reclaiming precious metals from electronics

[huskymill]

so I was just watching tv and a commercial for investing in silver came on. they were talking about how silver is used in the production of electronic devices. this got me thinking. so after a quick internet search I found some info I thought might be interesting to people on this forum.
so here it is.
http://www.ehow.com/how_4674637_refi...nic-scrap.html

if any of you have done this before or know better ways to do it please comment. It could be a technique that would be of some value should shtf. if there is no power grid, it would be nice to still be able to use your electronics for something.

[huskymill]

the one big problem that stands out to me is the use of sodium cyanide. im not sure that's an easy to use or obtain chemical.

[Rick]

We had "junkers" reclaim all our old electronics starting back to 1980 anyway. They would buy all of our electronics and smelt the gold out of it. You could get your knickers twisted for you if the boss caught you tossing any junk in the trash because they sold ALL of it. It's pretty big business when you do it at the Fortune 500 level.

[hunter63]

Had a friend that used to recycle the silver out of photography solutions.......most likely not practical these days.

I think you would need some fancy set up to do any reclaiming, most likely not a cottage industry.

[welderguy]

the cost and labor associated with reclaiming the precious metals is not even close to making it worth while on a small scale. I heard about this and researched it in depth. What i found out was in an old computer there is less than 4.00 worth of gold .

[huskymill]

http://mrmoneyhustler.blogspot.com/2...-scrap-in.html
I found this as well. it takes a while to read but I still think its interesting. welderguy may be right about the time needed to do this not being worth it, but its still a cool idea and with today's value of gold its kinda hard to let it go to waste if there's a way to use it. back up at MTU it seemed like they were throwing out old computers every couple of years, and a lot of them. if I had known about this sort of thing I might have talked to a few chemistry majors I know.