Gold price was: Re: ebay feedback

From: Innfogra_at_aol.com <(Innfogra_at_aol.com)>
Date: Tue Dec 7 00:04:07 1999

I know this business well, having apprenticed to a scrapper for several
years. He is lowballing you on prices. This is common among scrappers.
However he is fairly accurate when you include labor. Final prices depend on
the price of the metals that day, remember this is an international market.

>
> Breakage, what it sounds like the lowest grade general scrap, 2 to 4 cents/
> lb

Breakage breaks down into three categories (actually more if you consider
specialized breakage like telephones.) Low grade breakage is 2 to 4 cents per
pound. Motor breakage (must include a motor or transformer) is 4 to 6 cents
per pound. Aluminum breakage which has a high content of aluminum mixed with
other metals can be up to 16 cents per pound. IBM 3380 disk drives have the
aluminum platters pressed onto a steel shaft. The difficulty of separating
these pieces make them Al breakage.

> Cables with copper inside, power cords, data cords, etc. 6 to 8 cents/lb

 Wire is graded by the amount (%) of copper in them. It really pays to sort
it and remove the connectors. The last wire I sold ran from 12 to 24 cents
per pound. The connectors stripped of their housings and excess wire can
bring up to $2 per pound

> Old PC chassis that have some usefull parts, drives etc., but maybe no cpu
> or memory chips. 8 cents/lb

Old PCs have little value. My friend who is shipping containers overseas is
getting $10 for every 486 or better box he throws in the container, they must
have CPU (33mhz or better), memory and drives. They do not have to be tested
or working. Anything else is steel scrap or breakage.

> Just the circuit boards, 25 to 35 cents/lb

Raw PC circuit cards are this price. Raw dec cards are worth considerably
more. However it pays to clean the cards. If you remove the metals on the
card (this includes the aluminum capacitors then the cards can be worth up to
$1.50 a pound at the refiner. The last cards I sold I got $1 per pound for
run of the mill and 50 cents per pound for clean PC cards. This was at the
bottom of the gold market. However I get top dollar because of the job I do
to clean them. The last DEC cards I sold I got $1.33 per pound. This is after
all of the collectors in the area went through them and pulled anything they
were interested in.

Gold plated cards like the HP are worth up to $3.50 per pound. The brighter
the gold the thinner it is.

Circuit cards from before 1972 have gold that is much heavier plated. This is
when gold was $35 per ounce. The plating was normally 40 microns. HP plated
cards from the 1980s had gold at about 1 micron. These cards have to be
evaluated separately

It also pays to clip and collect the Tantalum capacitors. They are very
heavy. The last I sold I got $4 per pound.

> Aluminum that a magnet isn't attracted to. 35 cents/lb

The price of Aluminum fluctuates daily. The last prices I got were .37 for
painted sheet, .39 for unpainted sheet and ,36 for cast. 6061 extruded is
about is about .42, 6063 clips are about .44 and 6068 disk drive platters are
worth a premium.

If there is any iron or other contaminates the aluminum goes as irony Al
(less than 2% iron by weight) or breakage.

There are other metals of interest. The water cooled mainframes have a lot of
good copper that will bring 70 to 80 cents per pound. Electromagnetic
shielding, called Mu (pronounced moo) metal has a high nickel content and ha
a value based on the daily price of nickel. Also ALNICO magnets have a fairly
high value for similar reasons. These come out of the CDC 300 meg removable
disk drives and others. Stainless steel is highly prized because it is heavy
and worth about 20 cents per pound.

The last major metal salvaged is Palladium not Platinum. It is used heavily
in computers. IBM mainframe cards demand a premium because of their use of
Palladium.

Some keyboards have gold contacts in them. Backplanes are usually Palladium
or Gold. Big printers usually have a heavy cast Aluminum base plate. I am not
mentioning the value of some of the chips on the cards. Any ceramic chip has
a gold value. All plastic chips have a breakage value, even preprogrammed
pals.
A lot of this varies by the year of manufacture.

> Untested or bad monitors
> 14" about $3 to $5
> 15"

My friend who ships containers overseas is getting above market for monitors.
If they are at least SVGA he is getting $10, working or not. He can put up to
200 in each container. Now the minimum weight he has to get into his
containers is 40,000 pounds, so he can't send too many.

> 17"
> 19" More, but it isn't clear how much, as testing/repair becomes more
> worthwhile.
 
He is getting $20 non-working for the 19" monitors in the container. Most of
his large monitors he has serviced and sells them locally.

One consideration in the prices you were quoted was labor. To evaluate a
computer system you total what you will get for all of the metals then deduct
for the labor to take it apart to get the metals. Many scrappers will work on
a profit margin of 2 cents per pound.

If they feel they can drive you from the market they will bid more than scrap
if they have to. It is better to make friends with scrappers so you can make
deals before the sale.

We are thinking of making a video tape about evaluating scrap and another
about loading containers. Anyone interested?

Paxton
Received on Tue Dec 07 1999 - 00:04:07 GMT