Have you ever tried recovering gold from computer card contact points?

[bull]

I did a little reading up on this and some of the methods for getting it off require the use of some nasty chemicals... not too interested in messing with that. I also found out you can scrape it off but the recovery rate is only about 1/2 or so. I know it's probably long shot but I was just wondering if anyone here has tried messing with it.

[Todd Wilson]

I havent tried to recover but this summer our antique truck club was rescuing some old trucks from a backyard and this guy selling them scraps old computers. He had more boards and memory simms then you could imagine. I mean dump truck loads of stuff.  He would pull the boards out of a computer, scrap the metal case to a pile, power supplys to a pile and then sort the boards in various size piles. He said he could get like 1$-4$ a board scrap to certain companies and then they  recover the various metals off of the boards. I was not aware that it was as much money as it was.


Todd

[Rocky]

1ton of ewaste has more gold than 17tons of gold ore. 

Here is an interesting study.      http://sitemaker.umich.edu/section002group3/e-waste