Ewaste PM content per unit volume

[Reelman65]

Greetings and thanks for the awesome information source.

I am looking to confirm the relative amounts of PM per unit volume. The reason is as follows:

I process ewaste as a way to acquire PMs without affecting my normal income. I would rather be pursuing my hobbies of hunting and fishing, but I believe the dollar will continue to fall etc. etc. So my tactic is to process and sell ewaste to break even, and then skim and hoard the material with the most PMs. I focus on volume because space is my limitation, not weight.
I don't currently refine and don't have the volume to go to a refiner, but I would keep all options open as my cache grows.

I always keep all CPUs, Memory, and easily removable IC chips. My margins seem to be high enough to start keeping the next PM dense items. So my question is what it would be?

Slot cards or just the fingers?
High end telecom

My rankings are as follows:
Ceramic CPUs
Gold fingers (which I haven't kept yet, due to the labor component)
Fiber CPUs, RAM
Hard Drive Cards
IC Chips, P4 cpus
???

I would love to hear your thoughts,
thanks!!!

[Victor]

If it was me doing what you are doing.....I would sell a bit of my CPU stash to buy a small band saw and I would start cutting gold fingers off. You still have a board that you can sell and the fingers are yours to hoard.

Why don't you break yourself even selling what ewaste you have too. Whatever you have left is free to you so you could sell that as volume justifies then convert that cash into a better form of PM's like gold bullion in a .999 form. It's a more liquid form and the buy and sell spread is quite a bit smaller than un-refined finger cards or CPU's. Better yet find a refiner that you can swap your material for to get PM bullion. If your going to hoard PM's....hoarding computer parts is not the way to go. Think most liquid and purest form. No one knows how much gold a finger card has on it or what karat it is. In a 1/10th ounce gold eagle....there is no doubt what you got.

[PartTimeScrapper]

I agree with victor you should be selling it all and buying bullion if hoarding is your goal.

[Ewasted]

Well said Victor!

[Reelman65]

won't I be losing percentages in the 2 transactions of selling scrap and buying bullion?

I agree with victor you should be selling it all and buying bullion if hoarding is your goal.

[EcoSafe]

of course you will, there is necessary profit in every step, you just have to decide if it is worth it to you.

you probably wont be able to trade gold comp parts for much if the dollar crashes. also the chemicals necessary to process it wont be available, even gold home made kisses or ingots or coins will be suspect. I would include silver in your DD stash.

[Reelman65]

Thanks for the perspective, but this tactic is specific to a particular scenario of moderate to severe inflation but not monetary crash. I am pursuing other strategies for more severe crashes where bartering etc. will be required.

of course you will, there is necessary profit in every step, you just have to decide if it is worth it to you.

you probably wont be able to trade gold comp parts for much if the dollar crashes. also the chemicals necessary to process it wont be available, even gold home made kisses or ingots or coins will be suspect. I would include silver in your DD stash.

[Reelman65]

I would love to find a refiner to trade ewaste for bullion. anyone know of one, that would do that in quantities of one ton or less?

If it was me doing what you are doing.....I would sell a bit of my CPU stash to buy a small band saw and I would start cutting gold fingers off. You still have a board that you can sell and the fingers are yours to hoard.

Why don't you break yourself even selling what ewaste you have too. Whatever you have left is free to you so you could sell that as volume justifies then convert that cash into a better form of PM's like gold bullion in a .999 form. It's a more liquid form and the buy and sell spread is quite a bit smaller than un-refined finger cards or CPU's. Better yet find a refiner that you can swap your material for to get PM bullion. If your going to hoard PM's....hoarding computer parts is not the way to go. Think most liquid and purest form. No one knows how much gold a finger card has on it or what karat it is. In a 1/10th ounce gold eagle....there is no doubt what you got.

[Victor]

I would love to find a refiner to trade ewaste for bullion. anyone know of one, that would do that in quantities of one ton or less?

Your going to have to start calling them up and asking. The gold refining forum might be a better place to ask that but I do know some will take your karat jewelry and trade you out in coin form. I am sure you could find the same for ewaste. There is a spread of course but there will be no matter what. These places got to make a profit somehow and that is where it comes from. That's just the nature of that business.....the trick is to develop a relationship with one or two places and work a deal that benifits both of ya.

[skipRAT]

Victor has "hit the nail on the head"
If your aim is to hoard PM's then,
Try to get as much in bullion form now, rather than holding onto your PC parts and hoping that there will be more value when you can refine it ?
An Eagle is an Eagle, everyone know the value of that.
Whereas a gold finger has ......what value to it?
This will be down to the buyer to determine what they are prepared to give you,
you would be totally in their hands!

Be Lucky

[Reelman65]

thanks for the input, but I have a bullion strategy already. As specified in the original description, I want to know the most dense, least effort PMs relative to each other, so I can find the best way to control or have access to the most PM, in a non-TEOTWAWKI situation. Kind of like stock options. Yes, I know owning stock is better than options, but options magnify your gains for a given dollar amount. (Before everyone tries to lecture me on dangers of the market, etc. I am not currently invested in the market. that is just an example).
Sounds like gold fingers are the answer, thanks for the information everyone.

Victor has "hit the nail on the head"
If your aim is to hoard PM's then,
Try to get as much in bullion form now, rather than holding onto your PC parts and hoping that there will be more value when you can refine it ?
An Eagle is an Eagle, everyone know the value of that.
Whereas a gold finger has ......what value to it?
This will be down to the buyer to determine what they are prepared to give you,
you would be totally in their hands!

Be Lucky

[Enoch43]

Reelman...I have been doing much the same thing you are, except I am hoarding gold plated metal such as pins and etc.

I don't devalue boards, but whenever I find gold plated pins on small components, I pull them. One example is the IDE connectors on 3.5" drives. Often they are very nice pins, fully plated, attached to a junky brown board. Rather than sell the whole drive for pennies a pound, I pop off that connector and then toss it into my shred pile. Then, at my leisure, I go at a pile of connectors with a small set of clippers and needle nose pliers while watching television. The primary reason I save these is to build up a decent amount of feed stock for a reverse plating cell. These are easy to build, and easy to run. After filtering the product, one could either break out the real chemistry and refine it to 99.99% pure Au, or take the lazy way out and melt it into a button that will stand up to an acid test, and could therefore be used in TEOTWAWKI trade as caret gold.

Here is a pic of what I have piled up recently......

[Dumpster-Dee]

beautiful ! what do the "sticks" come off of ?

[Enoch43]

They were antennas on a certain model of Motorola pager. They were a loop, I straightened them. I'm kind of excited to see how they deplate!

[Reelman65]

Enoch, thanks so much for your response. This is EXACTLY what I was asking. I actually have a box of stuff that is as you describe as low grade boards but seem to have gold on them. Me and my wife also watch tv while doing the final scrapping steps or other things like stripping wire or cutting off cable ends.

Thanks again,

Reelman...I have been doing much the same thing you are, except I am hoarding gold plated metal such as pins and etc.

I don't devalue boards, but whenever I find gold plated pins on small components, I pull them. One example is the IDE connectors on 3.5" drives. Often they are very nice pins, fully plated, attached to a junky brown board. Rather than sell the whole drive for pennies a pound, I pop off that connector and then toss it into my shred pile. Then, at my leisure, I go at a pile of connectors with a small set of clippers and needle nose pliers while watching television. The primary reason I save these is to build up a decent amount of feed stock for a reverse plating cell. These are easy to build, and easy to run. After filtering the product, one could either break out the real chemistry and refine it to 99.99% pure Au, or take the lazy way out and melt it into a button that will stand up to an acid test, and could therefore be used in TEOTWAWKI trade as caret gold.

Here is a pic of what I have piled up recently......

[Mechanic688]

I actually have a box of stuff that is as you describe as low grade boards but seem to have gold on them.

Low-grade cannot have gold on them. If they do have any gold that would make them mid or hi grade depending on the amount of it and any IC chips.
If your still curious about refining and want to at least read about it this place probably has more experts and wanta-be's than anyplace else on the web.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/index.php

[Reelman65]

Thanks Mech. I should have been more descriptive than "Low Grade". What I meant was boards that appear to have a higher amount of PMs but not enough boards to wrestle with the buyer over grading. (Like Floppy drives, brown key pads, some green and brown boards, antennae parts like enoch showed. Smalltimers like me often get lots of weird stuff that appears to have PMs but always only a few of a type.)

Yep, I joined the GRF a few weeks ago, I will probably never refine, but I love the site and people there. TONS of great info.

Low-grade cannot have gold on them. If they do have any gold that would make them mid or hi grade depending on the amount of it and any IC chips.
If your still curious about refining and want to at least read about it this place probably has more experts and wanta-be's than anyplace else on the web.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/index.php