scrapping electricals for pm's

miniroo

miniroo

Well-Known Member
Silver Stacker
Have started the hobby of scrapping to coincide with my existing hobbies of stacking & prepping.
the purpose is not just the pm's but I have an interest in recycling the left overs in an environmentally friendly way.
aswell as the fact that I like to pull things appart, so long as I don't need to put it all back together.
I enjoy removing screws, pulling wires and all that, i'd like to build a stack of copper & other interesting bits
so I think this hobby will be fun.

Today I picked up my first tv down the road, it's a sony! :)
will be driving up to a nearby area that is currently having hard rubbish collection
and i'll see what I can pick up.

computer towers seem a good one, they have quite a few pieces inside with gold.
there's many different metals in them and mobile phones that surprises me.
platinum, palladium, rhodium and all sort of words ending with ium.

scrap metal is another quite lucrative caper but requires room to store, a good ute or van
and a solid trailer, I don't have the room for big things at this stage so I will need to
have a system of disposing the large metal on a regular basis, maybe just drop them off
at the metal recyclers for free, they'll get to know me and maybe give me a good price when I
bring the good things to sell.

are there any stackers here that scrap electronics for pm's?
any tips?
 
I've been having a go at extracting gold from waste PC's just out of interest to see how much there really is.
Still extracting parts and collecting, but will soon be refining.
I have a feeling it will be the lowest per-hour rate I will have ever earned. :rolleyes:
 
There is a lot of information on this within this forum and there are a few videos on Youtube.

If you use the search feature they should come up pretty quick.

Synopsis for me: Modern CPUs have very little PM content and the health hazards associated with the chemical process isn't worth the minimal return.
 
Good news, a lot of you tube vids talk as if everyone knows what the bits are,
I'm not electrical at all so have no idea what a heat sink is except that it's a
nice chunk of alluminium.

an explanation of all them little bits along with the metal content would be fantastic!
if you could add laptops and mobile phones too it would be great.

Yeah lots of money in scrap it seems, I have no intentions of extracting the gold,
just immaculate the boards that contain gold and sell them as is.
they sell the gold boards like pamp ingot cards, it's like a different world of bullion.

yeah there's one guy on you tube that does real well on a daily basis and just for
having a few you tube videos about scrapping, google sends him $1000 cheques!
so there's definately a lot of people interested in the hobby, if you know your stuff
and can communicate it well on you tube, think you can do well that side too.

yeah wrcmad, I can imagine the hourly rate may not be too great, although some scrappers on you tube
show how to scrap pc's ect in minutes.
it's the enjoyment factor that makes up for the time for me, just undoing screws ect is quite theraputic
to some, it took me about 30 minutes to slowly scrap the tv, i've made a screw bin, a wire bin, a copper bin
and an alluminium bin in the shed and dropped in all in, there's the main board and things that i've yet to identify
but that will come aventually.

there's a thing that sits over the end of the tube and it has has heaps of beautiful copper wire,
it's the perfect wire for art use so i'm going to coil it up and maybe sell them at a craft market.
i'm stacking all the nice screws too so when I have lots of the same ones i'll bag them up and sell like that aswell.
even $1 for a bag of 100 screws is better then scrap metal price so i'm going to look at the best way to sell things too.

radiobirdman, sounds like you got it worked out too, that's fantastic, although I cringe at how they will process
it to extract the goodies, but still, it's money from nothing except your time and knowledge.
 
you will need to elaborate further before I take that on board thatguy, don't know hat your reffering too
 
miniroo said:
you will need to elaborate further before I take that on board thatguy, don't know hat your reffering too
Click to expand...
The problem is that only around 10% of all this e-waste is collected and taken care of in adequate recycling facilities [La Dou & Lovegrove 2007, Cobbing 2008], despite the well known fact that it contains a wide variety of hazardous components, such as heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants, as well as many valuable materials, such as metals (including several precious metals) and plastics. In fact, e-waste can both be considered as hazardous waste that potentially can cause serious pollution and health damage upon disposal, and as a huge resource that can provide the industry with valuable materials using less energy and less natural resources compared to using virgin materials in the production of new products. The use of recycled materials instead of virgin materials will also, in total, cause less pollution during extraction and further processing of the materials
[Cui & Forsberg 2003, Cui & Zhang 2008].
Click to expand...
Be my quest recycle away... when I researched it I decided risk(my health)/reward(Ag/Au) was poor
 
I have been collecting electronic boards and other PM scrap (braising rods, X-rays, HRC fuses, Hard Disc Platters etc) for about 10 years now (more so in the last 4 years) have a lot of it now but don't want to try and refine myself as it looks too messy and have too many other hobbies. If someone in Brissy gets the refining down pat send me a PM and I would be keen to trade it all in for some refined stuff. I have a electronic furnace, molds and die kit for once it's refined if that helps.
 
Here's a thought - why not just stack the components and not refine them.

That way you're not wasting your valuable income-earning time on a below-income operation, but you still get to keep the gold content.

Let's say hypothetically that gold repriced to $5000K, or you became unemployed, well then it just might be more worth your while in the future to refine them. You might even be able to get it done by someone else, cheaply.

Eg, if you earn $30hr today (just an example) and it takes 1hr per gram of gold to extract, then that gram (roughly $50 worth at the moment) just cost you $30 worth of time! That's 60% of your value right there. Work an hour and a half and you could have just gone out and bought a gram of gold instead.

Fast forward to the future, if you have that same gram of gold to extract, and you now get $40hr wages (if you're lucky ;) ), but gold is $150 per gram, then it cost you $40 (plus extras) of your time to make $150. That's much better. You'd have to work nearly 4hrs to go out and buy that gram just through wages.

Worth thinking about anyway. Unless you need cashflow or you just love the excitement of it, it sounds like waiting might be a good option? Plus it's like a crappy form of unemployment insurance (if you have enough scrap to salvage) ;)
 
Dogmatix said:
Here's a thought - why not just stack the components and not refine them.
Click to expand...

Because the misses says, what are you doing with that box of rubbish in the house

(So you move it outside and keep adding)

Then she says why is the driveway blocked with all those crates

(So you buy a shed and keep adding)

Now the shed is full, more crates are back in the driveway and I'm still tripping over more boxes in the house

A trailer load of scrap boards takes up a lot more room than a 1 ounce ingot of Gold
 
yes I'll leave the recycling to whoever buys what I scrap.
I have no intention of burning plastic to get metal, just finding it and stacking it up to saleable size then moving it.

pc's are just the start, i'm going for anything electrical, washing machines if I can get it into my hatch back, microwaves, vcr's. anything really, I love copper too, there lots of pure clean copper to be got, just love it.

the wire cables from tv's and extension leads ect are sold as 50% copper, that's pretty good considering the cables are pretty heavy, no wonder people stop to cut the cables off tv's left on the side of the road.

what about brass? taps and pipe fittings, that could be an easy one too.
 
whew.. what a week it's been!
a nearby suburb has hard rubbish collection
so i've been going back and forth loading up my hatch
with stacks of goodies!

I'm absolutely stuffed, just unloaded my last one for the day in the dark.
it's amazing how much I can get into my hatch, I load to the roof, front seat too and I can barely change gears.
but it's so addictive.

I'm gob smacked at the amount of ewaste there is,
it's incredible, i'm loading up the whole car
in just one little street, some people leave out so much, like just before the was one house with 3 big monitors, 3 towers, 8 keyboards, 2 printers, 3 mobile phones and a huge bag of cables, next door to them was another beautiful stack of electricals.

You might think this is an exageration but I assure you it's crazy.

I got 2 beautiful antique radio's, I got 3 massive plasma's, on wheels they are that big, about 50 dvd's, 80 tv's and 50 monitors.

vaccuums, heaters, an escooter! lots of speakers and things I can't think of, oh sewing machines.
the garage is loaded to the roof and right to the exit door
so I can't get in at all.

the shed is fully loaded too and todays 4 trips are
neatly stacked in the backyard, maybe 40 tv's and monitors are sitting out there. I think council start picking it all up from tommorow, but it's a huge suburb and will take them a week to get it all so I'll still be going for the next few days.

There's no time to scrap what I got, I'd like to start and make room but not whilst the goods are running hot.
but I must start this week as there's another suburb starting hard rubbish near me and this area should have much more pc's then the current one.

first day I started I grabbed every tv I saw, some were so big I can barely lift them, but in just one week I've realised that doing these hard rubbish collections, there's no need to break my back with huge old tv's, they take up most the room in the back, so now I'm already being more selective, and just loading up with monitors and little tv's, there's only so much time so I need to make the most of it when i'm out hoarding, I think I can scrap out a lot more from 6 monitors then one big tv, so that's how i'm doing it now.
 
@ Miniroo. Not to rain on your parade, but in Victoria, believe it or not, it is actually illegal to pick up hard waste from nature strips etc. It's covered under the "Theft by finding" legislation.

There have actually been court cases over what you are doing, instigated by the waste pickup companies.

Tread carefully. Nazi Germany is surprisingly very close.
 
miniroo said:
whew.. what a week it's been!
a nearby suburb has hard rubbish collection
so i've been going back and forth loading up my hatch
with stacks of goodies!

I'm absolutely stuffed, just unloaded my last one for the day in the dark.
it's amazing how much I can get into my hatch, I load to the roof, front seat too and I can barely change gears.
but it's so addictive.

I'm gob smacked at the amount of ewaste there is,
it's incredible, i'm loading up the whole car
in just one little street, some people leave out so much, like just before the was one house with 3 big monitors, 3 towers, 8 keyboards, 2 printers, 3 mobile phones and a huge bag of cables, next door to them was another beautiful stack of electricals.

You might think this is an exageration but I assure you it's crazy.

I got 2 beautiful antique radio's, I got 3 massive plasma's, on wheels they are that big, about 50 dvd's, 80 tv's and 50 monitors.

vaccuums, heaters, an escooter! lots of speakers and things I can't think of, oh sewing machines.
the garage is loaded to the roof and right to the exit door
so I can't get in at all.

the shed is fully loaded too and todays 4 trips are
neatly stacked in the backyard, maybe 40 tv's and monitors are sitting out there. I think council start picking it all up from tommorow, but it's a huge suburb and will take them a week to get it all so I'll still be going for the next few days.

There's no time to scrap what I got, I'd like to start and make room but not whilst the goods are running hot.
but I must start this week as there's another suburb starting hard rubbish near me and this area should have much more pc's then the current one.

first day I started I grabbed every tv I saw, some were so big I can barely lift them, but in just one week I've realised that doing these hard rubbish collections, there's no need to break my back with huge old tv's, they take up most the room in the back, so now I'm already being more selective, and just loading up with monitors and little tv's, there's only so much time so I need to make the most of it when i'm out hoarding, I think I can scrap out a lot more from 6 monitors then one big tv, so that's how i'm doing it now.
Click to expand...
I know a guy on the central coast who does what your doing & takes it all to an auction house . He makes a fair living out of it . He doesnt have a real job & always has money in his pocket .
 
boston said:
@ Miniroo. Not to rain on your parade, but in Victoria, believe it or not, it is actually illegal to pick up hard waste from nature strips etc. It's covered under the "Theft by finding" legislation.

There have actually been court cases over what you are doing, instigated by the waste pickup companies.

Tread carefully. Nazi Germany is surprisingly very close.
Click to expand...


yeah I know, and I can understand as some scrappers are messy buggers.
there are nice ways to do things and breaking tv's on naturestrips to pull out the yolks
is about as low as one can go.
the glass is highly contaminated and when that rubbish is removed, the broken glass remains and kids play there.

also I guess the recycling companies that are contracted to pick up the waste lose a large portion of
valuable scrap, even though councils pay them to pick up the waste, but then again I think it depends on the market,
if scrap metal is low then they also dump it in landfill as it's not worth the required workers to do the sorting and stuff.

I'm very considerate with peoples rubbish, if they are outside i'll ask if it's ok to take a few things.
costs nothing to ask politely, and so far everyone's been really friendly.
and if there's someone struggling to pull out their rubbish, I ask if I can help 'em take out the heavy items,
if there's something tossed on the side of the road I put it back up, I don't open sealed bags and if there's something in a box or
bag I want, i'll take the whole lot and put the plastic in my bin at home, so basically i'm like a mouse that takes but you'd never notice.

I have somewhere very close that recycles crt's, they are much better off there then in landfill, maybe I should apply for a gov't grant?
save the planet recycling, I need a ute with a caged trailer, maybe they'll donate the money?

The suburb i'm doing it in is huge, i'm just doing the closest part to me, have only done about 40 streets in the whole week,
and that's 5 trips a day, i'm not even touching the sides really, i've bumped into at least 15 different scrappers, all look to
of been doing it for ages, good trucks and ute set ups ect, I figure if they can drive around blatantly obvious that they are taking
stuff as they are over loaded with stuff, then me in my little hatchback with dark tinted windows can sneek around, load up and not stand out.

My suburb doesn't do hard rubbish like that anymore unfortunately, we need to book for a pick up and get one per year, and we need to leave the rubbish in the driveway and not outside at all.

I saw a tv dumped in a ditch way off the road and trecked down to pick it up, kinda regretted it carrying it bak up the hill,
but I got it and I did everyone a favour I think, someone had to go and get it aventually, don't see how a cop would fine me for that,
what about the bloke that dumped it in the first place?
 
today was the biggest day yet, much less tv's but scored 3 giant flat plasmas,
I wished I had a video camera to show this guys rubbish stack.
in a little court, the only pile and had a large sheet of timber across the front.
so from the main street looking in, it just looked like a pile of wood.

but I was parked on the corner so walked up and bingo, boingo, my god!
the three plasmas, a big box of 18 keyboards, about 10 compaq flat pc monitor type things,
a small box of pc modem thingies and a stack of cables, and two drink coolers which I grabbed too.

today was very different, spent much more time walking the piles instead of looking from the car.
there's 10 times more electrical things hidden I found.
and most don't look in the boxes, so many bags of electrical cables and stuff people tend to keep then toss out the lot.

bumped into an old scrapper in a street, we spoke for about 30 minutes, he was keen to share his experiences
and had so many tips i forgot a lot.
asked him about the law ect and he has no problems with police, basically he said what I assumed, if your just picking up a few
things, not making a mess or stopping traffic then they are ok with it, he said council isn't as easy with it and he's had council people
kick up a bit of a fuss, but all you need to do is ask the owner, if they give you permission then your fine.

anyways, thought i'd update you all on my excellent adventure, thus far haven't made a cent, have used up $20 in petrol and done 300 k's.
I have so many bruises it's getting very uncomfortable, but i'm pushing on.
tommorow i'm going to have to start scrapping things in between trips, never expected to have so much junk lying around in such a short time, actually I never thought i'd ever see 14 vacuum cleaners in my backyard so it's all new.
 
I think your going to turn into one of those steptoes that everyone dreads as a neighbour with the yards full of crap . Im glad i dont live next door to you .
 
we have a couple of them in the area, but no, i've been neat & discreet, i'm not a hoarder for phsycological reasons,
i'm scrapping this crap and stacking the pm's, recycling the waste as I go so very small footprint.
 
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