wondering about recoverable amounts from this ebay sale

[necromancer]

Hi all!!

its been a long time since i've posted.

i was wondering about recoverable amounts from this ebay sale, could anyone give me a rough amount of recoverable gold in this amount of cpu chips??

I was told it was only 0.8 grams.......

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/394433745396
ad says:

6.5 pounds for a total of 141 cpu chips

pinned fiber no copper tops
28 - intel P3 type fiber cpu with no copper tops
17 - intel/amd mobile cpu no copper tops
7 - intel black fiber cpu no copper tops
2 - AMD fiber no copper tops

pinned fiber with copper tops
16 - AMD Athlon type with copper tops
23 - intel P4 type with copper tops
13 - intel ZEON with copper tops

pinned ceramic with copper tops
5 - AMD ceramic with copper tops

pinless fiber with copper tops
30 - intel fiber pinless P4 and up


thanks!

 

[eaglekeeper]

Yea, I was going to say 1g...at best.

The 7 MMX's (black fiber) at the top right will be the one's that yield the best out of all of them. They are kind of along the lines of the north/south bridge chip (gold corner BGA). But there is very little gold in the others.

My scrape yard gives me #2 copper for the heat spreaders.

By the way... are any of those pinless CPU's i5's or i7's and up. Boardsort has a buy back program for those CPU's, I'm not sure what the shipping cost would be from Canada though.

 

[Alondro]

That'll be much more than 0.8 grams of gold in all that. The pinless ones have very little, so don't really consider those. But the pinned ones have roughly 1 gram for every 30 CPUs. The AMD ceramic ones have a decent amount, maybe 0.1 grams per CPU.

You'd also want to save the capacitors on them. They often have palladium, especially the from the old CPUs. There can also be some extra gold under some of the copper tops: plating you'll need to scrape off with a sharp chisel.

Over all, if you're very good at processing them, you could squeeze out 2 grams. But, that's basically the value of the asking price. Not worth buying at that price.

 

[necromancer]

Yea, I was going to say 1g...at best.

The 7 MMX's (black fiber) at the top right will be the one's that yield the best out of all of them. They are kind of along the lines of the north/south bridge chip (gold corner BGA). But there is very little gold in the others.

My scrape yard gives me #2 copper for the heat spreaders.

By the way... are any of those pinless CPU's i5's or i7's and up. Boardsort has a buy back program for those CPU's, I'm not sure what the shipping cost would be from Canada though.

i don't know.

 

[necromancer]

That'll be much more than 0.8 grams of gold in all that. The pinless ones have very little, so don't really consider those. But the pinned ones have roughly 1 gram for every 30 CPUs. The AMD ceramic ones have a decent amount, maybe 0.1 grams per CPU.

You'd also want to save the capacitors on them. They often have palladium, especially the from the old CPUs. There can also be some extra gold under some of the copper tops: plating you'll need to scrape off with a sharp chisel.

Over all, if you're very good at processing them, you could squeeze out 2 grams. But, that's basically the value of the asking price. Not worth buying at that price.

"The AMD ceramic ones have a decent amount, maybe .25 grams per CPU."

that's a lot for a little ceramic chip, an old ceramic pentium pro would have 0.33g per chip how could one of these have 0.25g??

 

[Alondro]

Already edited it. I have a chart I consulted. Those types are about 0.1g/CPU.

The Pentium Pros can actually be higher, IF you get the non-consumer electronics ones. The ones for industrial equipment were 0.55g.

It's why I always search for industrial electronics scrap. That's where the GOOD stuff is!

 

[eaglekeeper]

Sorry, I misidentified the ceramic one's, I thought they were the brown fiber type.

 

[necromancer]

thanks everyone!!
I think i have my answer & am going to estimate a 3 g max gold content for the lot of 141 cpu.

 

[orvi]

For profit, I do not see it. Just for fun, maybe... Processing MMX is not as easy as ceramic stuff.

 

[jkenned5]

I was the one who inquired about these and estimated 0.8gr after receiving a prompt reply from the seller; which was a very quick estimate that I calculated in my head. I followed-up my estimate to reply to the seller where I gave a calculated estimate of 0.9604gr but I did mention that I valued the bulk 129 cpus as pinless so that bit of variation would probably bump the total to 1gr.

I couldn't figure out the type of ceramic so I guessed 0.05gr each since the bigger pentium pros have 0.2gr each and the black fibers have about 0.0462gr each.

 

[rickbb]

This is the current pricing from cashforcomputerscrap.com. I doubt you will make any profit and most likely lose money if you buy them for $100.

CPUs (Must be Sorted)
PRICE/LB MATERIAL
$155.00 Intel 386 and 486
$160.00 Motorola
$95.00 Pentium Pro Gold Caps
$55.00 Cyrix/IBM/VIA Gold Cap
$40.00 Pentium Ceramic
$40.00 AMD Ceramic Clean (without Al. Cap)
$42.00 Black Fiber CPU
$16.00 Green/Brown Fiber without Heatsink
$7.50 Green Fiber with Heatsink - Pins
$6.00 Green Fiber with Heatsink - Pinless

 

[VK3NHL]

1.5-2g aprox.

 

[ClydeP]

Sorry about the post that drew a yellow flag for "borderline spamming" . The topic of this thread is recovering metals from electronic scrap. A number of people I worked for and with in Vancouver developed a leach process to recover Au from ores without using cyanide. The company they formed to market the process was called Enviroleach. Then, apparently, they changed the name to Envirometal (Envirometal | Environmentally sustainable metal recovery technologies).

While working on the process, they tried processing electronic scrap and had pretty good success - according to their press releases.

I am in no way connected to the company other than being on their mailing list. I put their name out as a resource for those interested in a safe, environmentally sound - so they say - process for recycling electronics.

My apologies for crossing some line...

Edited by Moderator to remove link

 

[Yggdrasil]

Sorry about the post that drew a yellow flag for "borderline spamming" . The topic of this thread is recovering metals from electronic scrap. A number of people I worked for and with in Vancouver developed a leach process to recover Au from ores without using cyanide. The company they formed to market the process was called Enviroleach. Then, apparently, they changed the name to Envirometal, (Envirometal | Environmentally sustainable metal recovery technologies).

While working on the process, they tried processing electronic scrap and had pretty good success - according to their press releases.

I am in no way connected to the company other than being on their mailing list. I put their name out as a resource for those interested in a safe, environmentally sound - so they say - process for recycling electronics.

My apologies for crossing some line...
Edit, removed link.

This thread is about ebay and auctions, not recovery or refining.
And almost all the green recovery systems are based on some kind of cyanide derivative like Ferro cyanide or Ferri cyanide.
The green is just for advertising and not real, at least not anything I have seen so far.

Edit to add:
I visited their website and they have no MSDS and no information beyond the usual sales pitch to investors.

 

[GoIdman]

Hi all!!

its been a long time since i've posted.

i was wondering about recoverable amounts from this ebay sale, could anyone give me a rough amount of recoverable gold in this amount of cpu chips??

I was told it was only 0.8 grams.......

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/394433745396
ad says:

6.5 pounds for a total of 141 cpu chips

pinned fiber no copper tops
28 - intel P3 type fiber cpu with no copper tops
17 - intel/amd mobile cpu no copper tops
7 - intel black fiber cpu no copper tops
2 - AMD fiber no copper tops

pinned fiber with copper tops
16 - AMD Athlon type with copper tops
23 - intel P4 type with copper tops
13 - intel ZEON with copper tops

pinned ceramic with copper tops
5 - AMD ceramic with copper tops

pinless fiber with copper tops
30 - intel fiber pinless P4 and up


thanks!

If you listen to me, you`ll do exactly as you wish, but that lot is not worth the price.
Consider this. How much gold can you buy from 100 USD? Roughly 1-1,2 gr ? With no work or loss of time whatsoever.
If you buy this, you will invest in your own loss.

Be safe

Pete.

 

[justinhcase]

When I started the only material I could find easily was second-hand jewelry and dental gold on eBay.
Small lots from £100 to about £1000.
Mostly managed to brake even over the first two years until I had run the process enough to be confident about processing other people's scrap and my advertising started to kick in.
You have to do a lot of hunting to find even one lot that is worth while none of the electronic scraps was ever going to be worth the postage let alone the processing.
Set up as many low bids on scrap lots in Auction sniper as you can be bothered to do a week and you should at least find some material to process, you are unlikely to make anything out of it but it will let you learn.
Enviro leach is a funny one they keep sending me updates about how many millions of yards of material they are running, but have never bothered to explain what it is they are actually doing.

 

[silversaddle1]

It's been a while since we have had the E-Bay value discussion so I will take a run at it.
As some of you know, I have been in this business longer than some of you have been alive. I have been an active seller on E-Bay since 2000. You name it, I've sold it on E-Bay.
When you have been doing e-scrap as long as I have, you meet some interesting people. And people all have a story to tell if you give them time to tell it.
Now you might find it amazing that a guy who has been recycling computers for 30+ years, been on E-Bay for 23 years, and have been a member here since 2008, has never refined a single gram of gold himself. But it is true. I tell everyone that I don't need another hobby. We re-sell everything we bring in to other people, businesses, and they refine it. Anyway, enough of that. Let's discuss E-bay prices.

The first thing everyone has to keep in mind is that not everyone who buys scrap gold on E-Bay is going to refine it. 100's of times I have seen it discussed how a buyer is going to loose money or just break even on a purchase. Well, you need to explore some other options and ways of thinking. Some buyers never plan on refining anything. They buy up the scrap when gold is low and sit on it until gold spikes, then they resell it and pocket the profit. I have seen this time and time again with buyers. Back in 2018 when gold was in a slump, you could buy good gold fingers on E-bay for around 55 dollars a pound. Now they are selling as high as 140 dollars a pound. So if you bought 100 pounds back then for 5500 dollars, you value now would be 14,000 dollars (assuming they a good quality, close cut fingers). Almost triple your money in 4 years and never do a thing other than wait. Sure, it could go either way, but gold's market history suggests upward growth. So these guys are speculators. Buy low and hope to sell high.

The next group of guys are the students. I have had a few of these guys buy right from me in person. They come to the shop and buy so much of this and so much of that. I charge full E-Bay prices on the material. One guy, an older guy told me that any good education will cost money. He wanted to learn how to refine. He didn't care if he made money off the scrap, he only cared that he would learn. And if you think about it, he was correct in the thinking that not every deal is a good one, some things are just not going to pay a profit.

The third group are the well seasoned buyers. These guys know the ropes, know the yields, know how to process at a profit, and have professional labs and equipment. These are the big lot guys, the guys that will spend in the thousands. Buy they also run the prices up on small lots as well. They know what they can spend and still come out at a profit, even if it's a slim one.

So yeah, I know sometimes people way over pay on E-Bay. But the thing is, we have really no idea of what they plan on doing with the material.

 

[necromancer]

If you listen to me, you`ll do exactly as you wish, but that lot is not worth the price.
Consider this. How much gold can you buy from 100 USD? Roughly 1-1,2 gr ? With no work or loss of time whatsoever.
If you buy this, you will invest in your own loss.

Be safe

Pete.

I didn't buy it & am not going to, I do believe its $100 canadian not that it makes any difference.
Thanks

 

[Heavy-Black-Sand]

The company they formed to market the process was called Enviroleach. Then, apparently, they changed the name to Envirometal (Envirometal | Environmentally sustainable metal recovery technologies).

While working on the process, they tried processing electronic scrap and had pretty good success

They recently sold off their e-waste equipment to focus on processing Gold mining ore ...... their press release hints they no longer can get a big reliable source of e-waste ... and that processing gold mining ore repesents a much much larger potential market going forward into the future.