With the New Year here, we want to talk about one of the metals that we all want to make our New Year’s resolution: Gold. Where to find it and how to sell it are major questions that people ask us, and we want to answer them. The answer is…We don’t know!!!
We say that half-jokingly, but gold is one of the metals that has been phased out of many applications due to the increase in technology. There is considerably less gold in almost all consumer electronics compared to 20, 10, or even 5 years ago. Some VCRs and older household electronics had gold in them, but now you only see very minor traces in a few of the connectors.
Other than jewelry, many pieces of gold have been hard to come by when scrapping. Any other places that you may run into gold other than in electronics? Gold-plated utensils and some place settings like bowls and plates may occasionally be gold-plated. Most of the weight will be from the materials that are underneath that coating, most likely copper or Brass.
While gold is the, well, “gold” of scrap metals, plenty of other materials can be easier to find and still worth some good money at your scrap yard. Over the last decade or so, our technology has improved greatly and thus has decreased the amount of precious metals that have to be used in electronics. So what once had a lot of gold on it before may have significantly less now, and some metals have been used more in computer scrap.
Copper and aluminum heat sinks, among other materials inside like Motherboards, hard drives, CPUs, and RAM boards, can be worth a pretty penny at the scrap yard. It is always difficult for scrap yards to find the right place to bring the materials to, but once you find the right buyer, these materials can be worth a lot of money and require less effort than scrap gold would.
Until next time…scrap ya later!
-Tom
