Recovering gold from gold fingers

[icejj]

I would like to get input from members on the forum on what you all would think a minimum amount of profit per pound on gold fingers would make it worth your time to purchase and process gold trimmed fingers.

A little background information on why I ask: I have a potential partnership in the making, with someone who can supply me with gold fingers. This man has been in this business for awhile, and is willing to let me do a test run on a 1lb batch of gold fingers (after I pay for the 1lb fingers), which has been taken from a larger batch of fingers, and based on the yield, I will be able to negotiate how much I'd be willing to pay for the rest of the batch. Of course he could accept or decline my offer.

So based on chemical costs and waste treatment costs, etc., I am curious as to a minimum amount of profit per pound that some of the members on the forum would come up with after getting a yield on a 1lb "test" batch. A minimum amount of profit that one would feel would make purchasing and processing such material worthwhile. Thanks!

 

[AMS-Pro]

I would like to get input from members on the forum on what you all would think a minimum amount of profit per pound on gold fingers would make it worth your time to purchase and process gold trimmed fingers.

A little background information on why I ask: I have a potential partnership in the making, with someone who can supply me with gold fingers. This man has been in this business for awhile, and is willing to let me do a test run on a 1lb batch of gold fingers (after I pay for the 1lb fingers), which has been taken from a larger batch of fingers, and based on the yield, I will be able to negotiate how much I'd be willing to pay for the rest of the batch. Of course he could accept or decline my offer.

So based on chemical costs and waste treatment costs, etc., I am curious as to a minimum amount of profit per pound that some of the members on the forum would come up with after getting a yield on a 1lb "test" batch. A minimum amount of profit that one would feel would make purchasing and processing such material worthwhile. Thanks!

1lb of gold fingers trimmed properly with no excess (no green board) yields 2 grams of gold ideally. Gold spot is currently at the time of this post is $58.40/per 1 gram. That's a potential of $116.80 usd. ideal final yield valuation. Your max investment for gold fingers should be no more than 33% ($38.93 usd.)/lb. Ideal investment should be 25% ($29.20 usd.)/lb.. Mind you, you will need a lot of gold fingers to offset your chemical/equipment cost beyond a hobby level. You need to figure what amount of material you would need with your process once perfected to lower the total cost/investment of chemical/equipment/source material at 25% or less of final value. It should be 25% for the total source/recover/refinement process, 25% safety net, 25% profit for you, 25% reinvested to scale.

Edit* Finally, back at the office and not out and about on a phone. My apologies for the edits and multi post due to size of a phone screen.
Anyways... For these kind of numbers to work, and for this to be viable for you as a business venture on just gold fingers alone (which it shouldn't be JUST gold fingers), the type of quantities we're talking about is not small. You've to figure Ideal numbers are nice, but in reality with the process, 1-1.5 Grams gold / per lb. of gold fingers after potential problems, quality, thickness of plate, etc. Equipment cost to really do this at scale, is not cheap, when you need to do volume. Even if you're to do electrowinning, you could buy a smaller ready to go unit to process, but you're still looking at $7,000 per electrowinning unit, not including a single thing else. It would take you about 110-120 lbs. of gold fingers for free to cover the cost of that one piece of equipment with absolutely no other cost coming out. Cost of refining is usually a trade secret, which why I suggested you figure out what the cost of your process is not including your raw material, to produce a troy ounce (31.1035 grams), how long it takes you, and how much you value your time at. Take the value of the ounce, minus the chemical cost, then divide the remaining total by 31.1035, the number you get is your absolute max you can spend, per pound, before losing money.

 

[orvi]

1lb of gold fingers trimmed properly with no excess (no green board) yields 2 grams of gold ideally. Gold spot is currently at the time of this post is $58.40/per 1 gram. That's a potential of $116.80 usd. ideal final yield valuation. Your max investment for gold fingers should be no more than 33% ($38.93 usd.)/lb. Ideal investment should be 25% ($29.20 usd.)/lb.. Mind you, you will need a lot of gold fingers to offset your chemical/equipment cost beyond a hobby level. You need to figure what amount of material you would need with your process once refined to figure the regular supply you need for your total cost of chemical/equipment/source material cost to be at 25% or less of final value.

This is very risky type venture. Depending on how you see it - as a funny hobby with possibility to make some buck/or lose it, or as a business opportunity with aim of making cash.
2g/lb of fingers is yield on the higher end. This happen when you get some good hard plated older stuff. Newer fingers like RAM fingers do not run that high. Sometimes you are quite grateful for 1,5g/kg, not 4.
Material would probably vary from batch to batch, as every finger is unique and I doubt it will come from one type of device all the time. I don´t know if I personally go like this. Could be a losing game.

One of the best practices is to get whole bulk lot homogenized best as you can, and pull average sample (say that one pound). Hard to accomplish in amateur setup, but kinda doable. This you can process, assume the yield and then negotiate.

Just be aware of getting sample directly from the hand of seller, agree on purchase the bulk and receive some unknown quality stuff. Guys who can run this business for that long are either very skilled and precisely know how valuable their material is, or they are partly scammers who know exactly what they are doing to get extra buck out off you

 

[AMS-Pro]

This is very risky type venture. Depending on how you see it - as a funny hobby with possibility to make some buck/or lose it, or as a business opportunity with aim of making cash.
2g/lb of fingers is yield on the higher end. This happen when you get some good hard plated older stuff. Newer fingers like RAM fingers do not run that high. Sometimes you are quite grateful for 1,5g/kg, not 4.
Material would probably vary from batch to batch, as every finger is unique and I doubt it will come from one type of device all the time. I don´t know if I personally go like this. Could be a losing game.

One of the best practices is to get whole bulk lot homogenized best as you can, and pull average sample (say that one pound). Hard to accomplish in amateur setup, but kinda doable. This you can process, assume the yield and then negotiate.

Just be aware of getting sample directly from the hand of seller, agree on purchase the bulk and receive some unknown quality stuff. Guys who can run this business for that long are either very skilled and precisely know how valuable their material is, or they are partly scammers who know exactly what they are doing to get extra buck out off you

I edited my post for clarity. I'm on a cell phone right now, so had to type in multiple sections. This is how I do mine from a business standpoint on percentages. Also note, I did say 2grams/lb ideally lol.

 

[AMS-Pro]

Also, to clarify the 25% reinvested to scale. This is recurring cost like licensing, insurance, multiple source location, employees, building and overall operating cost. The gold fingers won't always be there, so you need to work on being set up for multiple continuous material processing, if you really want to make a business of this.

 

[niks neims]

You know, there probably is a reason why, for example, boardsort pays 40$/lb

Also be carefull - sometimes scammers will try to sell you ENIG plating as "fingers", from LCD boards for example...

 

[silversaddle1]

I can tell you right now, if your guy has been in business as long as you say, he's not going to sell you trimmed fingers for 40 dollars a pound.

 

[AMS-Pro]

You know, there probably is a reason why, for example, boardsort pays 40$/lb

Also be carefull - sometimes scammers will try to sell you ENIG plating as "fingers", from LCD boards for example...

Lol yeah, to get the volume they need. With more people getting involved in the process/industry, means more competition and less profit. The good thing is there is a lot of source material (57.4 million tonnes/63.3 million U.S. tons minus a couple million tons or so for plastic and scrap steel/tin), and the number is growing every year. The bad is, the newer electronics get, the less precious metals they have used in them.

 

[AMS-Pro]

I would like to get input from members on the forum on what you all would think a minimum amount of profit per pound on gold fingers would make it worth your time to purchase and process gold trimmed fingers.

A little background information on why I ask: I have a potential partnership in the making, with someone who can supply me with gold fingers. This man has been in this business for awhile, and is willing to let me do a test run on a 1lb batch of gold fingers (after I pay for the 1lb fingers), which has been taken from a larger batch of fingers, and based on the yield, I will be able to negotiate how much I'd be willing to pay for the rest of the batch. Of course he could accept or decline my offer.

So based on chemical costs and waste treatment costs, etc., I am curious as to a minimum amount of profit per pound that some of the members on the forum would come up with after getting a yield on a 1lb "test" batch. A minimum amount of profit that one would feel would make purchasing and processing such material worthwhile. Thanks!

You say "I have a potential partnership in the making, with someone who can supply me with gold fingers.", is that only as a source, or is he willing to be more invested in the process? I'm in agreement with

I can tell you right now, if your guy has been in business as long as you say, he's not going to sell you trimmed fingers for 40 dollars a pound.

But even at $40 usd. (slightly above 33%) that's a lot to give to just a source. you could go 50/50 on it, but the reason of 33% is 1/3 for him, 1/3 for you, 1/3 for the process and miscellaneous. The process being dangerous as it is, you have more of the risk. If you're really doing a partnership in that sense with him, you shouldn't be buying the material upfront, you should be splitting the end result. His material, your time, risk, with chemical/equipment cost deducted first then the final result split.

At this point you're getting into the toll refining trade, so it could be you take 10%-15% of final product after the Cost of the process is deducted. But usually you have to have a spread sheet already set up, and the ability to do an expected analysis, which is not possible with only 1 lb. if we're talking about some serious volume. Estimated yes, basing on average yes, accurate on large volume with only 1 lb. no.

You could have someone shred it all up and pulverize it for you, to give you a better idea. But that process cost money, I can tell you I charge $25/hour for 1 laborer on 1 shredder, and $25/hr. for each additional laborer. Capable of processing 1 ton a day. how much material you have, it really depends, run 500 lbs. then take a sample from the collection bin.

There's definitely a whole bunch of numbers involved to really go that route.

I know what information I can give you from my part of the industry as I just did. But you're going need several people on here for the more chemical side of it for sure to average the cost of your process, but all of that goes back to cost of refining, and people, including myself, tend to be really reserved when it comes to letting that information out as that is our lively hood and how we are able to stay in business.

 

[icejj]

1lb of gold fingers trimmed properly with no excess (no green board) yields 2 grams of gold ideally. Gold spot is currently at the time of this post is $58.40/per 1 gram. That's a potential of $116.80 usd. ideal final yield valuation. Your max investment for gold fingers should be no more than 33% ($38.93 usd.)/lb. Ideal investment should be 25% ($29.20 usd.)/lb.. Mind you, you will need a lot of gold fingers to offset your chemical/equipment cost beyond a hobby level. You need to figure what amount of material you would need with your process once perfected to lower the total cost/investment of chemical/equipment/source material at 25% or less of final value. It should be 25% for the total source/recover/refinement process, 25% safety net, 25% profit for you, 25% reinvested to scale.

Edit* Finally, back at the office and not out and about on a phone. My apologies for the edits and multi post due to size of a phone screen.
Anyways... For these kind of numbers to work, and for this to be viable for you as a business venture on just gold fingers alone (which it shouldn't be JUST gold fingers), the type of quantities we're talking about is not small. You've to figure Ideal numbers are nice, but in reality with the process, 1-1.5 Grams gold / per lb. of gold fingers after potential problems, quality, thickness of plate, etc. Equipment cost to really do this at scale, is not cheap, when you need to do volume. Even if you're to do electrowinning, you could buy a smaller ready to go unit to process, but you're still looking at $7,000 per electrowinning unit, not including a single thing else. It would take you about 110-120 lbs. of gold fingers for free to cover the cost of that one piece of equipment with absolutely no other cost coming out. Cost of refining is usually a trade secret, which why I suggested you figure out what the cost of your process is not including your raw material, to produce a troy ounce (31.1035 grams), how long it takes you, and how much you value your time at. Take the value of the ounce, minus the chemical cost, then divide the remaining total by 31.1035, the number you get is your absolute max you can spend, per pound, before losing money.

Thank you for the response and the figures! Ideally I wouldn't want the business to be just gold fingers alone, I just figured that gold fingers might be a good starting point until I can find more/better material. May not be looking to be the best place to start now lol

 

[icejj]

This is very risky type venture. Depending on how you see it - as a funny hobby with possibility to make some buck/or lose it, or as a business opportunity with aim of making cash.
2g/lb of fingers is yield on the higher end. This happen when you get some good hard plated older stuff. Newer fingers like RAM fingers do not run that high. Sometimes you are quite grateful for 1,5g/kg, not 4.
Material would probably vary from batch to batch, as every finger is unique and I doubt it will come from one type of device all the time. I don´t know if I personally go like this. Could be a losing game.

One of the best practices is to get whole bulk lot homogenized best as you can, and pull average sample (say that one pound). Hard to accomplish in amateur setup, but kinda doable. This you can process, assume the yield and then negotiate.

Just be aware of getting sample directly from the hand of seller, agree on purchase the bulk and receive some unknown quality stuff. Guys who can run this business for that long are either very skilled and precisely know how valuable their material is, or they are partly scammers who know exactly what they are doing to get extra buck out off you

Thanks for the tips! Your last two paragraphs are really close to what I was thinking about before I created the post.

 

[icejj]

You know, there probably is a reason why, for example, boardsort pays 40$/lb

Also be carefull - sometimes scammers will try to sell you ENIG plating as "fingers", from LCD boards for example...

You know, you might be on to something lol

Thanks for the tip. I actually opted out of buying a few pounds of fingers from someone else a few months ago because some pieces were obviously not fingers smh

 

[AMS-Pro]

Thank you for the response and the figures! Ideally I wouldn't want the business to be just gold fingers alone, I just figured that gold fingers might be a good starting point until I can find more/better material. May not be looking to be the best place to start now lol

You're welcome. Figures are definitely a nice thing to have. If you can get the material, it's good thing to start with and perfect your process. It's very similar to the type of material you'll want to run. Older ceramic cpus, bga, eproms, ic, etc. If the guy is willing to work with you, he could be a great contact, and partner to have in your corner. Especially if he's willing to share his contacts with you. If he has that kind of money, then you need to invest the time and build the relationship with him.
As far as sourcing material, it can be difficult for most. Start thinking outside the box, with 57 million tonnes and counting of e-waste produced every year, you're bound to think of something that someone else hasn't.

 

[icejj]

You say "I have a potential partnership in the making, with someone who can supply me with gold fingers.", is that only as a source, or is he willing to be more invested in the process?

As of right now, only as a source.

But even at $40 usd. (slightly above 33%) that's a lot to give to just a source. you could go 50/50 on it, but the reason of 33% is 1/3 for him, 1/3 for you, 1/3 for the process and miscellaneous. The process being dangerous as it is, you have more of the risk. If you're really doing a partnership in that sense with him, you shouldn't be buying the material upfront, you should be splitting the end result. His material, your time, risk, with chemical/equipment cost deducted first then the final result split.

At this point you're getting into the toll refining trade, so it could be you take 10%-15% of final product after the Cost of the process is deducted. But usually you have to have a spread sheet already set up, and the ability to do an expected analysis, which is not possible with only 1 lb. if we're talking about some serious volume. Estimated yes, basing on average yes, accurate on large volume with only 1 lb. no.

Thanks! These are definitely things that should/will be considered.

I know what information I can give you from my part of the industry as I just did. But you're going need several people on here for the more chemical side of it for sure to average the cost of your process, but all of that goes back to cost of refining, and people, including myself, tend to be really reserved when it comes to letting that information out as that is our lively hood and how we are able to stay in business.

Understandable. I was a little on the fence about making the post in general because I didn't want anyone to feel like I was asking for too much info. That's why I simply kept it at asking for people's opinion on a minimum profit amount per pound, without trying to have folks dive into too much detail, as I know that much of the other stuff I would need to figure it out on my own. The responses and tips so far are the type I'm looking for!

 

[Dougplogan]

It's gonna be hard buying them at $40 a pound. On eBay they sell for over $100 a pound. Not trying to be a Debbie downer or anything but also I've done a few pounds of fingers from rams and I've never been able to get 2 grams. I read that every where but have at most gotten 1.4 grams.

 

[AMS-Pro]

Understandable. I was a little on the fence about making the post in general because I didn't want anyone to feel like I was asking for too much info. That's why I simply kept it at asking for people's opinion on a minimum profit amount per pound, without trying to have folks dive into too much detail, as I know that much of the other stuff I would need to figure it out on my own. The responses and tips so far are the type I'm looking for!

You worded your initial post well enough. The information you were asking for was pretty generalized.

So based on chemical costs and waste treatment costs, etc., I am curious as to a minimum amount of profit per pound that some of the members on the forum would come up with after getting a yield on a 1lb "test" batch. A minimum amount of profit that one would feel would make purchasing and processing such material worthwhile. Thanks!

Had you not asked it the way you did, as based on, and instead had asked for the costs, I believe that would've been the difference in how people took your initial post, so again, you worded it well enough.

I'm glad you were able to get the information you wanted.

 

[icejj]

It's gonna be hard buying them at $40 a pound. On eBay they sell for over $100 a pound. Not trying to be a Debbie downer or anything but also I've done a few pounds of fingers from rams and I've never been able to get 2 grams. I read that every where but have at most gotten 1.4 grams.

I'd rather hear the truth and realistic expectations than to get my hopes up and waste money, so don't worry about being a "Debbie downer" lol Thanks for your response!

 

[niks neims]

I'd rather hear the truth and realistic expectations than to get my hopes up and waste money, so don't worry about being a "Debbie downer" lol Thanks for your response!

Well in that case consider the following:
Removing fingers could be losing proposition in the first place: very rarely you can remove fingers (or chips, mlcc or other components, for that matter) without seriously downgrading source material - sure there is an odd finger on brown board (server PSU boards), peripheral (I've taken some off of from rare printer boards) or some MBs... but no way it would amount to any serious volume)... main finger donors will be RAM and slot cards - and there is a lot (most) PMs to be recoverd there after removing fingers - only now the material has been made considerably worse... And large processing plant is much better equipped to recover those values (in some cases unrealistic to do for small refiner).
Sure, there is a place for "cherry picking" and finger, chip and CPU small scale recovery, but it is more of a niche opportunity, a side venue of larger e-waste stream. I don't know about "your" guy, there could be logistical considerations or even unethical ones (hopefully not) but I would not consider it a good idea to build a business on recovering e-waste scrapings alone, not only you are competing against larger scale refineries, you are also paying for useless (counterproductive) manual labor of someone removing those fingers - what's the point?

Best thing about e-waste - its mostly free (at the consumer point)

 

[orvi]

Well in that case consider the following:
Removing fingers could be losing proposition in the first place: very rarely you can remove fingers (or chips, mlcc or other components, for that matter) without seriously downgrading source material - sure there is an odd finger on brown board (server PSU boards), peripheral (I've taken some off of from rare printer boards) or some MBs... but no way it would amount to any serious volume)... main finger donors will be RAM and slot cards - and there is a lot (most) PMs to be recoverd there after removing fingers - only now the material has been made considerably worse... And large processing plant is much better equipped to recover those values (in some cases unrealistic to do for small refiner).
Sure, there is a place for "cherry picking" and finger, chip and CPU small scale recovery, but it is more of a niche opportunity, a side venue of larger e-waste stream. I don't know about "your" guy, there could be logistical considerations or even unethical ones (hopefully not) but I would not consider it a good idea to build a business on recovering e-waste scrapings alone, not only you are competing against larger scale refineries, you are also paying for useless (counterproductive) manual labor of someone removing those fingers - what's the point?

Best thing about e-waste - its mostly free (at the consumer point)

In many countries, the "DIY" recycling business at some random garage on outskirts of town is on boarderline of barely legal/illegal activity. And so is managing e-waste without license. So the material isn´t flowing that much from official facilities, but from private business, where owners are more prone to go against the rules and sell some stuff to practically anybody who pay better price. For him, the stuff is free, so any extra buck which is worth the risk of doing such a thing is good for him.

As individual without the help of e-waste collecting facilities, you will need very very large net of "sub-contractors" to fill your crates with good stuff. It requires quite a lot of labor as you say to manually cherrypick the good stuff from big piles of e-waste at some facility. And even more work as you say for preparing the stuff (like trimming fingers, removing chips or BGAs).

You are right on the point, that for large scale well-tuned process, the manual sorting and cherrypicking/preparation is not needed, as the furnance and shredder will do a great job on practically any material thrown in. But for the small guy, who want to refine the stuff, this is beyond doable in the backyard. So he must be willing to accept higher price and pay the "unnecessary" work just for the possibility to proceed with his simple route.
If its worth it, depend on the point of wiew.

 

[icejj]

Well in that case consider the following:
Removing fingers could be losing proposition in the first place: very rarely you can remove fingers (or chips, mlcc or other components, for that matter) without seriously downgrading source material - sure there is an odd finger on brown board (server PSU boards), peripheral (I've taken some off of from rare printer boards) or some MBs... but no way it would amount to any serious volume)... main finger donors will be RAM and slot cards - and there is a lot (most) PMs to be recoverd there after removing fingers - only now the material has been made considerably worse... And large processing plant is much better equipped to recover those values (in some cases unrealistic to do for small refiner).
Sure, there is a place for "cherry picking" and finger, chip and CPU small scale recovery, but it is more of a niche opportunity, a side venue of larger e-waste stream. I don't know about "your" guy, there could be logistical considerations or even unethical ones (hopefully not) but I would not consider it a good idea to build a business on recovering e-waste scrapings alone, not only you are competing against larger scale refineries, you are also paying for useless (counterproductive) manual labor of someone removing those fingers - what's the point?

Best thing about e-waste - its mostly free (at the consumer point)

Very good info for me to consider. I never thought about it like this.