Make your own gold recycling business

Let’s write about recycling Gold from Electronic, Telecommunication & Computer Scrap. To find the gold keep your eyes and ears open. Don’t let to miss a chance to collect gold from scrap.

This post should give you simple guidelines how to collect scrap, sort all kind of electronics and recover gold from. To be successful in this business you need to keep your eyes and ears open.

Simply nut not easy enough. Make sure you know where gold is hidden and to find right price to pay for that kid a scrap. Also, important thing is to know the amount of gold in particular electronic device or part where you have gold plated parts.

For people doing this for a long time these values are well known but not if you are newbie.

Let’s take a look for mobile phones and try to figure out amount of gold inside these electronic devices - Some people saying that a bag of used mobile phones contains a gram of gold. There are a lot of mobile phones in the world, so how much of the gold we need can we get from them? This is the question everyone dealing with gold recycling business wants to know. Numbers can confuse some people, so let’s quote some text from experts saying about gold amount inside smartphones -

“There be gold in them thar smartphones”, said the European Commissioner for the Environment Janez Potocnik last month. He didn't use those exact words, but that was the general idea.
"The business case is clear," he said, as he launched revised waste and recycling targets for the EU.
"There's gold in waste - literally. It takes a ton of ore to get 1g of gold. But you can get the same amount from recycling the materials in 41 mobile phones."
This seems to be largely correct, whether the commissioner was talking about an imperial ton, or metric tons (one is 1,016kg, the other 1,000kg).

Take these facts and buy old smart phones with prices determined with global gold value at that time.

Now let’s see amount of gold in computer unit - When you buying CPU’s for recycling keep in mind that old ones contains much more gold per pound than new CPU’s. Also, as I shown on example before, low class and mid class CPU has less gold value per pound then high CPU class. These Intel Pentium vs Intel Celeron gives you real gold value per pound example.

To write more about gold inside processor chip - The processor is the brain of the PC. This means that every computer has one, and it contains plated pins. Some processors have high gold value per pound and some of them not. Older processors are generally larger and have more generous gold plating than more modern ones. For gold recycling business 386/486 and Pentium chips are particularly most valuable.

Process of recycling electronic scrap

On many occasions we already mentioned electronic recycling process but in short steps. This article should provide you more precise and detailed step by step procedure for collecting and recycling electronic scrap.

Step by step recycling chain for electronic scrap consists of various actions you must take care for. In short way, these are steps required: collection, dismantling, shredding, and end-processing of the various materials and metals.


Each step requires experienced specialists with dedicated technologies. If you are not familiar with technologies we mentioned, it is smart thing to do to hire company with experience and technology needed. First 3 steps can be done by anyone with basic knowledge, but the last step requires special techniques and should be done by specialized company dealing with recycling electronic scrap. Last step is the crucial one, which makes the physical recovery of metals back into their pure metallic form. If we speak about environmental impact of recycling process, we must understand how important is to make this process Eco-friendly as much as possible. Transformation of circuit boards and other materials into precious metals, copper and other base and special metals forms is a process we all need, but not with any price.


Any individual which wants to recycle electronic scrap wants to know gold, silver and other metal content inside some scrap categories.


Lets try to answer that question - These are typically categorized into different qualities, depending on their gold content:


very high grade: gold content of minimum 400 ppm
high grade: gold content of minimum 200 ppm
medium grade : gold content of minimum 100 ppm
low grade: gold content of minimum 50 ppm
very low grade: gold content lower than 50 ppm
HINT: Remove large Al/Fe-parts but be careful, especially in case of shredding and sorting, not to lose valuable (precious) metals in side streams. For high and medium grade boards avoid pre-treatment and ship them as they are.


Each recycling process consists of the following operations and services:


Weighing and sampling collected materials - This make sure that material is accurately weighed and sampled. If you have weigh materials right then you can calculate their value more precise. Providing correct weights, moisture content and representative samples for assaying provides numbers to get accurate gold or silver percentage. Besides that, with materials like electronic scrap that contains hazardous substances, precise determination of the material composition is a prerequisite of environmentally sound treatment.


Smelting and refining process - Most recycling companies uses a standardized metallurgical flow sheet, based on copper, lead and nickel as collector metals to secure high recovery yields for all precious metals and numerous other metals. Any plastics or organic residues contained in the input materials are also utilized as a reducing agent and partly as a fuel substitute.


Recycling process can be different from one company to another but they all do the same finish. Extracting gold or some other precious metal. While doing that, many other metals and non metal elements are collected and mostly they all can be recycled for further production process.

Celeron 3L9XP without gold inside - Don't bother

If you read my blog then you could notice some broken CPU chip I have show you to see gold in them. This Celeron 3L9XP has shown as not worth at all for recycling.

I broke this CPU as well and find out that there is no gold content inside. Take a look at those pictures and see that there is no gold on the surface.

For CPUs with gold follow these links

CELERON D with Gold
755 Intel with Gold inside

However you can still collect these CPU for recycling gold from outside small pin surface. There is no enough gold for you to buy these CPUs but if you can get them for free it is worth to collect them and recycle for gold later.

How to get out gold from old computer?

Do you really think that it is possible to get out gold from old PC?

If we talk about getting gold from old PC, it is crucial to understand recycling factor in the whole story. That means that you can't buy expensive computers and electronic parts to get out gold from them. Instead, you need to get cheap material for recycling. For that manner, we are saying Old PC and thinking about computers which don't worth someone as they are.

Gold price all around globe has become main reason for recycling gold from any source people can think about. Old Computers can be rich with gold content and that is why are they so much wanted recycling material. Keep in mind, not any PC component is worth with gold. Forget about power units or main housing components made from plastic. Make sure to collect all CPUs, motherboards, RAM modules and other components with gold plated connectors.

To get more secure way of doing this kind a job take a look at the documentary on NGC how people collect all kind of raw materials and how they extract gold. In most cases they need to use hazard chemicals so be careful and let the professionals do that step. All you need to do is to collect gold plated components, broke them apart and take them to recycling plant in your area.

It is possible to do it at your home if you know what are you doing, but still it is important to know how dangerous that process can be.

For those people who don't want to deal with chemicals it is better way to take their scrap to someone who can do it in a professional way with right equipment.

On my further posts I will show some other cool examples of gold hidden inside electronic devices. In that way you can see where to look for gold and how to make money from it. Don't throw away old electronic devices, keep them instead and sell their gold content.

Beside gold maybe you can find silver or some other noble metal.

Wonder if there is gold inside CPU?

New CPUs are made using new technology with a less gold than old ones, but still there is gold inside them. To find that gold first you need to take CPU apart and to search for gold plated elements inside CPU housing unit.

How much gold you can find inside CPU?

Here are two examples of gold plated components inside modern CPU. To be honest, these CPUs are not so modern anymore but they are used even in these days. You can find gold in personal computers but not as many as that was case in lately 80’s or early 90’s.

First example shows you gold plated components inside Celeron D processor and second one shows you 755 socket Chip with gold inside. Both of these CPUs are broken and gold is easy to be noticed.

Production process become more precise and gold plating was made more accurate which means that CPU’s from early 2k year contain less gold per unit than it was case in a decade before.

However, if you want you can still find gold to recycle. Not as much as it was case before, but it is worth to try to recycle even these new Celeron, Pentium or AMD chip.

CPU is component which is made of significant amount of gold. Mostly gold is trapped inside CPU housing unit. To collect gold you need to break it part and to look for plated parts. After that it is easy to dissolve gold plated surface and collect pure gold.

Amount of gold depends on which processor we talking about. Some of them have more gold than others but one guideline stays and that is - Older processors have more gold than new ones.

For example - Cyrix Cx486 processor contain about 0.11 grams of gold inside. That means that you can find one gram of pure gold inside 10 CPU units. It is not bad for recycling them. Other example is Cyrix 586 processor which contains 0.25 grams of gold inside single unit. You need only 4 of these processors to make one gram of pure gold. Take a note and do the math. It is quite good to break them apart and to dissolve gold from them.

Today we know that most valuable processors are Pentium PRO with about 1 gram of gold inside and AMD-K5 PR133 which contains 0.5 grams of gold. This applies for single CPU unit.

Gold inside Intel Celeron D

Here I show you broken CPU from my old PC. This is Intel CPU Celeron D model and I brake it apart to show you gold content inside.

Beside gold plated pins you can see outside, this CPU have significant amount of gold inside its body.

This is socket PPGA478 CPU and like you see it comes with gold inside. I broke my CPU just to show you how to get gold out of CPU housing. Before braking your CPU make sure to remove pins from outside. The best way to do that is to use hot air blow machine. That is fast and easy way to remove gold plated pins from these kind a CPUs.

After you have removed pins take any kind of hard tool like pliers and screwdriver and broke CPU housing which will result with two main parts like you see on my pictures. Inside it housing unit there is gold hidden.

One more time to mention - this is Celeron D CPU which comes on A478 socket. One post before I have show you how to brake 755 socket CPU and gold hidden inside. Later on I'll try to reveal few more CPU models and to show which one have most gold inside its body.

Don't throw away old CPUs - in some time you may want to recycle them to get all that gold out. If you don't know how to do it then I suggest you to sell those CPUs for recycling. Someone want them and will bid for your quantity.

Gold plated circuit board and chip

Have many old boards and chip inside? Don’t know what to do? Maybe it’s time to sell those for recycling gold from.

To make money by selling old Computer parts you need to find recycling corporation which can take gold and silver out of electronic circuits. Gold value of Computer Chips found on Motherboards & PCB Circuit Boards can be significant especially with these gold prices.

Mostly old circuit boards are heavy gold plated but still you can find gold in these new ones. I have showed you already example of gold plated Intel CPU 755 Socket processor. Depending on their age, computer electronics and cell phone electronic boards can also contain rich gold content made up of gold-plated circuit traces, edge fingers, connectors, Integrated Circuits, transistors, & memory chips.

If you don’t know how to take them apart and to recycle gold from them it is a good idea to take your electronic parts to recycling plant and to ask for fair price.

Electronics from old army equipment can be rich with gold parts, also aero and radar equipment and telecommunication devices as well.

Make sure to know how to recognize those parts so you know where to look for gold.

Some printer devices contain gold and you only need to take board out of them, not mechanical parts. If you find old phones or some other telecommunication equipment make sure to look for gold plated parts.