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Are the yellow "fingers" (photo, red box) gold? What about the things in the blue boxes? I saw various people selling these fingers in bulk on eBay. So is it better to cut the fingers off and throw the rest away or keep the board intact? We don't have many scrap yards in my area and those that are close to my home do not boards at all. So I presume my only option is eBay, but is it better to go the "finger" route or the "whole board" route? Also, if I do keep whole boards, do I need to first remove large electronic components like capacitors, transformers etc, or should I keep them?

Yes, it is very a very thin gold plating. I can't tell what's in the blue boxes, it could also be gold plating.

You'll get the most money if you sell all of the material. Throwing away 95% of a board after going to all the work to collect it is silly.

Whether or not you should cut fingers off or if you have to remove the steel bracket or other items depends on what company you're selling material to.

Suggestion: find buyers and ask what they pay and how they want material prepped before you go to all the work of processing material more than you have to. In the meantime, just stockpile it.

It would all depend on how many boards you can pile up. We cut off all the gold fingers on our boards. Then we sell the boards to our local scrapyard. Of course, we deal in tons of them at a time, so the yard is more than happy to deal with us. The gold finger edge connectors are on of the easiest things to refine so they are quite popular on e-bay. Prices can range anywhere from $50.00 to $125.00 a pound. Make sure when you cut the fingers off you keep close to the edge of the gold. Too much "extra" board will lower the value of the fingers to most buyers. Throw the board in a box with the motherboard and start saving them!

I do the same. You will still get high grade price for the card after cutting off the fingers.

If that is a working PCI 56Mhz protocol g (or better) wireless card (and you have the antenna), I'll buy or trade for it for more than scrap value.
PM me.

Also interested in this, as I put a wanted ad in a local classified ad for broken or unwanted computers and I had a lady contact me shortly after. Well, so far I've removed 2 truck bed loads of PC towers, boxes of NIC cards, motherboards, ceramic CPUs, aluminum heatsinks, etc. I've got more material than I know what to do with lol, but as I'm tearing it all down I'm seperating it out. I've sold a 30lb. box of MB's on eBay before, and I'm probably sitting on 300-400 pounds of them right now. I'm in the same boat though, the yards here do not deal in computer scrap. So, I'm gonna have to sell on eBay or try to find a buyer for the whole load. Granted it isn't a "ton", but I have a few hundred pounds of things. Anyone know if ribbon cable is worth saving?

Heartkill wrote:Anyone know if ribbon cable is worth saving?

Some yards near me will take ribbon cable as #2 insulated, connectors and all. I'm not sure how the return compares to other types of wire; I don't deal with enough of it to bother experimenting. Older ribbon cables often have gold-plated connectors, so you'll want to cut those off and save them up.

On this related note - I'll chime in with my questions related to computer boards:

What are the differences between high grade boards and low grade boards?

I have access to a large amount of old PBX equipment that typically gets trashed. Many of these phone systems are 10+ years old and the back end processing equipment is similar to a PC. They have older style thick and heavy circuit boards in them, multiple processors and chips per card, etc... Most of this usually gets tossed into the dumpster. Is it worth my time to take one of these apart (15 min max) for the PC boards?

branshew wrote:What are the differences between high grade boards and low grade boards?

See this topic http://www.realcent.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=592

PBX equipment is worth taking apart, as usually the boards are high grade.