Rare Earth Magnets and Platters

[SNPSELLER2015]

Looking for a rare earth magnet and platter buyer?

[Patriot76]

A place to start your research is at the bottom of this thread containing previous posts. It might be a place to start. I do not have the background or expertise to offer more insight.

[hills]

It looks like you found our prime buyer of HDD magnets here. He hasn't posted in awhile so don't know if he's still active or not.

The only other outlet that i know of is ebay. You can find them listed for sale there.

Just my own personal opinion:

There doesn't seem to be a huge market demand for HDD magnets. There's been some research done into recycling them but that part of things seems to still be in it's infancy.

At present: China seems to have control of the rare earth metals that are needed for electronics manufacturing. They don't appear to be tweaking the market to drive up prices. Quite the opposite really. If they have been dominating the available supply it's probably more for the purpose of insuring that they have a readily available supply of raw material that is mission critical to their manufacturing base.

That's where the U.S. is vulnerable. We depend on the Chinese for most of our supply of rare earths.

Heaven forbid we should ever get into a war with them. What few rare earths we do have on hand here will skyrocket in price.

That's why i've been hoarding, and not selling, the few neodymium alloy magnets that i run across.

The platters are all but worthless. They're either aluminum or glass with a very scant ( unrecoverable) amount of PM's on the surface. The ali ones go to shred. The glass ones go in the trash in my shop. There is a niche market for them in arts n crafts. Best to check that one out on ebay to see how they're selling.

Anyway ... that's about all i know to date. There may be more to the story that i'm not aware of.

[SNPSELLER2015]

Thanks for the post and insight I think I will also hold on and stock pile these metals as well. I dont think that anytime soon will this trade war will stop. Thanks again....

[PartTimeScrapper]

IMHO The magnets arnt worth holding on to. Send them to the yard with your shred. The platters can usually be sold to the yard for Aluminium. Your yard may vary.

[JJinLV]

Your best best for both is to sell per piece and not per pound. The platters you should be able to sell as mlcc price at your local yard but they're aesthetically pretty so some folks buy them for arts and crafts. Strong magnets are sellable and it's unlikely their scrap value will ever be higher than a resale value as a usable magnet. If you're lucky you can find someone to buy them a couple for $1 or something. Not sure it's worth the effort imo

[hills]

For all practical intents and purposes ... right at this moment ... i would tend to agree with you guys. The magnets and their backer plates are exotic alloys that most yards simply aren't set up to deal with. If there's no market ... there's no value there. Don't waste your time with it. Chuck it in the shred pile and move on.

On the other hand ....

We might be overlooking a potential opportunity because it's a thing that we don't ordinarily deal with.

Quote:

The price of neodymium has fluctuated on world markets largely because of changes in Chinese production. In mid-2011, it sold for about $500 per kilogram; but, by the end of that year, the price had fallen to less than $350 per kilogram, or 35 cents per gram ($9.92 per ounce). Pricing has continued to slide, fetching less than 4 cents per gram ($1.13 per ounce) as of late November 2017.

Source: https://www.recyclingtoday.com/artic...als-recycling/

It's just my thing, but i'm more concerned from a national security standpoint. The profit potential in time of war is strictly secondary. The way i figure it ... if every scrapper's shop had a few pounds of rare earths ... it might make a positive difference with powering up our military industrial complex in time of crisis. Call it strategic stockpiling ?

Anyway ... they don't take up much space. The magnets are glued on to the alloy backer plates. They pop right off with a little bit of heat from a heat gun. Apply a little extra heat and the magnets lose their magnetism. They're less of a hassle to store that way. The backer plates are some kind of nickel alloy ? There might be potential value there if a market opens up as well.

Just something to keep in the back of your mind. If you're ahead of the curve ... you're sitting pretty IF the time comes.

[magnetscrapper]

Hi guys,
We are starting the first rare earths recycling facility in North America and can start buying rare earth magnets. Can buy with the bracket but ideally without as the bracket can go to more traditional metal or aluminum scrap (depending which you have). We don't process the bracket.
Magnetic or demagnetized, any coating is accepted (magnets from various electric motors, car starters, some models of ABS brake pump, speakers, etc... all have different coatings, sizes and shapes).
Solid pieces or broken scraps.
Depending on the volume can pay between $1 and $4 per kg of magnet.
Let me know if you have any questions and you can contact me at kmugerman@geomega.ca

[eesakiwi]

The backing plate is made of some special metal ( that i cannot find the name of ) that is resistant to magnetic fields ( i think thats what it does )

And i read that Chinas rare earth mines are close to the border with Nth Korea and that Nth Korea is sitting on a lot of rare earth metal reserves & potentual.
About the same time that i read this, it was in a investment companys e news paper called, 'The Outsider'
Nth Korea decided to get a bit chummy with Trump.
If this is true, its setting up for a situation where the US gets first access to Nth Koreas rare earths metals, in return for US protection of Nth Korea agsinst China.
I think this would lead to peace agreements as the US & China would both then have major control of the markets.
US for domestic production & export of that production, with a reliable rare earths sources, some export of it too.
And China supplying the rest of the world in the bare rare earth metals, plus export of it in produced items.

Im no much about politics. But i got a 5 gallon pail filled with hard drive magnets on their backing plates.

[mikeinreco]

Hi guys,
We are starting the first rare earths recycling facility in North America and can start buying rare earth magnets. Can buy with the bracket but ideally without as the bracket can go to more traditional metal or aluminum scrap (depending which you have). We don't process the bracket.
Magnetic or demagnetized, any coating is accepted (magnets from various electric motors, car starters, some models of ABS brake pump, speakers, etc... all have different coatings, sizes and shapes).
Solid pieces or broken scraps.
Depending on the volume can pay between $1 and $4 per kg of magnet.
Let me know if you have any questions and you can contact me at kmugerman@geomega.ca

You may need to purchase buyers thread here before you try to buy..........Either way welcome aboard and good luck

[eesakiwi]

Read somewhere if you heated the magnets up they loose their magnesium but still have their rare earth values intact.

Yep, i was 1/2 way thru a project to make a laboratory hotplate & magnetic stirrer and found this out.
= Project abandoned..

[eesakiwi]

The HDrive magnets backing plate is made out of MU metal..

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu-metal

https://hollandshielding.com/Mu-Meta...SAAEgKd-_D_BwE

[auminer]

Neodymium in that sample is 16ppm?

Good luck with that. Viable production ores are well over 10% grade. (100,000ppm or over 6,000 times as abundant as in your sample.)