so over the years i have accumulated a pretty decent pile of gold/gold plated electronic boards(from computers, cell phones, etc) and other plated components..... now i come across this site: 123preciousmetal.com .... supposively i can insured mail them all my stuff...and they will either send me a check or some bullion anyone ever deal with this sort of place? is it worth it? i dont really have any local avenues to get rid of this stuff....and it seems to me i have at least an ounce of gold within all the stuff i have thanks for any input
My very limited understanding is that many places will not accept gold plated scrap and scrap from electronics. They want rings and things like that. So if you found a place that will take what you have it might be worth a shot and hope for the best. I don't know how you could ever determine whether you received an honest deal. [Some of the electronics might have silver in them also.] But someone else here might have actually done this in the past. I'm just going by what I've heard. Please post your experiences when this transaction is completed. It's pretty interesting to know how the recovery process works for individuals, or if it works at all.
that place i listed above explicity states they take 'old electronics, computer components' ........ so we'll see what happens
to CoinTalk Smoky. I wouldn't count on it unless you have a massive amount. The typical circuit board has less than a milligram of pure gold, and the gold used for plating contacts won't register on any but the most delicate scientific scales.
thanks for the welcome i am aware to some extent the amounts used in the electronics i have...... and yes, i do have a very large amount you'de be surprised the amount used in cell phone applications........ ever rip open a cell before? for the most part you are correct....the components are just plated...and thus we are talking mg. amounts of pure gold
I don't think we are talking about micro grams here. We instead are talking about macrograms. Levels of plating has become so refined that it's around 0.005 microns of gold plating. My dad's still working in the gold plating industry so yea, scrapping gold from it is not too worth it, unless you got a landfill of trash made in the 80s. Even the 90s gold plating technology has become quite refined that you are not going to get much worth from it or alternatively, gold prices go insane.
No Roy is correct. I don't care if you have a 1,000 cell phone, you won't get more than a milligram of gold. Since you have expertise in electronics and the manufactoring of electronics, you must realize that gold can be hammered down to nearly a molecule wide thickness and gold plating is just about that. It takes 6.04 x 10 ^23 molecules to make a single mole of gold, which is about 80 grams as I recall. On a city, state and national basis, it makes sense to try to recover the gold, silver and for that matter lead and mercury from electronic equiptment (if not for environmental reaosn alone). On the basis of a single individual FORGET ABOUT IT. Next case - step up to the bench... Ruben
I do hear some Processors (Pentium Pro, for example) DO have reasonable amounts of gold in them.... SOld just for gold content!
The problem here is that even if each circuit bord or cell phone had one mg of gold, that would require a total of over 28,000 circuit boards and/or cell phones just to get one ounce of gold. I can guarantee you that no company out there will process 28,000 pieces of equipment and then hand you back an ounce of gold. That would be the biggest money-losing operation ever.
Bingo I was teaching at LIU in the Pharmacy school when I was working on my PhD when one student in a compounding class multiplied a 3 place number by a 2 placed number and ended up with an answer in the 10 millions. Normally they give points for math errors like this but I gave the kid a BIG FAT ZERO. And he protested because he'd have to take the whole course over again and maybe loose 6 months before getting licensed. But I didn't care and the grade stayed. You can't be a Pharmacist if your so disconected to numbers that you can be off 4 decimal places and not notice, simple error or not. I'd rather you just cheat and make up a reasonable number about what it should be for the problem. Its the same issue here, There is a thousand fold or GREATER (probably MUCH greater) less amount of gold on these devices to even notice any economic benifit at all. Ruben
Hey Ruben... Pretty close but here are the details; Au (Gold) Atomic Number (79) grams/mol= 196.966569(4) the (4 is the isotope) and Avagadro's number is 6.022 e23 atoms to make 1 mol of anything.... RickieB
SmokeyD welcome to the forum The science lesson has been fun, but here's a practicle avenue to sell off your scrap electronics: Ebay There are SO many "do it yourself" home gold reclaiming kits that older CPUs in bulk usually go for $1 each and bundles of old memory and such do the same. Clearly state that you are selling scrap electronics and don't say anything about reclaiming the gold and I betcha you'll make more than if you send it to an untested company with a website. It may feel like those folks that set small bundls of cut wood and a coffee can on the side of the road, but hey they will be paying the shipping instead of you. Do an Ebay search for "electronic scrap" and one for "gold scrap" CPUs seem to be king right now. Pins and boards are not moving by the looks of it.
