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I went down to my local flea market today and saw probably 20 old computers stacked up for sale. The price on a couple was $20. My question is, is it worthwhile to buy them for scrapping? Is there enough PM inside to justify buying them? I read somewhere that there is like 3.5 grams of PM in old computers. Is that true? If it is, that would be more than $200 profit. I appreciate any help. Thanks.

Short answer: $20 is too much for most junk computers. $5 per junk tower is about what a hobbyist/small time scrapper should spend.

Regardless of how many grams of PM are in an old computer, how much you can actually get out is the more important number.

My company buys small loads of computers for $0.45/lb. This is assuming that they're fully loaded towers with hard drives, memory and all other internal components. It's also just for the towers, not monitors or external components, which are worth much less by weight.

If the towers are all identical model, the rate is $0.50/lb because it's easier to streamline their disassembly and it may be possible to sell them in quantity for actual use. The later is where the real money is in computer "recycling".

Usually I recommend my local dealers to not pay more than around $5 a tower or $0.30/lb - this leaves room for the occasional half-empty or mangled case and it factors in the labor to disassemble and/or part them out.

So under ideal conditions, a PC tower weighs 25 lbs and goes for $0.50/lb. Even then that's only $12.50/tower.

Thanks Doc, I appreciate the insight. I was just thinking about picking up one or two and seeing what exactly was in there. I am on disability so time isn't a problem, I was thinking of a hobby to keep me occupied and make a few bucks if I could. I couldn't buy all of them at once so I think I will pass on recycling computers if I couldn't at least get out of it what I paid. Guess I will stick with aluminum cans and sorting pennies. BTW, are there any goodies in old printers. I have a few in the garage left over from an auction I bought. Thank you.

Most printers are not worth taking apart. They are simply sold as shred scrap. Some of the yards near me will take them with light iron, which is the way to go.

Most of the circuit boards in printers contain very little PM content.

Inkjet printers are the most common type found with home computers. They're mostly disposable with the exception of some high-end photo printers. The most valuable parts are the ink cartridges and power adapters.

Laser printers are more expensive, and can be worth trying to repair, part out or sell intact for parts. Some have high grade boards and memory modules inside. The toner cartridges are the most valuable parts.

Dot matrix printers are the oldest technology of the three. For several years these were a great item to pick up cheap at tag sales and resale for $100+. Despite being old, they're desirable in harsh environments like factories and shops because they resist dust and heat better than newer printers. Over the past couple of years the market for these has softened, but there is still good demand for certain models. These don't have much in the way of salvageable parts or metals inside.

Computers, monitors, printers, we just shoot 'em and leave 'em. Fun times....

Deal

I was at a storage auction about a year ago,and could have bought a 10 by 25 locker stacked floor to ceiling with towers and monitors from some school.The unit received no bids,as in no one would even pay $1! I was tempted,because I knew there is PMs in the towers-but there were a ton of monitors too...what can you do with those? Incidently,if the opportunity came up again,I would bid $1! But now like 10 times the amount of people go to those auctions because of those shows...anyway-what can you do with monitors if you get a situation like that where you have to take the towers and the monitors?

the monitors at least old crts have copper yokes in them. frome what i read lcd monitors have hair thin gold wires aroound the monitor but i myself have never checked this out so im not sure if its in all of them or just some either way i always crack open anything electronis that may come to me as scrap.

Best Buy will accept old monitors, essentially for free. They charge you $10 to drop off an old monitor or TV, but give you a $10 gift card. They usually have a three monitor per day limit.

messymessy wrote:Best Buy will accept old monitors, essentially for free. They charge you $10 to drop off an old monitor or TV, but give you a $10 gift card. They usually have a three monitor per day limit.

If you talk to the manager, most the time they will wave the three per day rule. Ask them what day the truck comes to pick them up, then arrange to take your monitors in that morning or the day before. The problem most stores have is storage space. So if they are going out right away, the will let you bring in more at a time. We just bought a new I-Pad and handheld GPS unit with gift cards from Best-Buy. It's a good deal.

Once inside the computer tower, what is the part called that contains PM's?

Thanks in advance for any help.

PennyBoy wrote:Once inside the computer tower, what is the part called that contains PM's?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Mother board, memory, and expansion cards can all be refined for gold content. Hard drives have something, but I can't remember.

Search old posts. SilverSaddle has posted some really good information on this subject in the past. PM if you can't them.

messymessy wrote:

PennyBoy wrote:Once inside the computer tower, what is the part called that contains PM's?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Mother board, memory, and expansion cards can all be refined for gold content. Hard drives have something, but I can't remember.

Search old posts. SilverSaddle has posted some really good information on this subject in the past. PM if you can't them.

Thank you! As a small time/new scrapper, any help is greatly appreciated!

I have been reading around, and the sources usually say there could be gold, platinum, silver, rhodium, palladium, and copper. And the best approach it is to separate out the components you believe/know have the metals, and ship them to a smelter. But if I want to do this, I don't want to waste bucks on the shipping. I want to only ship the stuff that contains good stuff... more bang for my postal buck.

So where exactly is the gold? For fun, I took apart a video camera with my daughters. Here are a couple of pieces...


Is this gold?


Or possibly this?


I have a possible source for many old computers. Wanting to get much more informed before I start plunking down the bucks to buy towers. And I'm curious... what other electronics could yield stuff like this?

silversaddle1 wrote:

messymessy wrote:Best Buy will accept old monitors, essentially for free. They charge you $10 to drop off an old monitor or TV, but give you a $10 gift card. They usually have a three monitor per day limit.

If you talk to the manager, most the time they will wave the three per day rule. Ask them what day the truck comes to pick them up, then arrange to take your monitors in that morning or the day before. The problem most stores have is storage space. So if they are going out right away, the will let you bring in more at a time. We just bought a new I-Pad and handheld GPS unit with gift cards from Best-Buy. It's a good deal.

I'm a bit confused by this; If I'm turning in old monitors and paying $10, and getting a $10 gift card, how do I make out at all?
I may as just pay cash for whatever I buy......

fb101 wrote:

silversaddle1 wrote:

messymessy wrote:Best Buy will accept old monitors, essentially for free. They charge you $10 to drop off an old monitor or TV, but give you a $10 gift card. They usually have a three monitor per day limit.

If you talk to the manager, most the time they will wave the three per day rule. Ask them what day the truck comes to pick them up, then arrange to take your monitors in that morning or the day before. The problem most stores have is storage space. So if they are going out right away, the will let you bring in more at a time. We just bought a new I-Pad and handheld GPS unit with gift cards from Best-Buy. It's a good deal.

I'm a bit confused by this; If I'm turning in old monitors and paying $10, and getting a $10 gift card, how do I make out at all?
I may as just pay cash for whatever I buy......

How do you make out. Well, if you get a bunch of computers to recycle, what are you going to do if they all have monitors? Sure, you can pull them apart and get the little bit of copper out of them, but what are you going to do with the rest of it? You can't throw it in the trash, if you get caught doing that most states have a fine. All the recycling facilites around here charge around 10 dollars to drop each monitor off. So if you have to pay it anyway, take it to Best Buy and get you a 10 dollar gift card.

Now how you really make out on this deal is if YOU charge your customers to haul off the monitors. Almost all our customers are fine with paying a disposal fee for the monitor. About everyone out there knows they are a haz-mat item. So now you have their 10 dollars to dispose of the monitor. Take it to BB, now you have disposed of the monitor safely, eleminated all liability for you and your customer, and have a 10 dollar gift card to boot.

Monitors are dirty, a haz-mat item, and dangerous to recycle. They are not worth the time to try to recycle on a small scale. I recycle 100's of computers a month. We know all about it. It's good advice I'm giving you, free of charge!

OK thanks.
I'm short the one thing to make that work out, that would be the customers.
I can get my hands on lots of monitors, but nobody will pay me to take them away.

fb101 wrote:OK thanks.
I'm short the one thing to make that work out, that would be the customers.
I can get my hands on lots of monitors, but nobody will pay me to take them away.

"I'll take your monitors for a case of beer. Okay?"

Sometimes, you just need to change the rewards abit.

ANY RESPONSE TO MY QUESTIONS?

uthminsta wrote:I have been reading around, and the sources usually say there could be gold, platinum, silver, rhodium, palladium, and copper. And the best approach it is to separate out the components you believe/know have the metals, and ship them to a smelter. But if I want to do this, I don't want to waste bucks on the shipping. I want to only ship the stuff that contains good stuff... more bang for my postal buck.

So where exactly is the gold? For fun, I took apart a video camera with my daughters. Here are a couple of pieces...


Is this gold?


Or possibly this?


I have a possible source for many old computers. Wanting to get much more informed before I start plunking down the bucks to buy towers. And I'm curious... what other electronics could yield stuff like this?

PM silversaddle1 he can help you. Yes looks like gold fingers

uthminsta wrote:I have been reading around, and the sources usually say there could be gold, platinum, silver, rhodium, palladium, and copper. And the best approach it is to separate out the components you believe/know have the metals, and ship them to a smelter. But if I want to do this, I don't want to waste bucks on the shipping. I want to only ship the stuff that contains good stuff... more bang for my postal buck.

So where exactly is the gold? For fun, I took apart a video camera with my daughters. Here are a couple of pieces...


Is this gold?


Or possibly this?


I have a possible source for many old computers. Wanting to get much more informed before I start plunking down the bucks to buy towers. And I'm curious... what other electronics could yield stuff like this?

The following is a quote from Market Harmony on this thread viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2868&start=50

"Some odd items containing some level of precious metals: dental crowns, cell phones, electrical contacts within military aircraft and from the mining industry, x-ray films, photographic solutions, crucibles."

As for finding out if that is gold, do you have a test kit? If not, eBay has them for quite cheap.

Hope this helps.

Yes, there is gold there. The "finger edge" connectors need to be cut off the card. The little card with the gold traces on it, yep, gold flash. Not much gold there, but it all adds up. You will be better off just selling the stripped components to others than to try to have them refined yourself. Most refinerys have a 1000 pound minimum and you have to pay for all the processing up front. That can be $1000.00's of dollars.Take a stroll over to E-bay and search "scrap computer gold", And such. That will give you an idea of what you can make in your spare time.

Whats the easiest way to remove gold fingers/contacts from things like video cards?

Hey all:

I've been in the electronics resale business for about 15 years now and have started to do some recycling.

Hope this helps you guys out...

Just about all IT equipment has some amount of precious metals in them. Of course, they have "non-precious" metals too.

For small time operators, there are MANY problems...

A). You have to be dealing with TONS of equipment to make it worthwhile.

B). You have to low cost labor to disassemble the equipment.

C). You have to have strict environmental standards & certifications. What small operators do is an initial teardown. You will separate out the hard drives, memory, processors, power supplies, circuit boards, optical drives, etc. Once separated, you put them in a "gaylord" box on a pallet. Once your pallet is full, you'll take it into the bigger recyclers who have the permits & big equipment to really break it down. Once they break it down, it goes to the refiner/smelter.

HOWEVER, the larger recycler will pay you for the component parts. For example, I took in about 800 lbs of optical drives & floppies (DVD, CD, DVD_R,floppies). I think I got $.45/cent a pound. I also took in over 1000 lbs of power supplies, I think that those brought about $.60/lbs.

The circuit boards are where the real money is at. Boards are broken down into low & high grade.

Low grade boards are usually "consumer" motherboard & such. They might bring $2/lbs. The higher grade boards out of industrial or networking equipment can easily bring $3 or $4 lbs. Memory will bring maybe $15 lbs. Processors are usually the most valuable of all. 386, 486, Pentium & Pentium pro processors usually bring the highest amount, up to $5 PER PROCESSOR!

Hard drives have a variety of precious metals in them (circuit boards & drive platters). The drive platters contain platinum & silver.

A good rule of thumb is this: The older & more expensive the equipment was to begin with, the more valuable it will be as scrap....

Thus consumer PC's found at flea markets are usually low grade. Stuff coming out of scientific installations, data centers, render farms, communication centers, etc is usually fairly valuable.

Also keep in mind that when you are dealing with the larger recyclers (who in turn go to the refiners/smelters), you need to be dealing with SORTED, BROKEN DOWN EQUIPMENT. You also need to be dealing with HUNDREDS of pounds of equipment. They will not deal with 20-30 lbs. of something.

Hope this helps.

DTEJD

Whoops!

Almost forgot to mention....

just about everything you see & think would be gold on circuit boards IS, usually it is high grade too!

HOWEVER, it is so thin, the thinness could be measured in microns...so you will indeed need a lot to add up to something significant.

ADDITIONALLY, certain circuits & processors will have VERY high grade INSIDE of them, invisible to the naked eye. If you break open a Pentium or Pentium Pro processor, you will see very fine threads of almost pure gold.

As time has progressed, the industry has gotten better at using less & less gold. Current processors do not have anywhere near the gold content of older processors.

DTEJD

here is a forum to read all about it

http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3 ... 936d663e96