I recycle gold components and PCBs for the simple reason, what else do I do?
This forum has killed the analogue scope dead, digital is everything, so what do I do with about 70 Tek 7000 and HP180 scopes and plug ins? I bought them, salted them away, and fully expected to spend much time getting them working. The market is dead, today a 7104 with correct plug ins fetched about 100GBP, the 7403 with plug ins quite a bit less. Even standard items like the 8640 sig gen are worthless now, just paid 10GBP.
In actual fact the best recycling components are RF connectors, many are gold plated, my market is the military so the gold was more than a film.
Gold plated PCBs are pretty much a waste of time, the ones made by HP in particular. It is actually called gold flash, and my recycling place says there is more gold on an edge connector, finger type, not 41612, than the whole board. You know these boards are useless when the front panel switches wear their was through the gold then the copper, 8082 and similar slide switch test equipment, all they are good for is scrapping.
I empathise with the chemicals, this is why I get a licenced place to do the work. But why are the sporting fraternity allowed to blast lead shot all around the countryside, tonnes and tonnes of it, without any restrictions?
A gold side braze chip is nice, but why do you want hundreds? Not going to use them, in fact a Pentium/486 is so complex that you simply wouldn't wire one up to play with.