Re: A bit more about scrap recycling

You cannot make any sort of income with a profit doing this extracting from electronic parts. I looked into this years ago and not only are the chemicals very dangerous, but the amount and quality of gold you can get off using the acid is minicule, and most people do not understand that what they extract STILL needs to be then sent to be refined, it is not pure gold when you use acid to melt it off computer components. Also it takes thousands of pounds of scrap metal and thousands of hours to go through each piece dipping them in acid, you need a warehouse or industrial size place for this and then you need to live near one of the locations that has such low priced scrap to get. What you see on ebay for lamely low prices probably too people hundreds of hours to do in total not including prices of acid, location, truck, other equipment needed.

A better thing to get into although just as labour intensive is dredging for gold pieces in rivers in certain locations only known to experts. I do not recommend the acid treatment of electronic parts as an income at all. It might be more profitable to buy the scrap melted gold off ebay and get it refined, then sell that instead, don't get involved in the acidic treatment side.

> After checking out a board recommended by Nathan Haines a few message
> threads south ( clicky-link) , I discovered that yes by golly there IS a
> market for scrap metals and there's recyclable metal in a lot of things.
> What surprised me most is that people will buy scrap gold on Ebay.

> The material there varies from computer circuit boards (which can be
> picked up at any municipal auction or corporate auction for Not Much
> Money) to old jewelry (which could be picked up by the astute flea
> marketer.) I kind of blinked at some of the prices people were willing to
> pay (check it out for yourself. Do a search for "scrap gold" on
> Ebay.)

> While there is MORE money in refining the gold and metals into nearly pure
> bars and selling those, that requires some equipment and knowledge and
> setup.

> In order to run this business, you have to be able to:
> * identify and certify gold and know the difference between HGE and karat
> gold.
> * have an electronic jeweler's scale and a good camera
> * do some research on the market, particularly on local markets.

> I think it's too labor intenstive to make a working wage at it (unless
> you're buying and selling scrap jewelry and then you have to know what's
> good and what isn't.) If you get serious about the business, you'll have
> to buy a refining setup (or find and price refiners.)

> You DO want to be careful, though, because some of the materials and some
> of the ways to recover the gold involve chemicals that are Not Very Good
> for you or the environment. If you have severe allergies or autoimmune
> diseases (fibromyalgia, etc) then the refining and processing end is NOT
> something you would want to go into (though you could buy and sell scrap
> jewelry.)

> Check the boards Nathan recommended for some starting places.