List of CPU Chips / Gold Content

Originally Posted by ScrapHunter

I saw this list of gold content in CPU chips. From the document I can't tell who did the tests. Can anyone comment on it's accuracy.
Scribd

Some of the chips listed are

IBM 5x86C
Weight: 20.65g/piece
Gold quantity: 0.1g

Pentium PRO
Weight: 87.37g/piece
Gold quantity: about 1g

Intel Celeron (green fibre)
Weight: 8.92g/piece
Gold quantity:do not buy contains iron.

Gold plated pin
Gold quantity:4.5g/pound

Sim cards of Cell phones
Gold quantity:0.8g/pound

I have seen these lists of claimed yields. For the most part they are totally inaccurate, although sometimes you do see numbers for some items that make sense. For example.

The sim cards, you can usually get, dependent upon the type, age, etc about .8 - 1.1 grams.

HOWEVER

You can take this list of yields and flush it so far as I am concerned. The reason I say this is because what you do not know is how much it costs to process the material. When I process sim cards I use HCl/Cl to strip the gold on the outside, then a lye soak to remove the plastic cover on the outside, then I dry them, shred them, leach them again to make sure I recover all the values. It's more time and effort than just stripping the outside, but I am assured of recovering the maximum amount of value from the material by doing this. What the person selling to me does not know because they have never done this, is all the time, effort, energy and cost that goes into recovering and refining the material. So if they are looking at a lb of sim cards, and thinking to themselves it's worth about $40. They are trying to squeeze all that value out of the material leaving very little for anyone else. In that case, it's not even worth my time trying to talk and explain things to a person like this. They are basing their expected return on the actual value, not the actual profit that can be made.

Somewhere at some time someone posted that there was 1g per each Pentium Pros. That is just simply not the case. I suspect whoever did post that original information, did so because they were selling Pentium Pro's on ebay. I have seen Pentium Pros go for as much as $55 per each. That is insane. That's similar to these poor people who purchase the "gold melted virgin pin drops" what a joke. In the end the gold content is under 1% in those pretty gold looking bars of melted pins, but if you took it to a refinery, they would scan with an XRF, and if it reads under 1% they would tell you it has no value.

Pentium Pro's do NOT have 1g of gold in them. PERIOD. I have literally processed hundreds of them, and have never had a yield higher than .33 grams each. The amount of gold people perceive is just simply not there, not anywhere close, not even in the same universe.

Also, I want anyone reading to very seriously consider this. The amount of precious metals that any given scrap lot contains is subject to how much can be recovered. Different refiners use different methods and processes. For example, the this post states not to buy fiber CPUs. They do not take into account the MMLCs that are on the fiber chips, they just simply say not to buy because of the iron. If you know how to deal with the iron, and how to knock the gold pins off, and you are buying for the MLCCs also, you might very well be making good money off fiber boards. But because so many refiners do not know how to properly deal with the iron in thee, moist steer. Some people are adept for example at extracting the palladium from MLCCs, while other people are best at processing pins. Also, there are different processes used to recover from any given type of materialeee, each with their own merits. For example you can recover the gold from gold plated pins by using an etching solution to eat the copper and foil the gold, a sulfuric cell to strip the gold plate off, or by digesting them in Nitric Acid which can be very expensive. Each has their own cost involved which would make the pins more or less profitable for the refiner.

There are so many different dynamics to recovering and refining precious metals that to say, with certainty, any given material will produce x amount of precious metals is insane. There literally is no way of knowing exactly what the yield will be for any given material until you recover and refine it yourself, with your own processes.eeee

The problem as I see it is like this. The person holding the material wants to squeeze every cent they can out of the material. I can't blame or knock a person for that, seems like an aggressive business transaction and while it might seem a little self serving, is how business is practiced in this country. HOWEVER, if you are basing what you sell your material for,ee what you perceive the precious metals are worth, you probably are not leaving any room at all for a refiner to make a profit. In many areas a case of Nitric Acid will cost a refiner $250 or more. Also, each refiner is only able to recover as much precious metal out of the material as they can recover, dependent upon their experience, equipment, process, etc.

I am asked on a constant basis how much I am able to recover from any given type of material, by the people who sell to me. That would be like walking into a car dealership and asking the sales person how much they paid for the car, and expecting them to happily tell you so that you can make an offer as close to what they paid as possible. It's not going to happen. I am not going to tell someone that I am buying from "Oh by the way, I can get x amount of gold from that type of material" because I know, as a smart businessman, they would try to get as close to my yield as possible. Seriously. If you have never recovered and refined values, you will never know or understand the money, time, effort, energy, record keeping and compiling, etc etc etc that was invested to be able to come to those yield amounts.

What you are asking amounts to metaphorically speaking, asking a refiner to shoot themselves in the foot, and then to be happy to do so.

There are a few people I share information with. It gives them the ability to purchase scrap with confidence. But on the flip side, they treat me fairly and I am able to profit as well. I like working with people who are honest and fair, but those people often times seem few, and far between.

If a refiner is willing to give you a list of what they will pay for any given material, that is far better than any list you might find floating around the internet. It's worth, literally, it's weight in gold. So instead of looking for yields, why not just simply talk with refiners and find out how much they will pay. If you want to rip someone off or take the majority of the profit you can always sell on ebay, people just starting out commonly pay way too much for material on ebay. I wouldn't do it personally because my intent would be to make a customer I could keep and sell to on a regular basis. But it would be better than posting, asking yields for scrap on a forum.

And if you truly want to know what the yield of any given material is, try processing it yourself. Not only will you begin to understand the costs involved in recovering precious metals, and the dangers, but you will know beyond doubt, what you are able to recover. I think it would open the eyes of people who currently are thinking of selling their scrap as close to the yield value as possible.

See what refiners are willing to pay, they are going to know how much they can pay for any given material without over extending themselves. No matter what you believe the yield is, a refiner is only going to pay as much as they can to stay healthy as a business.

I would suggest instead of spinning your wheels searching for yields, that you spend that time and effort making a good solid connection with a refiner you can work with. Who might be geographically close to you so that you can actually interact with them, in the real world. Someone you can develop the type of business relationship that benefits you both.

Scott