Can't believe somebody is actually bidding on this

[AlphZeta]

I was just looking around on eBay and found this http://www.ebay.com/itm/65-LBS-Of-Computer-Circuit-Board-Scrap-for-Gold-Recovery-/221051669064?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3377b4ca48

How much gold could you seriously get out of 65 pounds of junk board? I remember seeing a video on a tech site (can't remember whether it was extremetech or tomshardware) that you can only recover a tenth of a gram of gold from a single motherboard...

[T4P]

AAAAARRRRRRR! THE SCALLYWAGS MUST BE KIDDING ME 'RITE?

[metalphreak]

At ~$50AUD per gram, you'd want at least 6 grams of gold to break even, and that doesn't include tools, consumables, and effort put in to extract it...

You can't blame the seller, he didn't set the price. Not completely his fault if people bid too much on his useless junk 

To be fair, he never claims how much gold is actually there to be reclaimed.


Also, the layer of gold on these things is ridiculously thin. It's only there as a contact surface so won't be more than a few microns or something thick.

[siliconmix]

its money laundering

[saturation]

Buying old boards is more than just gold, the big haul are the rare elements in some components, once extracted from slag.  This is why I posted on another thread, the interest is this process has made recycling PCB more earth friendly in developed nations, given that China, a large source of such, threatens to control its distribution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element#Recycling

How much its worth:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/42194545/Rare_Earth_Metals_Become_Recycling_Gold_For_Cleantech_Sector

[Dagon]

How much gold could you seriously get out of 65 pounds of junk board? I remember seeing a video on a tech site (can't remember whether it was extremetech or tomshardware) that you can only recover a tenth of a gram of gold from a single motherboard...

Tomshardware:

http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/550-gold-motherboard-chemistry.html

[MikeK]

See, and we all thought Scrapper Girl was stupid. 

[AlphZeta]

Aha, thanks @Dagon, that was the article I read before...

[amyk]

Title should now be "can't believe somebody is actually paying $277.5 for this"

[codeboy2k]

last year I remember seeing a similar auction.. it was for a box of junk PC boards, like this one. it was sold at around $800 USD. 
I couldn't believe it!  I think it was like 250 lbs of boards

it made me upset that I had just recently finished cleaning up and I discarded about 100 lbs of old boards myself.
I sent them to the scrap bin. I was tired of seeing that old box of junk in the corner..