulate enough to say it as well as that.

OP move on, based on the information you've given you did ok. If your RAM was all populated than it would be a different discussion but I've seen no pics so it's all theoretical.

Jon

 

[pcscrapper]

I do have picture of these ram boards, there is also, along with the shipment like I said, about 30lbs of processors without the heatsink and pins, and also, about 20lbs of gold ic ceramic chips, and about 100lbs of the gold plated boards, that was in the mix of the ram, I will get some of the picture that I took before I shipped up on the site, so You can see what They look like, this is the exact amount of each item that was shipped

10014lbs of upopulated gold plated boards, will provide pics,
35lbs modems board high grade
39lbs "
51lbs"
40lbs'
54lbs"
49lbs"
41lbs"
50lbs"
40lbs"
52lbs"
44lbs of cdrom boards
39lbs of cdrom boards
62lbs of High Grade memory boards with gold pads,
62"
62"
62"
66"
20" of gold leg ic ceramic chips
30" of cpu green fiber boards without heatsink and pins.
for a total of 1044lbs
It ws shipped to them, they came back with a total weight of 963lbs
Till this day I still have not recv My slag as I've requested,
They also called me last week and said the value of my sample went up a snibbit.

I've over 3000lbs of motherboards, and about another 2000lbs of misc boards high grades around 1000lbs and I'm looking for a new refiner and a person that will represent My company,

I will never ever do this again, When You not around the mouse will play .

I feel as tho the company has not lived up to its reputation, they say they are going to do something about it and yet they haven't . They promosed to mail out the slag and yet haven't, they just frustrate Me,

Thanks.

 

[Smack]

Thought I would post some info with prices for representation of material meant for refining. Just so you know what to expect and can make sure you have enough material to justify refining with representation or to keep collecting until you can.

 

[pcscrapper]

what was the total weight.?

I've over 4000lbs think it would be worth the time and money to have someone represent My company,

 

[Smack]

No, on 4k lbs. of misc. circuit boards...not worth it at all.