A question about Gold pins and scrap

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Originally Posted by NewbyScrapper

When attempting to sell gold plated pins, is it permissable to have some solder left on the pin ends or do the pins have to be 'squeaky' clean ?
t.i.a, Happy New Year to one and all on the forum.

Ed.

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You will get a better price for ebay auction titles that state (clean gold plated pins) etc. The reason is that the tin has to be dealt with, and for some refiners that means a pre-soak in a different acid to dissolve the tin, then that also means an extra wash and incineration step. If the refiner doesn't know to deal with the tin first, when dissolved in Aqua Regia they are going to create tin oxide, which is insoluble and takes extra steps to convert back to it's metallic state.

Another thing a lot of solder contains is lead. Lead is also a you know what to deal with. It might take an extra step at the beginning, or the addition of sulfuric acid to the solution to precipitate the lead so it's not melted with the refined metal. It's better if there is no or little solder.

Anything you can do on the scrap side, that makes it easier and more profitable for the refiner, is going to bring better prices, if you are selling to a refiner. That might not be true is you are selling to a scrap yard that pays out on pins, but then if you are doing that you are getting far less than the actual value and should be slapped. (just kidding, just had to slip that in there I'm usually not like that). If there are two lots of gold plated pins on ebay, considering what I have just said pretend you are a refiner and you are looking at the two lots, one is $70 and are not clean, they have solder which adds weight and can be a you know what to deal with, and a lot for $99 that were totally clean of any solder. Which are you going to buy? Answer that, and you answered your own question. Or better yet, search ebay for pins, and then look at each lot and decide for yourself which you would purchase, then try to make yours look that good.

Scott

i dont see it being worth it to remove the solder from pins, 2 reasons behind this
1. you are reducing the weight of the pins by trimming it off
2. factoring in the weight reduction, you are only gonna make an additional $8 or less per hour of your time

Based on that i would recommend you do take the time to sort the clean and dirty pins out and sell them separately.

Thanks Scott and JG for the valuable info.
Ironically, I have been seperating clean from dirty, just wanted some expert opions.
HNY 2013

Ed

here a few picture, if a input on this would be nice, each container weighs in about 2 to 3 lbs. and they are all clean.

No Plastic, No nothing.. pure clean o

http://i1307.photobucket.com/albums/...ps88af2bf2.jpg

those were High Grade Testing equipment contact boards pins. 22k acid test

http://i1307.photobucket.com/albums/...ps723bae57.jpg

These are from IDE Cables Thanks to My kids, was able to complete a nice batch in under 6 hrs.
again Clean , pure, and beautiful.

IDE Cable contacts are about .25g# very close to a waste of time to pull. The newer style only had gold on a tiny point. think of that plating as being worth $0.50Sq In that's a lot of pins for that. Some older ones were fully plated but not now.

Your other ones look to be it the 2g# range. They could be more depending on some other factors.

Some times its worth pulling pins other times it's better to sell them in the plastic. The buyers are really buying contaminated brass and being payed for the gold.

Eric

I've to agree, but with the acid test, I can confirm that these are 22k gold... and its clean as a whistle.

I see people selling gold dropping on ebay, and I'm like.. why would you melt it all down into one pot.. seperate the metal from the goods... More like Metal slugs to me not worth nothing in that condition.

I think those gold drop sellers are just trying to make a quick buck and are playing up the value of these "gold" drops. They look pretty, if those are especially IDE pins like etack mentioned above, there is very little gold, and now it's all mixed in with the other metals.

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Originally Posted by bnbsfsd

I've to agree, but with the acid test, I can confirm that these are 22k gold... and its clean as a whistle.

I see people selling gold dropping on ebay, and I'm like.. why would you melt it all down into one pot.. seperate the metal from the goods... More like Metal slugs to me not worth nothing in that condition.

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Are You saying the pins are solid gold? If this is the case you are incorrect. Pins are plated not solid.

The people that melt pins to sell then on Ebay are vulchers and misleading scum in my opinion.


Eric

They melt the gold plated metal into bars or ingots or drops and sell it like that. Hence instead of being plating it is now an alloy. Then they polish it and get pictures, I agree that it is dumb. The messed up part is it still fetches better prices than it would as pins. It is a scam because unknowledgeable people buy it, those of us in the industry know better and pass on it.

examples, dont drink anything while looking at these or you will spit it all over you monitor:
574 grams Bar Stock Melt Drop of Computer Pins Scrap Gold | eBay
Huge 211 7 grams Raw Bar Stock Melt Drop of Scrap Computer Gold Plated Pins | eBay
57 8 G 1 86 Troy oz Melted Drop Ingot for Gold Refining or Scrap PM Recovery | eBay


as you can see some of it selling for $100+ per ounce

its no different than selling annuities to old people.
Eric

I understand how people are being taken for fools when buying the melted pins...but each one of those sellers had a 100% approval rating. If that bar stock can be bought at a good price what type of yield could be gotten out of it, if it was to be properly refined? Might be an ignorant question on my part but there has to be someone who is refiing those items further?

After ading the descriptions of the items on ebay the sellers outright say that the bars would not even pass a traditional gold test. Shame on people for not reading the descrptions of what they are buying.

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Originally Posted by bnbsfsd

I see people selling gold dropping on ebay, and I'm like.. why would you melt it all down into one pot.. seperate the metal from the goods... More like Metal slugs to me not worth nothing in that condition.

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You are exactly right about the "gold drops". Frankly, to be honest, I give people selling "gold drops" no quarter. What they are doing really amounts to a scam job, regardless if they claim they are being honest about the description. I tried to help an elderly woman who had been buying these "gold drops" off ebay, her great grandson was helping her with buying but he was only 12. She was purchasing them for Christmas, as a way as she put it "securing her great grand children's college future. You cannot even imagine how upsetting it is to hear a woman in her 90s, bawl and cry because as I tried to explain how she was ripped off by shady ebay sellers.

Usually, less than 1% of the "gold drop" is comprised of gold. And regardless if you are paying only for the actual gold content or not, it's expensive to part the other metals from the alloyed gold drop. It becomes more expensive to ever refine the gold out, than the value of the gold contained.

I really hope I don't come across pin smelters on this forum. I can handle criticism so long as it's constructive, hecklers, jerks, grumpy or just plain "you know whats". But after the number of people I have come into contact that have unfortunately purchased "gold pin drops" off ebay, I reserve no quarter for the people who tricked them, and happily ripped them off. In my opinion people who melt gold plated pins down into a lump of totally useless material are lazy scam artists only looking to part the buyer from their money and not providing any real service at all.

This is a really touchy subject with me, as well as many other refiners. It's been a hot topic of discussion on GRF. So far as I am concerned, regardless of how the sellers attempt to word this so that they are being honest, their intent is to be honest enough so ebay cannot remove them, yet be dishonest enough so as to sell their material for more than it's actual worth. I do not care at all for these people, I will not ever do business, knowingly, with anyone that plays at this type of scam. So far as coming into contact with any of these scam artists in real life, I am not sure what I would do but I don't want to post it on any forum, for sure.

The old saying about the buyer beware doesn't work for me at all either. The people who have the 100% rating on ebay selling gold drops do it like this. They simply set up another account with a bunch of .99 cent items, then use the account they want the good feedback on to purchase all those items. Then give themselves good marks so that sellers feel confident they are dealing with someone reputable. They create numerous accounts like this.

One of the most common types of scams is a confidence scam. Where the scam artists says or words things in such a way that it leads a person to believe the person they are dealing with is good and honest, while they are actually leading them to believe something that isn't actually true. The very best scam artists also seem like the very nicest people. This is done on purpose, with intent to scam, regardless of how wholesome or honest they might seem, it's all a game to separate you from your hard earned money.

You cannot hardly blame people for buying these gold drops, the buyer beware thing doesn't fly with me. These ads are written specifically to mislead people with the intent on selling the "gold pin drops" for more than their actual value. When you have someone working so hard to scam people while seemingly being honest, and does so everyday, you cannot blame someone who has no clue, no idea, no experience at all with scams for falling for them. It's sad. It's a good indicator on how far people are willing to go to take from other people so they can provide for themselves. It scares me to think this is the direction our society is taking.

If you hurt other people while making your profit, then what you are doing is wrong, period, no grey area.

Scott

Thanks for the post Scott, cleared up what questions I had about the gold drops. I dont ebay, so now I am clear as to how some one can raise their buyer rating to a level that would instill confidence in someone to buy from them.

You know honestly, I have a hard time believing that the people making the gold drops, do so knowing how incredibly wrong it is. I hate to think there are that many people who feel it's okay to openly and knowingly rip people off this way. But the posts speak for themselves I guess. I try to keep an open mind but it's difficult. I speak with a gentleman who has developed and is selling small melt furnaces, and as he puts it, it seems like almost half his customers are buying them to make these "pin drops" so now he's got into the habit of asking before he sells to people, what their intended purpose is.

I can't hold anything against people who have a different opinion on the subject, just simply because it's not easy to figure out or know the dynamics. I also enjoy people with different opinions about everything from what I do for a living, to morality. But what I have no truck with are people who intentionally steal from other people. There just simply isn't any right in it at all.

Scott

The person in the 1st 2 auctions I have known personaly. He was a top member at the GRF till he showed his true colors in these sales on Ebay. I cosidered him a freind at one time. I'm glad we had a parting of the ways. He will not loose any sleep over what he has done. If you ever meet him run before you are taken.

I wonder what the basemetal was on those pins? before smelting. The bars have a light but good color to them.

It's usually copper, sometimes with a very thin layer of nickel between. But almost always copper with gold plating.

Once you alloy copper with gold, it then has to be run as a copper proposition, or atomized, in order to part the copper from the gold. It's not an easy process, and to dissolve copper it takes 7 times more solution than it does to dissolve silver. Matter of fact, SiPi I believe has something like 7 acres of copper refining tanks. So it's right around 7 times more expensive to refine copper than silver, which means to make it economical you are going to want to refine as much copper as possible with a refiner to lower the operating costs and expenses. The money made on copper refining isn't the value of the copper, but rather the value of the other metals it's carries as impurities.

So alloying that less than 1% of gold with copper, is actually devaluing the gold because it's so expensive to refine at that point. Most of the time it's not worth it to refine. That would be akin to going out, buying a new car, driving it around for awhile, put a few dents in it then tricking people into buying your car for more than what you paid for it.

The reason it looks so gold is because copper is already close in color to gold, and when melted together the heavier gold tends to want to sink to the bottom. If you look at those pictures, sometimes you can see the difference in colors where the metal was melted, and the heavier gold sank to the bottom.

There are other tricks as well, sometimes they are spray painted, other times they hit it on the outside with a torch, or boil it in hydrochloric acid which eats off most of the copper on the surface and leaves the surface with a more gold color. There are lots of tricks. Sometimes it's really obvious, like when they alter the picture to show more gold color, you can see everything in the background has a gold tint.

I have spent a lot of time complaining to ebay about these scams, however they are not breaking any of ebay's policies, they are literally stating the exact composition, but how in the world does a 90+ year old woman know what gold plated pins are, or how much gold that might mean? I mean truly, it's taking advantage of people and that is wrong, as well as stealing, etc.

Scott

In other words. Keep your gold bars in a good'en DRY place or they will turn green. LOL

I agree, that the people that are selling these gold dropping ought to be banned from ebay for the simple fact they are scammers,

I wanted to see what value was in one of these dropping, and Whooooaa.. can I say Spray painted, when I hit it with my acid test with 10k acid it just bubbled.. alot of copper was found under the base color of GOLD. these people are scammers, and along with that, the ide pins are not solid gold as one said it's gold plated,

so.. bottom line.. they are fakes, and will not buy from gold droplets from ebay, I did the one to see what is trully behind this, and oh.. it was only a ten bucks.. better then buying them all up and finding out its truly fake.. Like one person said on here.. a 90 year old woman wouldn't know chyt about it other then GOLD Heaven Forbid Best buy it up.. so I can pay for my prescribtion... with GOLD....

its sick, sad and utterly grose.

I would never melt these pins down for the simple fact of,,, it takes alot to pull the impurities out of the bar, so best to sell pins to those that will refine it the proper way..

there are some predate 1990 pins which has more gold plating on then the new cable dated 1998

This is a really good topic for everyone.. Like to have people chime in on it.

Thanks for the great conversation and info.