Well people, its called "How to extract gold", not "How to get rich" from extracting gold. Absolutely loved the chemical processes. Really fun to watch. And especially all the time and effort it took to do this.
rich you get if you buy alot and then let a refinery do the job since they not only dont use chemicals but they get stuff done with alot less labour involved ;) nobody in its sane mind would try to process gold from e scrap himself if they want to turn a profit, exept you build a factory for 6-10m usd
@Johnathan Saegal bleach from any grocery store, hydrochloric/muriatic acid from any hardware store, hydrogen peroxide from grocery store/drugstore, sodium metabisulfate stump remover from Home Depot and also sold at home brewing stores, coffee filters and pickle/canning jars… if you -really- think this requires a chemistry lab and/or special order chemicals, this is sooo not the hobby for you.
I been studying the refining system a lot. Today , you have really made it simple as compared to those other fancy systems. I can now process all my pins and fingers. Thank you deeply.
While the extracted gold might not be worth all of the trouble extracting it, I totally enjoyed the video and found it very informative and now I feel like getting the chemistry set out. The best thing is NO MERCURY was used! Great Job!!
It's incredibly interesting to see the chemistry behind this. I'm lucky enough to mine it from streams so it's amazing to see people mining it out of urban environments.
Went to Colorado once, South Fork area. Prospected for days with not a single speck of gold. I guess you have to venture extremely far off the beaten path. It was rather disappointing but nice to know I have a box of old computer junk I can 100% refine gold from.
Thank you for showing me that method of gold recovery from electronic scrap. Not only did I learn a new chemical process, but also that I should stick to my day job! Very nice video.
I never liked chemistry back in school but you got me hooked. Fascinating to see a wizard going back and fro between solid and liquid state. Great job!
Hes UA-cam's #1 BEST REFINER ! The knowledge he shares could very well be kept secret to himself, yet he takes the time to teach US ONES WHO WANT to learn this underrated life skill. Not only are you an AMAZING and skilled chemist and refiner, YOU ARE AN AMAZING TEACHER and holder of these ancient old alchemical secrets🤳👨🔬👑 You introduced me to the art of refining and i am really thankful❤ I am studying to be a jewler..been 2 years now. But this is a skill i am soo attracted to..I LOVE TO WATCH THE PROCESS !! I LOVE WHAT COMES AT THE END ! A GLOWING GOLDEN ORB OF BEAUTY. I tip my hat to you sir 🙌🏻 You have amazed me OVER & OVER AGAIN with your level of skill and have taught me wonders !! Such skills will help me tons as i work in Gold and silver and always have to deal with contaminated gold/silver waste- but with this skill-i can save a lot of money and being a student- IT WILL HELP ME SOO MUCH.. THANK YOU SREETIPS !! I hope to one day meet you ! I have so many questions i would love to ask. With that said - I wish you a great afternoon and a productive day. Blessings from CANADA -Jonathan-
hey dude, youtube is free only the internet service is not free but has many educational pieces. just watch your cowboy and Indian black and white show.
Please remember that RECOVERY and REFINING are two totally different processes. With escrap, and with many other forms of gold scrap, the gold must first be RECOVERED from the scrap before it can be REFINED to high purity gold. In this video, RECOVERY is the process of separating the gold from the circuit card material that the gold foils cling to. I used hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide with an aquarium bubbler to RECOVER the gold foils so that those foils could be REFINED in later steps. After the gold foils were lifted from the circuit card fingers by the action of the the air bubbling through the hydrochloric acid and over-the-counter 3% hydrogen peroxide, I collected all the foils in coffee filters - at this point the RECOVERY process is complete. Now I proceed to the REFINING of the RECOVERED gold foils. REFINING is the process of 1) dissolving the gold foils 2) filtering out insoluble material 3) then reconstituting the gold out of solution with a chemical precipitant, in this video I used sodium metabisulfite. Sodium metabisulfite, when mixed with the chloroauric acid (dissolved gold) produces sulfur dioxide gas. The gold atoms in the chloroauric acid have an affinity for the sulfur atoms in the gas and they begin to cling to the sulfur atoms, but they don't bond chemically. At some point the gold gets too heavy and falls (precipitates) out of solution. When this happens then the REFINING process is complete. RECOVERY and REFINING are two totally different processes.
YES, it would have taken me several years and one thousand scrap computers to accumulate that many trimmed fingers. I paid $417 for five pounds of trimmed fingers, that's $83 per pound. I bought those over-priced fingers to make this and other videos, not to make a profit. Sellers on eBay use the perpetual myth that there is a half ounce of pure gold in every scrap PC to charge, and get, anywhere from two to ten times more than the fingers are worth in terms of the amount of gold that the scrap actually contains. People just keep bidding the price of the scrap higher and higher. The persistence of this myth is astonishing.
I just wanted to add to the newer viewers that this video is NOT about making money by getting gold in this manner. He is just showing the process that can be used. He is already aware that it cost more to scavange the gold by this method with the current price of gold! Add in the cost of the chemicals, equipment and what the trimmed fingers costs you and your return is less then $50. So please stop posting the same response/question that has been posted and answered several times. I guess some people just don't listen or somehow miss the lesson in chemistry he was giving. He has repeatedly stated that he didn't do this for profit. Great video and I may just try it for the heck of it. Yes, I have that much free time on my hands. LOL. Thanks... :)
Half way into the video , my curios mind just wants to know what his voice sounds like.. and is he not using his voice cause it's horrible and would district from the video content? Or is it that his voice is so sexy and would distract from the content?
Well versed in chemistry with solid lab technique. This was obviously not his first chemistry set! End to end process was well documented. Enough warnings and cautions to be safe but is not overbearing. Detailed enough documentation so after watching, someone with similar skills and equipment will have the info necessary to reproduce. Very interesting video to watch. Subscribed!
If you take nothing else away from this . If this was something you though you would be interested in doing but you didn't know how, well know you know and you have to decide if it's worth the time and money. Thanks for doing all the hard work so I can forget my get rich quick scheme.
IKR I've always wanted to do this but now I know why more don't you can't really make any money unless you have a repair shop and people donate their computers when it's not practical to fix them. I've donated a couple to a computer repair shop. They probably do this or sell to others to try.
Yep, definitely can't make money doing this. Most would make more money off of one broken down tower with all the components in-tact vs doing something like this. Even shops would benefit more from fixing up or at least scrapping what components work and selling those vs going through this unless it was a popular site for donations but even then it probably wouldn't be enough to be worthwhile. I'd say this would really only work if you owned an electronic waste center which would be the ones who would actually benefit from it vs anyone else. Everybody else would either break even, lose money or would never have enough to scrap for it to be worthwhile compared to just selling as is or salvaging.
Hmm. He started with 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of fingers. That gold bead at 1 gram is worth $41.78 at today’s price...the ounce getting almost $1300...which was more than what it was when he recorded. Costs of chemicals and propane eat into that $41.78 before you even consider what he paid for the circuit boards to yield that 500 grams of fingers. And then there’s the time trimming the fingers off boards before you even count his time working the chemical, filtering and smelting processes. I think he may ave lost money even if he only counted his time as worth $10\hour. There’s a lot of time lost setting things up, moving things around, just coming back from time to time to check on things. He certainly incurred a loss compared to what he would have earned by simply spending that same amount of time on the clock at a traditional job. I’m not hating on you OP, because education and experimentation are important. But I don’t see this being worth anyone’s time unless you could process in huge batches and eliminate the costs of procuring the fingers.
@@rodarywindsorcleveland8506 you make it sound easy to be able to sell parts. As someone who's in the business believe me, it's not. A lot of things from a used vehicle you dont sell. You dont buy a used clutch. Lol. Or brakes or MANY other components
That was fun to watch, but I was surprised there was no recap to see if he made money. From what I can tell he did not. He bought 5 pounds (2262 grams ) of trimmed material for $417. At the time he purchased the 5 pounds, gold was $1,130 or $40 a gram. He ran 500 grams of fingers as a test, or 22% of his material. 22% of his $417 investment was $92, so to make money on his test he needed to make more than $92, not including time and chemicals. He yielded 1 gram of gold at $40, and spent $92 for the “fingers”, so he lost $52. The whole 5 pounds of "fingers", assuming the same yield, would yield 4.52 grams of gold or $181; a total loss of $236.
Correct, you can not make a profit unless you can get the scrap for free or for very little cost. I only did this to make the video, not to make a profit.
I found you video very interesting, this is something I wouldn't even had guessed could be done! I read a number of comments, and there seemed to be confusion as to the financial results. I thought I would post a (hopefully) clear explanation of the profit or loss. Anyway, thanks for a great video, I found it very interesting!
Excellent video. Content very nicely organized and presented. Negative comments by people not paying attention to the information given at the beginning of the video, i.e. (a) safety precautions (b) assessing whether the process would realistically be a financial success (c) etc. Those paying attention from the beginning of the video gained some very important educational information and knowledge and wisdom.
Even those who didn't pay attention and gave negative comments learned the truth about how much gold (not much) this type of over priced scrap has in it.
Yes, the presentation of the process is very interesting for anyone interested in chemistry. And I appreciate that you describe both the extraction/recovery process, and the process of refining the gold. If this video can give gold-diggers a realistic picture of both the process AND of the financial realities, you have accomplished your mission :)
I use to pull the old Intel CPU's and sell them on Ebay about 100 at a time because they had quite a bit of gold but the newer ones not so much, so I quit doing it more than 10 years ago. I always wondered how they recovered it but I think they were doing a larger scale - as in 50+ gallon tanks. I was excited for awhile watching this, thinking oh maybe I can start recycling again since I work on computers for a living, but then was disappointed that the yield was so small. Obviously the technique needs to be refined and scaled up to be profitable - not something you can really do in your attached garage. Even 1-2k a day would be okay for one guy, but any less than that you're just spinning you wheels. Never the less I enjoyed the video.
they where smelting it since chemical process is a waste of money ;) no large scale refiner use acids - you just smelt it, use a carrier metal and catch all gold inside it, zero need to waste money on chemicals - just grind it and add 1 ton at a time in the furnace and process it
why don't you use a small grinder and grind off the gold into your beaker and then use your chemicals to recover the gold. i know it would take more physical labor, but it would take a whole lot les volumes of the expensive chemicals you using and i believe a way lot less time soaking and bubbling away in the jar?????
Call this a negative comment if you like but I think there was more time money and everything else that goes along with this video a waste of time and money. As well as your comment about this video as well.
Johann Moser.. Don't you just hate it when people don't LISTEN to the commentator. This is a demonstration on how to get the gold from computer cards and nothing more, but most are thinking this is some great way to get rich. It's not a get rich scheme, and in fact at current gold prices you would lose money. I think he makes this very clear in his video. BTW, Thanks to sreetips (the poster of this video) for being honest and saying he is trying to make money by getting views to this video, not by selling something. If nothing else it's intreesting and perhaps someone knows of products that contain more gold the PCs and would make this profitable, but I know of no other consumer product that uses as much gold as PCs besides art work or jewlery which are already way over priced!! Thanks... :)
or if you have good relations, effective resources and so on... Recovering minerals from 'waste' can be profitable if managed well, although not extremely.
PLEASE, PARDON MY SPELLING I MAY BE FRENCH BUT AT LEAST I`M TRYING . ... catillic converters from exsaust systemes under cars . which pays off steeling them from under buses or tractor trailer vehicles because its a black market shabang.... and always have trouble with that where huge amount of buses are parked ... IT`S CRAZY ... to me,, i think its too much of a long process... have a good one kind regards . MOON...
What patience and dedication to do this. I personally don’t think I would do it, just out of laziness. But I’m sure going to show this to other people who may be interested. Great job!
The video was very interesting and informative, thank you. As for some of the comments, the video isn't titled "How to get rich extracting gold from computer parts".
Great job. Very educational and great presentation. If I would of had teachers like you when I was in school, chances are good I would have understood chemistry more. Thanks for taking the time to make such an excellent video.
This was really interesting! Thank you for making this video. I just assumed gold could only be smelted from rocks etc. I never knew it could come from a liquid too then re-made into solid again. Fascinating stuff
I know, right?! this guy is a gem! and there are other people making similar videos, but for some reason, this guys videos are ultra informational to me
I quite enjoyed this video. Not only is the subject interesting, but many of the comments are amusingly foolish. There is value here; value in the immediately-useful sense of YT revenue, and value in the long-term sense of recycling. Gold is not only pretty, it is fantastically useful. Many medical uses for gold exist, which some people do not know. There is no reason to waste any of it. Regardless of small-scale costs for this experiment, clearly the process itself is straightforward and effective.
Only time enough in this life to accomplish a certain number of things and this will not be one of them. I prefer working to make money rather than pay to work. '
Christopher Cochran they should do this in a science class in chemistry but 8ts probably too dangerous...just think, what it Tim over ther just pulled an all nighter or if Kelly binged watched something on Netflix and stayed awake a little too long the night before and they were lab partners?
I agree, they currently sell for about 2 to 3 times more than they are worth in eBay. I included the cost/yield data to illustrate this fact; computer scrap is way over priced, yet people continue to pay. I'm hoping that this video (and others that I have made) will help to bring the cost of the scrap down to earth. When people see how little the scrap actually yields then they will be less inclined to paying the inflated prices for the scrap - hopefully.
A great tutorial. My only suggestion is that anyone doing it please make sure you have first aid information & supplies on hand in case you aren't as carefully, meticulous as Streetips!
Forgive me if my math is off, but i don't see how this works out. - You paid $417 for 5 pounds of scrap. - 5 pounds = 4.536 x 500 grams - Each 500 grams scrap = 1 gram gold - This means the recovery will be ~4.536 grams With the gold price upon purchase of $1130 per ounce, or $36 per gram, your $417 purchase of scrap netted $163.30 in gold. So what am I missing? I must have gotten something wrong while trying to make sense of it. Sorry, but I guess I need to be led down the path by hand...
i wouldn't mind doing this for a hobby. i love chemistry and like to put in practice. it may not be much gold but it takes 100 pennies to make a dollar. thanks for sharing your talent. bob
Well that looks like a very expensive gram of gold there. However, if you buy the chemicals wholesale, and get the electronics for free, then you really have a system for making money there. You told another commenter that basically the scrap is worth more and that this refining process just isn't worth it. However, I can see by your setup that you are profiteering from this venture. You have a complete refining system going always on this. Your video is based on your paying almost a $1/g for scrap. There are electronics manufacturing companies that would pay you to pick their scrap boards up. They would yeild hundreds of LB/week. That would turn things around drastically. - Buy chemicals wholesale. - Find a large electronics manufacturing company to get paid for picking up their scrap boards. Charge for pickup by the LB. - Have a place to refine. = Profit all the way to the bank. Oh, I also forgot to mention that if you are getting populated boards, then the components also have gold and silver elements in them. Additionally, those boards you are getting also have gold weaved in layers within the board from one circuit the next. You might even find a processor with 1/2 oz of gold in them alone.
You are not going to find a processor with 1/2 ounce of gold. Given the average gold content% of 0.2%, the processor would weigh in the neighborhood of 15lbs...would make for a rather hefty laptop. And it would be worth well over $500 per chip. You may find one with 1/2 gram of gold though. But the highest average yield I have heard of is 0.3g per CPU for Pentium Pro models (typical yield, some claim they contain up to 1g/CPU). But you are right in the at free or paid-to-haul scrap and bulk pricing for chemicals is a worthy business model.
No processor has 1/2 ozt Gold in it. I paid $280 for the NEW laptop which I am using. One half ounce of Gold is worth $581.05 as of this post....more than twice the cost of my machine. Nobody will remain in business long doing that. Companies are NOT the Welfare Department. They produce and sell to make a profit. Otherwise they close their doors and layoff their employees. Come on...Use your common sense. He said he makes money refining scrap jewelry. eScrap is LOW YIELD and costly to recover and refine. I buy Scrap Computers...for $1 each. I buy scrap Cell Phones for 20 cents apiece. One thousand of those will yield ONE OUNCE. I have about 650 at this point with 250 shredded.
24kGoldenRocket Why would you assume I was talking about 1/2oz being in a cheap consumer laptop? I said electronics company. I wasn't talking about Best Buy. If you are paying for old scrap computers or old cell phones then you don't have even the foggiest of ideas of what I was referring to. I'm damn sure not going to try to explain the process to you any better than I already have. Additionally, I'm sure the guy also makes a considerable profit from the scrap in general. Just wanted to say don't let him fool you in thinking that he is not making any money for the gold and silver. I don't know what his overhead is ie: logistics, payroll, insurance, but he's still in the black. Electronics companies aren't stupid either. They know what their scrap is worth. They don't pay someone much to haul off and sometimes they pay nothing to the scrap guys to haul off. A lot of companies desolder the 1/2oz processors and send them back to the manufacturer for credit on the next build. You're thinking too small time. No wonder you're not making money.
Going only on what was shown in this video, he showed ~2270g of fingers for about $500. Assuming 1g gold per 500g, that's roughly 4.25g of gold, at 3-year average price per gram of $50 = $212 return. This video shows an investment loss of over $280, before adding cost of materials.
I don't know how I stumbled on this page, but I'm glad I did! I always wondered how much trouble it would be to "extract" gold from a computer and now I know (a TON!). Kudos on the video. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it!
This was educational, and informative. Thank you and appreciate your time by bringing awareness on how these sellers charging people so much money for the scrap that is not worth the time, money, and the coast to get such a small ( Tiny ) amount of gold. But, I will say the scientific/chemical processes was cool.
Trust me he's doing it to make money one way or another. Just look at all of his equipment, he's definitely doing it "big", AND this video will also generate a few dollars. Problem is that nowadays circuit board connectors are covered will thinner and thinner coatings of gold, so there will come a time where it's really not worth the time, and flipping burgers will pay more than this process. Large refineries do it on such large scales that "smaller" operations like this simply cannot compete. Whoever started this 10-20 years ago, those have already made their "money". ;)
+Bill.. I used to work in a factory that produced cards with gold plated edge connectors and even in an American factory with 80s technology. the gold was extremely thin. These were industrial grade cards too. They were not for PCs, they were used in industrial equipment.
I enjoyed watching your showing of getting the gold simply compared to those who would make it seem almost untouchable thank you and God bless you for your efforts
Next time with the gold fingers, use a flat headed soldering iron to scrape them off, this is quicker than cutting strips and makes removing the gold plaiting quicker
Sreetips - Stripping the fingers with a soldering iron is faster than cutting off the strip of fingers with bolt cutters. However its easier to use the acid/peroxide if they're already cut. Also, because the base metals on the striped fingers are so thin it dissolves in only a few seconds-a minute. Either way great video, keep it up :)
I bet using a hot air gun would be even faster and you could line multiple cards up to do it faster. Even better would be to automate the whole thing with a modified 3d printer chassis running the air gun. :)
Just based on the foil separation alone that is $1.67 per hour. That's time alone for that part of the process and doesn't include chemicals or the rest of the process and time. Add the rest of the process I don't see how this is worth the time and money. Cool to watch tho...
Do think about that scaling up is a relatively simple task... There are Businesses that do nothing else than this, though a different environment obviously.
I found the video well presented. That it explained the process with text rather than audio made it convenient to pause, read and comprehend rather than "stop, go back, play and listen again" as so often is the case with most videos. For those who question the time and material cost verses profit, consider that sreetips has found his way to earn money working for himself. Letting the chemicles do their work while he is doing something else such as producing videos for those of us looking to educate ourselves or who are just curious shows that he is modivated to get ahead. I've often wondered how involved the process of recovering gold from electronics is. Now I know more than I did before I stumbled onto this video. Clearly it's a time consuming process.
Well said. Getting pure gold from any source is never easy. But escrap is the worst. It's not easy to get, the yield is low, and the amount of waste that must be treated before disposal is high. For these reasons I rarely process it.
interesting video ....quite a little setup as well ...looks like a good end product .that bubbler beaker reminded me of my younger days ..thanks for taking the time to teach at ur expense
Great video, I'm starting to enjoy these "Recover" Gold videos. It's pretty interesting plus the chemistry is pretty cool too. I thought you would get a little more Gold outta that but it is what it is.
cost of scrap - 100, cost to materials chemicals, electricity etc - 1000, cost of time spent - 0, sale price of gold recovered - 5000. Net profit = 400%. Beat that !!
@@rohitkhanna gold is way too CHEAP! This economy degraded the worthiness of gold, since the euro/dollar have inflated, but gold and valuable metals did not!
Jon, nothing, and I mean nothing, is priced correctly. My philosophy: convert paper to metal as quick as you can. Because when it gets away from them, and it will, then those who have metal will be glad that they do and those who don’t will wish that they did. Fiat paper has a 100% failure rate. Not one has ever survived.
I’ve always enjoyed my time in the labs when I was at university especially chemistry and bio sciences. Obviously it’s hard to make a buck. Thanks for a great video. I’ve liked and subscribed.
I know a person that does this for a living. She has so many stacks of old computers and odd equipment. I never knew it took this much effort to obtain so little Gold. Fascinating
This is really cool, but the price of gold per 24/k gold per gram is about $40 USD so the return on investment isn't too high compared to what you purchase. Ultimately for that $417 box you got $181.39 back from all that process. That's assuming that each 500 gram batch produced a 1 gram yield. This is a really cool video though, very interesting to see how it is done.
That was pretty cool. I'd probably accidentally mix the wrong thing and blow something up so you are looking like a real genius to me right now. Takes alot to make a little but your demonstration is priceless. Thank you.
Great! Now I'm stuck thinking where i can procure a railcar full of clean processed finger boards along with tanker cars of peroxide and hydrochloric acid.
A very nice way to make money, not from the gold recovery which loses but from the youtube vid watchers now nearing seven million, and i expect we all enjoyed watching it, well done sreetips
very interesting you have alot of talent ,smarts and PATIENCE!!!!! reading thru the comments viewers aren't getting your message i.e. over priced escrap! if you are not you should be a chem.eng.
irony isn't it? Thomas Edison tested 2000 light bulbs, what a brave man he was with patience and endurance. we would be still burning candles and kill the great white whale for the fatty bladder for spending a lousy $450???
Ok, seriously puky? Lol, sorry, couldn't resist. But, seriously, I am going out on a limb to disagree with you!! I think this video maker is a mathematical moron! I mean, if he were truly making the video simply to demonstrate the process...what's with the price quoting on other supplies throughout? I mean, I think this guy ran down to sell his 4.55g of gold with a goofy ass grin on his face that soon turned to "which way did he go George" as they counted out $185 bucks for him. He was probably muttering troy ounce prices the entire way home. Lol. Mathematical Moron. My final answer! Lmao, although a lucky one for luring us all in and keeping us baited the entire time with his financial accounting throughout!! Guy's a douche!
@@UA-camStudio101 He wanted to make the point with his financial numbers that it doesn't work out commercially unless you get them for free.. Somewhere in here, he makes this point clear that he did this to show refining and recovery as a hobby, and for people to not get too excited with the overbidding on Ebay, etc. Also he is showing the actual chemical process process an excellent example of how chemistry in the lab is done for some one who has free to real cheap access of these fingers.
@@UA-camStudio101 The only thing he even price quoted in the entire video was the actual finger trim he bought on ebay and the aquarium pump .... and he stated he would not normally do so because the price was much higher, then he showed a quick example of actually trimming a circuit board himself...That is at the 30 second mark and then around the 3:32 second mark. No where in this video did he imply he had a troy ounce of gold, additionally your comment about him "running to sell his 4.55g of gold" was , using your word here, MORONIC. He clearly showed and acknowledged the amount of gold he had at the end of the video. This was one of several of his comments above about this being a hobby and that he does not normally purchase the trimmed fingers, and that is is aware of the yield he will get. -" YES, it would have taken me several years and one thousand scrap computers to accumulate that many trimmed fingers. I paid $417 for five pounds of trimmed fingers, that's $83 per pound. I bought those over-priced fingers to make this and other videos, not to make a profit. Sellers on eBay use the perpetual myth that there is a half ounce of pure gold in every scrap PC to charge, and get, anywhere from two to ten times more than the fingers are worth in terms of the amount of gold that the scrap actually contains. People just keep bidding the price of the scrap higher and higher. The persistence of this myth is astonishing." Now try watching the video again and try making an actual valid and educated comment next time instead of making an asinine, insulting one when it is not needed or necessary. I think you are the one with the "goofy ass grin" when you make those kind of comments. Go and spend some of your money, take a loss and take the time to make an interesting video for people. I am sure you would appreciate getting the rude and insulting comments like yours after you took the time and money to do what he did. You are the douche!
So 500 grams of material to 1 gram of Gold and approx. 1700 grams of material left over to refine.Hmmm? Not gonna be any profit there. But very, very interesting! Thanks!
I think he makes more on people watching the video - but i enjoyed the walk through and yes, i thought "boy uses acid like tap water" what a dump it would be very fast
Very cool and interesting video. It was educational to those unfamiliar with the process. Crazy how some people fail to recognize the educational aspect of this and instead assume you were trying to show "how to get rich off mining gold from old computer parts". Haha. Cool video. Thanks for taking the time to create it and share -- regardless of the final $$$ yield, since that wasn't the ultimate point. (I.e. point was to inform and educate on how one process could be taken to extract gold from old parts.....period!) Cheers!
Thanks Crossifixio. I welcome those who come here looking for the get-rich-quick solution. Even if they leave a negative comment, they still got to learn the truth about how much gold this type of scrap really contains. And that it's not that easy to get. It's the reason I made the video, to do my part to kill the myth.
Great job and wonderful demo! You truly gave me an idea to work with and inspiration. One note for your safety- I noticed you corrected yourself on the plastic gloves! But when using the HCL to rinse, I’d suggest using plastic gloves there and not those leather work gloves! The leather will just absorb the acids and burn your fingers and hands up man! Like I said, just a safety note as the rest is spot on. Amazing job!
Woa. & i was starting to strip all my old cell phones. This video just changed my determination down. Ugh... Lol but awesome scientifically though. Alot of processing. A day for 39$. 28 days & you can get a ounce. How much did he pay for the set up & chemicals & waste. I dont think its possible to make any money off this system. But for a hobby. 5-10 years itll be a nice retirment. Say you do it 200 days out of the year. Thank you so much for sharing though. Interesting. Good luck
@@jasonvaillancourt2724 just what I said, buy when low, sell when high, process as much product as possible to cut downnon wasted materials in order to further lower costs. In the long run just buying the gold or silver already pure is a better investment though.
You are a Amazing, I would have fun everyday doing that if I could. I love science, and smithing. Both together as one that I would like to do. Great work I love it.
as I was watching your video I thought of mr. white on the tv show breaking bad. the video was very interesting and educational. thank you for the video.
It cannot be made economically viable just by upscaling it! The content of the "scrap gold" in the materials he bought was already way below the amount of gold needed to just break even! So adding MORE loss into the process will not EVER make it into a profitable venture. EVER!! Are you a Democrat, by chance? They always like to think that if they are losing money on a small scale operation, that they can make up for it by increasing the volume! Being a gearheaded technoid, I did however find the process very interesting! But I wouldn't have wasted the step of putting the gold into solution, just melt down the flakes after separation. That would have saved both time and money to get the sought after outcome, which was metallic gold. I already know of a few places where Mother Nature does the work of concentrating gold for me, but it's not economically viable for me to get there for the small amount of gold I get each time that I visit. Unless I space out my visits to several years apart to let the gold build up, and hit all of the places in the same day. My welding skills and car repairs are MUCH more profitable for me! Randy
@@AnotherWisenedOne theres a couple guys in Nebraska that have a large scale operation and they make money, instead of taking your old computer to a land fill they have hundreds of land fills send the computers to them. they don't even take the cards out they crush the computers by running them over with a loader and filling big vats. last summer they where averaging over 1 oz a day
@@mitchkolar5368 OK, I didn't say that a profit cannot be turned by doing this, only that paying more for the PC board pieces than there was gold value content in them like this guy did, is NOT a good business practice! Say these guys in Nebraska do reclaim an ounce of gold per day, on average, what is their cost of doing this business, per day, on average? The loader didn't come to them for free, did it? How about the fuel to power it and repairs when it breaks down? How about the electricity bills, rent, chemicals and wages, etc on a daily average? What is the cost, on a daily average, for getting rid of all of the OTHER parts of the computers after the gold has been reclaimed? Or do they just disappear into the ether on their own? Randy
I think as of writing this 1 gram of gold is about $62. You'd have to subtract the cost of all the chemicals and time. However, the UA-cam video might have made him a decent return. So combined the two for final value.
AH, NOW I UNDERSTAND THOSE NOTICES STATING THAT WE WILL TAKE AWAY YOUR OLD ELECTRONIC DEVICES FOR FREE AND JUST IMAGINE THE YIELDS OF GOLD TO BE HAD FROM A LARGE SCALE PROCESSING PLANT. THANK YOU FOR THE VIDEO WHICH WAS VERY INFORMATIVE AND NEVER BORING.
1gr of gold is worth about $40 dollars, I doubt that anyone can get rich by extracting gold from computer parts. Yet, it is a very interesting video to watch.
maybe..... Last time I went to the local "transfer station" (a.k.a. landfill/dump) in a town with a population of 7,000 there was about 90% of a large metal shipping container filled with hundreds of old computers. I have no idea how much gold could be extracted from a few hundred old cpus and I'm sure it would take a ton of labor and know how to strip 'em but I'm pretty sure you could talk the people running some of these places into getting free scraps, especially if you could offer them money from anything you recovered
@@prestochango1433 , another added cost. Another reason it's almost impossible to make money at this. Cost of materials and outside labor would have to be figured in. None of the release agents, nor agitations come free.
So hilarious how long I just spent adding up the total loss:D I suppose if the dollar crashes, you have millions of these fingers laying around, and electricity still...
I know... I just watched this video a couple of weeks ago. But if I set a goal to watch all of your videos then I'm going to watch ALL your videos!! Have a GREAT Day!!!
Well people, its called "How to extract gold", not "How to get rich" from extracting gold.
Absolutely loved the chemical processes. Really fun to watch. And especially all the time and effort it took to do this.
"How to get rich from a YT video about how to extract gold."
Cudos! First video I watched and it's fascinating, to say the least.
@@greyspot270 First video you ever watched on YT?
rich you get if you buy alot and then let a refinery do the job since they not only dont use chemicals but they get stuff done with alot less labour involved ;) nobody in its sane mind would try to process gold from e scrap himself if they want to turn a profit, exept you build a factory for 6-10m usd
@Johnathan Saegal bleach from any grocery store, hydrochloric/muriatic acid from any hardware store, hydrogen peroxide from grocery store/drugstore, sodium metabisulfate stump remover from Home Depot and also sold at home brewing stores, coffee filters and pickle/canning jars… if you -really- think this requires a chemistry lab and/or special order chemicals, this is sooo not the hobby for you.
I been studying the refining system a lot. Today , you have really made it simple as compared to those other fancy systems. I can now process all my pins and fingers. Thank you deeply.
While the extracted gold might not be worth all of the trouble extracting it, I totally enjoyed the video and found it very informative and now I feel like getting the chemistry set out. The best thing is NO MERCURY was used! Great Job!!
It's incredibly interesting to see the chemistry behind this. I'm lucky enough to mine it from streams so it's amazing to see people mining it out of urban environments.
I've watched your videos before. Man! If I only knew a 10th of what you fellas know, I'd be doing alright!
I've been watching your videos for over a year and keeping up to date with your facebook. Never thought I'd see you out in the wild like this! Haha
Went to Colorado once, South Fork area. Prospected for days with not a single speck of gold. I guess you have to venture extremely far off the beaten path. It was rather disappointing but nice to know I have a box of old computer junk I can 100% refine gold from.
Hello vo-gus from 3 years ago
props for including the info for disposing of the waste in a responsible manner .
Why?
@@weatherphobia because he is responsible
Thank you for showing me that method of gold recovery from electronic scrap. Not only did I learn a new chemical process, but also that I should stick to my day job! Very nice video.
I never liked chemistry back in school but you got me hooked. Fascinating to see a wizard going back and fro between solid and liquid state. Great job!
Welcome!
Hes UA-cam's #1 BEST REFINER ! The knowledge he shares could very well be kept secret to himself, yet he takes the time to teach US ONES WHO WANT to learn this underrated life skill. Not only are you an AMAZING and skilled chemist and refiner, YOU ARE AN AMAZING TEACHER and holder of these ancient old alchemical secrets🤳👨🔬👑 You introduced me to the art of refining and i am really thankful❤
I am studying to be a jewler..been 2 years now. But this is a skill i am soo attracted to..I LOVE TO WATCH THE PROCESS !! I LOVE WHAT COMES AT THE END ! A GLOWING GOLDEN ORB OF BEAUTY. I tip my hat to you sir 🙌🏻 You have amazed me OVER & OVER AGAIN with your level of skill and have taught me wonders !! Such skills will help me tons as i work in Gold and silver and always have to deal with contaminated gold/silver waste- but with this skill-i can save a lot of money and being a student- IT WILL HELP ME SOO MUCH..
THANK YOU SREETIPS !! I hope to one day meet you ! I have so many questions i would love to ask.
With that said - I wish you a great afternoon and a productive day. Blessings from CANADA
-Jonathan-
The real gold is what he’s extracting from millions of you tube views. Nice video; very interesting 😀
@ABC 123 - He said why; Nice video, very interesting -
hey dude, youtube is free only the internet service is not free but has many educational pieces. just watch your cowboy and Indian black and white show.
weird thing is youtube servers rely on these kind of golden plated server components!
They don't make that much for the efforts they put into it, Give him a break.
He's sharing something that can make us some money too.
Ha ha good one!
Please remember that RECOVERY and REFINING are two totally different processes. With escrap, and with many other forms of gold scrap, the gold must first be RECOVERED from the scrap before it can be REFINED to high purity gold. In this video, RECOVERY is the process of separating the gold from the circuit card material that the gold foils cling to. I used hydrochloric acid and hydrogen peroxide with an aquarium bubbler to RECOVER the gold foils so that those foils could be REFINED in later steps. After the gold foils were lifted from the circuit card fingers by the action of the the air bubbling through the hydrochloric acid and over-the-counter 3% hydrogen peroxide, I collected all the foils in coffee filters - at this point the RECOVERY process is complete. Now I proceed to the REFINING of the RECOVERED gold foils. REFINING is the process of 1) dissolving the gold foils 2) filtering out insoluble material 3) then reconstituting the gold out of solution with a chemical precipitant, in this video I used sodium metabisulfite. Sodium metabisulfite, when mixed with the chloroauric acid (dissolved gold) produces sulfur dioxide gas. The gold atoms in the chloroauric acid have an affinity for the sulfur atoms in the gas and they begin to cling to the sulfur atoms, but they don't bond chemically. At some point the gold gets too heavy and falls (precipitates) out of solution. When this happens then the REFINING process is complete. RECOVERY and REFINING are two totally different processes.
+sreetips did you buy the trimmed fingers?
YES, it would have taken me several years and one thousand scrap computers to accumulate that many trimmed fingers. I paid $417 for five pounds of trimmed fingers, that's $83 per pound. I bought those over-priced fingers to make this and other videos, not to make a profit. Sellers on eBay use the perpetual myth that there is a half ounce of pure gold in every scrap PC to charge, and get, anywhere from two to ten times more than the fingers are worth in terms of the amount of gold that the scrap actually contains. People just keep bidding the price of the scrap higher and higher. The persistence of this myth is astonishing.
+sreetips all that hard work for that little of gold? wow man im sorry but i dont have the patients for that
I hear you. Refining is NOT for everyone. It's my hobby and I love doing it and then sharing what I have learned.
yea i get ya. lol i just wish u could make more than just that little bead tho
I just wanted to add to the newer viewers that this video is NOT about making money by getting gold in this manner. He is just showing the process that can be used. He is already aware that it cost more to scavange the gold by this method with the current price of gold! Add in the cost of the chemicals, equipment and what the trimmed fingers costs you and your return is less then $50. So please stop posting the same response/question that has been posted and answered several times. I guess some people just don't listen or somehow miss the lesson in chemistry he was giving. He has repeatedly stated that he didn't do this for profit. Great video and I may just try it for the heck of it. Yes, I have that much free time on my hands. LOL. Thanks... :)
Thanks Robert. I included the cost data in the video to show that there was no profit. I thought that it would be self evident.
Doesn't help that people are generally stupid
so thats YOUR take on it...stop being the comment police snowflake douchebag
so what was the point .a waste off time and effort .i say.
what !he wouldnt have this set up and all the shit that is needed if he wasnt doing this for real
It's incredible how efficient we are at using it. 1 gram from 500grams of trimmed circuit card fingers!
This was educational, awesome video!
A very interesting video which confirms that extracting gold from computer wastes is best left to professionals.
Thank you
DUDE HATS OFF TO YA THE WHOLE PROCESS WAS INTRESTING THANK YOU
It was fun to watch, I really like that you didn't put an audio file in the background.
No kidding can actually focus on what's going on.
Something about his fan running is soothing...
Fun looked really boring ,what happens if u forget 1 of those steps????
o
Half way into the video , my curios mind just wants to know what his voice sounds like.. and is he not using his voice cause it's horrible and would district from the video content? Or is it that his voice is so sexy and would distract from the content?
Truly an incredible teaching tool and teacher. The myth and your motivation aside, I found the roadtrip mesmerizing. My thanks!
Well versed in chemistry with solid lab technique. This was obviously not his first chemistry set! End to end process was well documented. Enough warnings and cautions to be safe but is not overbearing. Detailed enough documentation so after watching, someone with similar skills and equipment will have the info necessary to reproduce. Very interesting video to watch. Subscribed!
If you take nothing else away from this . If this was something you though you would be interested in doing but you didn't know how, well know you know and you have to decide if it's worth the time and money. Thanks for doing all the hard work so I can forget my get rich quick scheme.
IKR I've always wanted to do this but now I know why more don't you can't really make any money unless you have a repair shop and people donate their computers when it's not practical to fix them. I've donated a couple to a computer repair shop. They probably do this or sell to others to try.
Yep, definitely can't make money doing this. Most would make more money off of one broken down tower with all the components in-tact vs doing something like this. Even shops would benefit more from fixing up or at least scrapping what components work and selling those vs going through this unless it was a popular site for donations but even then it probably wouldn't be enough to be worthwhile.
I'd say this would really only work if you owned an electronic waste center which would be the ones who would actually benefit from it vs anyone else. Everybody else would either break even, lose money or would never have enough to scrap for it to be worthwhile compared to just selling as is or salvaging.
Hmm. He started with 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of fingers. That gold bead at 1 gram is worth $41.78 at today’s price...the ounce getting almost $1300...which was more than what it was when he recorded. Costs of chemicals and propane eat into that $41.78 before you even consider what he paid for the circuit boards to yield that 500 grams of fingers. And then there’s the time trimming the fingers off boards before you even count his time working the chemical, filtering and smelting processes. I think he may ave lost money even if he only counted his time as worth $10\hour. There’s a lot of time lost setting things up, moving things around, just coming back from time to time to check on things. He certainly incurred a loss compared to what he would have earned by simply spending that same amount of time on the clock at a traditional job. I’m not hating on you OP, because education and experimentation are important. But I don’t see this being worth anyone’s time unless you could process in huge batches and eliminate the costs of procuring the fingers.
@@rodarywindsorcleveland8506 lmao
@@rodarywindsorcleveland8506 you make it sound easy to be able to sell parts. As someone who's in the business believe me, it's not. A lot of things from a used vehicle you dont sell. You dont buy a used clutch. Lol. Or brakes or MANY other components
That was fun to watch, but I was surprised there was no recap to see if he made money. From what I can tell he did not.
He bought 5 pounds (2262 grams ) of trimmed material for $417.
At the time he purchased the 5 pounds, gold was $1,130 or $40 a gram.
He ran 500 grams of fingers as a test, or 22% of his material.
22% of his $417 investment was $92, so to make money on his test he needed to make more than $92, not including time and chemicals.
He yielded 1 gram of gold at $40, and spent $92 for the “fingers”, so he lost $52.
The whole 5 pounds of "fingers", assuming the same yield, would yield 4.52 grams of gold or $181; a total loss of $236.
Correct, you can not make a profit unless you can get the scrap for free or for very little cost. I only did this to make the video, not to make a profit.
I found you video very interesting, this is something I wouldn't even had guessed could be done! I read a number of comments, and there seemed to be confusion as to the financial results. I thought I would post a (hopefully) clear explanation of the profit or loss. Anyway, thanks for a great video, I found it very interesting!
Eric Wild
Eric Wild rocks and kudos on Holden Mcgroine thought, changed my perspective on the matter.
Exactly what i was thinking but props to the poster for showing us this incredible process.
Excellent video. Content very nicely organized and presented. Negative comments by people not paying attention to the information given at the beginning of the video, i.e. (a) safety precautions (b) assessing whether the process would realistically be a financial success (c) etc. Those paying attention from the beginning of the video gained some very important educational information and knowledge and wisdom.
Even those who didn't pay attention and gave negative comments learned the truth about how much gold (not much) this type of over priced scrap has in it.
Yes, the presentation of the process is very interesting for anyone interested in chemistry. And I appreciate that you describe both the extraction/recovery process, and the process of refining the gold.
If this video can give gold-diggers a realistic picture of both the process AND of the financial realities, you have accomplished your mission :)
@@sreetips I hope 5.6M views pays enough to recoup the $70 you lost making this video, saathi. It was informative. Solidarity.
Traditional European 70 he lost way more than that
@@Jordan-sv3pu Please explain before I start insulting you.
I use to pull the old Intel CPU's and sell them on Ebay about 100 at a time because they had quite a bit of gold but the newer ones not so much, so I quit doing it more than 10 years ago. I always wondered how they recovered it but I think they were doing a larger scale - as in 50+ gallon tanks.
I was excited for awhile watching this, thinking oh maybe I can start recycling again since I work on computers for a living, but then was disappointed that the yield was so small. Obviously the technique needs to be refined and scaled up to be profitable - not something you can really do in your attached garage. Even 1-2k a day would be okay for one guy, but any less than that you're just spinning you wheels. Never the less I enjoyed the video.
Nice m8
they where smelting it since chemical process is a waste of money ;) no large scale refiner use acids - you just smelt it, use a carrier metal and catch all gold inside it, zero need to waste money on chemicals - just grind it and add 1 ton at a time in the furnace and process it
Regardless of the negative comments I found this vid to be quite interesting. Thanks.
It is interesting but the effort for little quantity of gold......
I don't understand why somebody would write a negative comment. I love his videos!
why don't you use a small grinder and grind off the gold into your beaker and then use your chemicals to recover the gold. i know it would take more physical labor, but it would take a whole lot les volumes of the expensive chemicals you using and i believe a way lot less time soaking and bubbling away in the jar?????
kharkhov I agree
Call this a negative comment if you like but I think there was more time money and everything else that goes along with this video a waste of time and money. As well as your comment about this video as well.
Johann Moser.. Don't you just hate it when people don't LISTEN to the commentator. This is a demonstration on how to get the gold from computer cards and nothing more, but most are thinking this is some great way to get rich. It's not a get rich scheme, and in fact at current gold prices you would lose money. I think he makes this very clear in his video. BTW, Thanks to sreetips (the poster of this video) for being honest and saying he is trying to make money by getting views to this video, not by selling something. If nothing else it's intreesting and perhaps someone knows of products that contain more gold the PCs and would make this profitable, but I know of no other consumer product that uses as much gold as PCs besides art work or jewlery which are already way over priced!! Thanks... :)
If your just collecting gold its cheaper to go buy a gold coin... This is pointless
Robert S. Yes a How To.
or if you have good relations, effective resources and so on... Recovering minerals from 'waste' can be profitable if managed well, although not extremely.
PLEASE, PARDON MY SPELLING I MAY BE FRENCH BUT AT LEAST I`M TRYING . ... catillic converters from exsaust systemes under cars . which pays off steeling them from under buses or tractor trailer vehicles because its a black market shabang.... and always have trouble with that where huge amount of buses are parked ... IT`S CRAZY ... to me,, i think its too much of a long process...
have a good one
kind regards . MOON...
I wish I had some of the shit your using
What patience and dedication to do this. I personally don’t think I would do it, just out of laziness. But I’m sure going to show this to other people who may be interested. Great job!
I don’t understand why anyone would leave a negative comment about your work, I think that was amazing 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
The video was very interesting and informative, thank you. As for some of the comments, the video isn't titled "How to get rich extracting gold from computer parts".
no, but it should be "How to lose money extracting gold from computer parts" lol
Wish I'd enjoyed Chemistry back in School as much as I do, now! Thanks, really enjoyed watching the process. ☘ T x
Great job. Very educational and great presentation. If I would of had teachers like you when I was in school, chances are good I would have understood chemistry more. Thanks for taking the time to make such an excellent video.
Wow,very cool.it only took 3-4 years to find and watch your video on how to do this correctly!
Marsden Balaska 310
This was really interesting! Thank you for making this video. I just assumed gold could only be smelted from rocks etc. I never knew it could come from a liquid too then re-made into solid again. Fascinating stuff
One of the best videos I have ever watched on UA-cam. Thank you.
I know, right?! this guy is a gem! and there are other people making similar videos, but for some reason, this guys videos are ultra informational to me
I quite enjoyed this video. Not only is the subject interesting, but many of the comments are amusingly foolish.
There is value here; value in the immediately-useful sense of YT revenue, and value in the long-term sense of recycling. Gold is not only pretty, it is fantastically useful. Many medical uses for gold exist, which some people do not know. There is no reason to waste any of it. Regardless of small-scale costs for this experiment, clearly the process itself is straightforward and effective.
Only time enough in this life to accomplish a certain number of things and this will not be one of them. I prefer working to make money rather than pay to work. '
This video was very educational and informative. Thank you for taking your own time and money to show everyone exactly how these processes work.
Christopher Cochra
Christopher Cochran 一。
Christopher Cochran they should do this in a science class in chemistry but 8ts probably too dangerous...just think, what it Tim over ther just pulled an all nighter or if Kelly binged watched something on Netflix and stayed awake a little too long the night before and they were lab partners?
Than maybe they could whip up something up so that they can make it through another speedy day!
Im amazed by the amount of resources you have. Im getting ready to do a t.v and this is alot more than i expected.
Seems like the best money to be made is collecting, cutting and selling the fingers.
I agree, they currently sell for about 2 to 3 times more than they are worth in eBay. I included the cost/yield data to illustrate this fact; computer scrap is way over priced, yet people continue to pay. I'm hoping that this video (and others that I have made) will help to bring the cost of the scrap down to earth. When people see how little the scrap actually yields then they will be less inclined to paying the inflated prices for the scrap - hopefully.
The best money to be made is the platform such as eBay that allows him to sell the fingers.
This guy has very good lab skills!
Did not expect that redox reaction at the end to precipitate gold.
Skills recognize skills, huh Mr. Amphetamine?
That name is pretty clever though, you gotta admit lol
moral of the story: always be the guy selling the magic beans
Will Hannah exactly. The ones who made the most money off the gold rush were the ones selling supplies to the prospectors.
Or you could earn your money and have a little pride.
@@thomasbrandon8029 im sorry pride doesnt pay my rent
Peasant
@@walkermallory6957 Kulaks were peasants and they were considered rich.
A great tutorial. My only suggestion is that anyone doing it please make sure you have first aid information & supplies on hand in case you aren't as carefully, meticulous as Streetips!
Forgive me if my math is off, but i don't see how this works out.
- You paid $417 for 5 pounds of scrap.
- 5 pounds = 4.536 x 500 grams
- Each 500 grams scrap = 1 gram gold
- This means the recovery will be ~4.536 grams
With the gold price upon purchase of $1130 per ounce, or $36 per gram, your $417 purchase of scrap netted $163.30 in gold.
So what am I missing? I must have gotten something wrong while trying to make sense of it. Sorry, but I guess I need to be led down the path by hand...
No, you missed nothing. I wasn't trying to make money from the gold I recovered. I was trying to make money from the video.
Best reply ever
Right now you have 1.326 Million hits. How much did you make? Will you tell us?
If he has a proper youtube partner, a youtuber generally makes around 1000usd per 1million views. Very very generally speaking.
Ooowwww......BURN!!!!!! Best business lesson ever!!! Glad I took the time to watch.
i wouldn't mind doing this for a hobby. i love chemistry and like to put in practice. it may not be much gold but it takes 100 pennies to make a dollar. thanks for sharing your talent. bob
You reminded of Walter White. Good job man. You've got patience.
As a retired science teacher I was in aah of the presenters expertise in using the lab utencils and chemicals. Good job.
As a retired English teacher, I can only assume you were in awe.
more money in making meth like walter white
I was glued to the screen. There is something soothing about the procedure. Thank you.
Stargazer Sally It was relaxing I just got off work and I was watching it and now I’m ready to go to bed thank you
Well that looks like a very expensive gram of gold there. However, if you buy the chemicals wholesale, and get the electronics for free, then you really have a system for making money there. You told another commenter that basically the scrap is worth more and that this refining process just isn't worth it. However, I can see by your setup that you are profiteering from this venture. You have a complete refining system going always on this. Your video is based on your paying almost a $1/g for scrap. There are electronics manufacturing companies that would pay you to pick their scrap boards up. They would yeild hundreds of LB/week. That would turn things around drastically.
- Buy chemicals wholesale.
- Find a large electronics manufacturing company to get paid for picking up their scrap boards. Charge for pickup by the LB.
- Have a place to refine.
= Profit all the way to the bank.
Oh, I also forgot to mention that if you are getting populated boards, then the components also have gold and silver elements in them. Additionally, those boards you are getting also have gold weaved in layers within the board from one circuit the next. You might even find a processor with 1/2 oz of gold in them alone.
this this right here
You are not going to find a processor with 1/2 ounce of gold. Given the average gold content% of 0.2%, the processor would weigh in the neighborhood of 15lbs...would make for a rather hefty laptop. And it would be worth well over $500 per chip.
You may find one with 1/2 gram of gold though. But the highest average yield I have heard of is 0.3g per CPU for Pentium Pro models (typical yield, some claim they contain up to 1g/CPU).
But you are right in the at free or paid-to-haul scrap and bulk pricing for chemicals is a worthy business model.
No processor has 1/2 ozt Gold in it. I paid $280 for the NEW laptop which I am using. One half ounce of Gold is worth $581.05 as of this post....more than twice the cost of my machine.
Nobody will remain in business long doing that. Companies are NOT the Welfare Department. They produce and sell to make a profit. Otherwise they close their doors and layoff their employees.
Come on...Use your common sense.
He said he makes money refining scrap jewelry. eScrap is LOW YIELD and costly to recover and refine.
I buy Scrap Computers...for $1 each.
I buy scrap Cell Phones for 20 cents apiece. One thousand of those will yield ONE OUNCE. I have about 650 at this point with 250 shredded.
24kGoldenRocket Why would you assume I was talking about 1/2oz being in a cheap consumer laptop? I said electronics company. I wasn't talking about Best Buy. If you are paying for old scrap computers or old cell phones then you don't have even the foggiest of ideas of what I was referring to. I'm damn sure not going to try to explain the process to you any better than I already have. Additionally, I'm sure the guy also makes a considerable profit from the scrap in general. Just wanted to say don't let him fool you in thinking that he is not making any money for the gold and silver. I don't know what his overhead is ie: logistics, payroll, insurance, but he's still in the black. Electronics companies aren't stupid either. They know what their scrap is worth. They don't pay someone much to haul off and sometimes they pay nothing to the scrap guys to haul off. A lot of companies desolder the 1/2oz processors and send them back to the manufacturer for credit on the next build. You're thinking too small time. No wonder you're not making money.
+blkcandywarez - This company - www.digitalsignalcorp.com/
at a gram its worth approximitly 41 dollars. Probably at a loss with the time effort and materials but a cool video none the less.
He only used 500 grams of trimmed fingers. And the whole lot is like 6 or 7 pounds. He got much more gold than this, he only showed us one batch.
Going only on what was shown in this video, he showed ~2270g of fingers for about $500. Assuming 1g gold per 500g, that's roughly 4.25g of gold, at 3-year average price per gram of $50 = $212 return. This video shows an investment loss of over $280, before adding cost of materials.
@@cbcinfla But if you collect the from free scrap then you win. Hes just showing how to process like he said in the begining.
I don't know how I stumbled on this page, but I'm glad I did! I always wondered how much trouble it would be to "extract" gold from a computer and now I know (a TON!). Kudos on the video. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it!
This was educational, and informative. Thank you and appreciate your time by bringing awareness on how these sellers charging people so much money for the scrap that is not worth the time, money, and the coast to get such a small ( Tiny ) amount of gold. But, I will say the scientific/chemical processes was cool.
He got about 40 dollars of gold out of that. He is losing money on this!
tarstarkusz He was not trying to make money but only bring awareness. Read his comments and read what I have wrote.
Trust me he's doing it to make money one way or another. Just look at all of his equipment, he's definitely doing it "big", AND this video will also generate a few dollars. Problem is that nowadays circuit board connectors are covered will thinner and thinner coatings of gold, so there will come a time where it's really not worth the time, and flipping burgers will pay more than this process. Large refineries do it on such large scales that "smaller" operations like this simply cannot compete. Whoever started this 10-20 years ago, those have already made their "money". ;)
Yes Fay, you are correct.
+Bill.. I used to work in a factory that produced cards with gold plated edge connectors and even in an American factory with 80s technology. the gold was extremely thin. These were industrial grade cards too. They were not for PCs, they were used in industrial equipment.
I enjoyed watching you do this. Well worth my time to watch, in fact, I could watch videos like this great one for days. Thanks for posting it.
ua-cam.com/video/b9FunEkhTNo/v-deo.html
Very intense process I'd never really thought about, and yet here I am after many UA-cam clicks.
I enjoyed watching your showing of getting the gold simply compared to those who would make it seem almost untouchable thank you and God bless you for your efforts
And this very video will forever remind me that chemistry is NOT for the impatient haha very nice!
I enjoyed this video. Not only was is relaxing and informative thanks for being clear. Made me want to study chemistry
Next time with the gold fingers, use a flat headed soldering iron to scrape them off, this is quicker than cutting strips and makes removing the gold plaiting quicker
I'd rather let the acid peroxide do it for me. I think that scraping 500 grams of fingers with a soldering iron would take a long time.
Sreetips - Stripping the fingers with a soldering iron is faster than cutting off the strip of fingers with bolt cutters. However its easier to use the acid/peroxide if they're already cut. Also, because the base metals on the striped fingers are so thin it dissolves in only a few seconds-a minute. Either way great video, keep it up :)
TicTacRich Jesus
I bet using a hot air gun would be even faster and you could line multiple cards up to do it faster. Even better would be to automate the whole thing with a modified 3d printer chassis running the air gun. :)
0
You have the best video for any Layman who wants to try and refined some gold fingers. You are the real James Bond.
I’d like to point out that his scale that he uses says “Gold Series”
Boron kills creeping charlie
seems like a huge load of time, energy, and effort, for just a couple of grams of gold.
@@billgates2581 That was only one gram.
Just goes to show: getting pure gold is never quick and easy. That’s why it’s so expensive.
Very interesting, a lot of processes to go through, I don’t think I would have the patience to do that.
That guy takes a profit not from gold but from youtube :)
a whole $.005 usd from ads lol
daft nord 3.8 million views x $0.00333 per view = $12,654.
Just FYI, after the adpocolypse UA-cam pays on average $3.33 per 1000 views.
Just based on the foil separation alone that is $1.67 per hour. That's time alone for that part of the process and doesn't include chemicals or the rest of the process and time. Add the rest of the process I don't see how this is worth the time and money. Cool to watch tho...
Do think about that scaling up is a relatively simple task... There are Businesses that do nothing else than this, though a different environment obviously.
why not !!!
I found the video well presented. That it explained the process with text rather than audio made it convenient to pause, read and comprehend rather than "stop, go back, play and listen again" as so often is the case with most videos.
For those who question the time and material cost verses profit, consider that sreetips has found his way to earn money working for himself. Letting the chemicles do their work while he is doing something else such as producing videos for those of us looking to educate ourselves or who are just curious shows that he is modivated to get ahead.
I've often wondered how involved the process of recovering gold from electronics is. Now I know more than I did before I stumbled onto this video. Clearly it's a time consuming process.
Well said. Getting pure gold from any source is never easy. But escrap is the worst. It's not easy to get, the yield is low, and the amount of waste that must be treated before disposal is high. For these reasons I rarely process it.
interesting video ....quite a little setup as well ...looks like a good end product .that bubbler beaker reminded me of my younger days ..thanks for taking the time to teach at ur expense
matt
aye
Great video, I'm starting to enjoy these "Recover" Gold videos. It's pretty interesting plus the chemistry is pretty cool too. I thought you would get a little more Gold outta that but it is what it is.
cost of scrap - 100, cost to materials chemicals, electricity etc - 1000, cost of time spent - 0, sale price of gold recovered - 5000. Net profit = 400%. Beat that !!
@@rohitkhanna gold is way too CHEAP! This economy degraded the worthiness of gold, since the euro/dollar have inflated, but gold and valuable metals did not!
Jon, nothing, and I mean nothing, is priced correctly. My philosophy: convert paper to metal as quick as you can. Because when it gets away from them, and it will, then those who have metal will be glad that they do and those who don’t will wish that they did. Fiat paper has a 100% failure rate. Not one has ever survived.
I’ve always enjoyed my time in the labs when I was at university especially chemistry and bio sciences.
Obviously it’s hard to make a buck.
Thanks for a great video.
I’ve liked and subscribed.
I know a person that does this for a living. She has so many stacks of old computers and odd equipment. I never knew it took this much effort to obtain so little Gold. Fascinating
Is she making a good living? Or a hoarder? Im not doing well with it.
I found the video to be very informative as well as entertaining. This was a more advanced technological (chemistry) way of mining for gold.
This is really cool, but the price of gold per 24/k gold per gram is about $40 USD so the return on investment isn't too high compared to what you purchase. Ultimately for that $417 box you got $181.39 back from all that process. That's assuming that each 500 gram batch produced a 1 gram yield. This is a really cool video though, very interesting to see how it is done.
Must factor in the cost of the materials used. He acid, etc.
dude with the views he got he's made USD 2500 only from the video revenue. That's what it's all about
Excellent description and step by step demonstration of the process, Thank you!
That was pretty cool. I'd probably accidentally mix the wrong thing and blow something up so you are looking like a real genius to me right now. Takes alot to make a little but your demonstration is priceless. Thank you.
Great! Now I'm stuck thinking where i can procure a railcar full of clean processed finger boards along with tanker cars of peroxide and hydrochloric acid.
lol
Very cool! I always wondered what stump out was, it works great. This video teaches more than one thinks.
Loved seeing the whole process which was very well explained and well presented. Thanks.
A very nice way to make money, not from the gold recovery which loses but from the youtube vid watchers now nearing seven million, and i expect we all enjoyed watching it, well done sreetips
very interesting you have alot of talent ,smarts and PATIENCE!!!!! reading thru the comments viewers aren't getting your message i.e. over priced escrap! if you are not
you should be a chem.eng.
Robert Patterson
How long she go to sleep trying to I u in yards good I will pay extra or might not get a chance I will be able to go to sleep
Agreed!
the whole process for $50 bucks for of gold, that he spent $450 for. Crazy but recycling is great!
irony isn't it? Thomas Edison tested 2000 light bulbs, what a brave man he was with patience and endurance. we would be still burning candles and kill the great white whale for the fatty bladder for spending a lousy $450???
This is not all the gold. He only used a little bit of the fingers. He probably could have had done this like many times more.
@@rayknn He would die of old age before he got all the gold out at that rate
This video was made to SHOW THE PROCESS and NOT to make a profit. Very interesting :)
Ok, seriously puky? Lol, sorry, couldn't resist.
But, seriously, I am going out on a limb to disagree with you!! I think this video maker is a mathematical moron! I mean, if he were truly making the video simply to demonstrate the process...what's with the price quoting on other supplies throughout? I mean, I think this guy ran down to sell his 4.55g of gold with a goofy ass grin on his face that soon turned to "which way did he go George" as they counted out $185 bucks for him. He was probably muttering troy ounce prices the entire way home. Lol. Mathematical Moron. My final answer! Lmao, although a lucky one for luring us all in and keeping us baited the entire time with his financial accounting throughout!!
Guy's a douche!
@@UA-camStudio101 He wanted to make the point with his financial numbers that it doesn't work out commercially unless you get them for free.. Somewhere in here, he makes this point clear that he did this to show refining and recovery as a hobby, and for people to not get too excited with the overbidding on Ebay, etc. Also he is showing the actual chemical process process an excellent example of how chemistry in the lab is done for some one who has free to real cheap access of these fingers.
+Abdul Wahid Munshi I must have missed that. Thanks for clarifying.
+Abdul Wahid Munshi What is the time point in the video where this point is made because I missed it. Thanks.
@@UA-camStudio101 The only thing he even price quoted in the entire video was the actual finger trim he bought on ebay and the aquarium pump .... and he stated he would not normally do so because the price was much higher, then he showed a quick example of actually trimming a circuit board himself...That is at the 30 second mark and then around the 3:32 second mark. No where in this video did he imply he had a troy ounce of gold, additionally your comment about him "running to sell his 4.55g of gold" was , using your word here, MORONIC. He clearly showed and acknowledged the amount of gold he had at the end of the video. This was one of several of his comments above about this being a hobby and that he does not normally purchase the trimmed fingers, and that is is aware of the yield he will get. -" YES, it would have taken me several years and one thousand scrap computers to accumulate that many trimmed fingers. I paid $417 for five pounds of trimmed fingers, that's $83 per pound. I bought those over-priced fingers to make this and other videos, not to make a profit. Sellers on eBay use the perpetual myth that there is a half ounce of pure gold in every scrap PC to charge, and get, anywhere from two to ten times more than the fingers are worth in terms of the amount of gold that the scrap actually contains. People just keep bidding the price of the scrap higher and higher. The persistence of this myth is astonishing." Now try watching the video again and try making an actual valid and educated comment next time instead of making an asinine, insulting one when it is not needed or necessary. I think you are the one with the "goofy ass grin" when you make those kind of comments. Go and spend some of your money, take a loss and take the time to make an interesting video for people. I am sure you would appreciate getting the rude and insulting comments like yours after you took the time and money to do what he did. You are the douche!
Watched this video when it came out in 2015, and i had forgotten that you had no narration. I like the newer videos where you narrate.
So 500 grams of material to 1 gram of Gold and approx. 1700 grams of material left over to refine.Hmmm? Not gonna be any profit there. But very, very interesting! Thanks!
River City MOVERS you need to do somthing with the read part you can't see it most of the time
Its a ratio, 500:1. If you want 1kg of pure gold you would need 500,000g of circuit boards, which is about half a ton
Informative. Costly process. 1 gram of gold is US$40.
44.77 actually. He uses his acids very liberally.
I think he makes more on people watching the video - but i enjoyed the walk through and yes, i thought "boy uses acid like tap water" what a dump it would be very fast
It's 1/21.2020 Price per gram is $50.14 and rising. I think I'd rather trade gold futures on the CBOT! Less Trouble!
what do you think they do with recycled computers and cell phones and other electronics gold is a great economic conductor in technology
Thanks for showing us your process and posting it here. Based on many of the comments you did a great job and most enjoyed watching you.
Wow, very well put together. Informative and involved process but looks kinda fun. Thank you for sharing brother, gained a new scriber.
Very cool and interesting video. It was educational to those unfamiliar with the process.
Crazy how some people fail to recognize the educational aspect of this and instead assume you were trying to show "how to get rich off mining gold from old computer parts". Haha.
Cool video. Thanks for taking the time to create it and share -- regardless of the final $$$ yield, since that wasn't the ultimate point. (I.e. point was to inform and educate on how one process could be taken to extract gold from old parts.....period!)
Cheers!
Thanks Crossifixio. I welcome those who come here looking for the get-rich-quick solution. Even if they leave a negative comment, they still got to learn the truth about how much gold this type of scrap really contains. And that it's not that easy to get. It's the reason I made the video, to do my part to kill the myth.
Interesting process but you spent over $89 + chemicals + precious time. Today, that 1 gram is worth $41.39.
Great job and wonderful demo! You truly gave me an idea to work with and inspiration.
One note for your safety- I noticed you corrected yourself on the plastic gloves! But when using the HCL to rinse, I’d suggest using plastic gloves there and not those leather work gloves! The leather will just absorb the acids and burn your fingers and hands up man! Like I said, just a safety note as the rest is spot on. Amazing job!
Looked like fun at first.
A lot of work and chemicals to extract $39 worth of gold. It was an excellent vid from a scientific standpoint though.
Thats a gram retail
Woa. & i was starting to strip all my old cell phones. This video just changed my determination down. Ugh... Lol but awesome scientifically though. Alot of processing. A day for 39$. 28 days & you can get a ounce. How much did he pay for the set up & chemicals & waste. I dont think its possible to make any money off this system. But for a hobby. 5-10 years itll be a nice retirment. Say you do it 200 days out of the year. Thank you so much for sharing though. Interesting. Good luck
@@jasonvaillancourt2724 buy the scrap while gold is super cheap, process and melt huge quantities while it's high, sell at a profit.
@@probablynotdad6553 thank u for the advice. Thats very human of u. Any suggestions?
@@jasonvaillancourt2724 just what I said, buy when low, sell when high, process as much product as possible to cut downnon wasted materials in order to further lower costs. In the long run just buying the gold or silver already pure is a better investment though.
You are a Amazing, I would have fun everyday doing that if I could. I love science, and smithing. Both together as one that I would like to do. Great work I love it.
The total experience was fascinating and well worth the time spent watching. Never too old to learn new stuff.
as I was watching your video I thought of mr. white on the tv show breaking bad. the video was very interesting and educational. thank you for the video.
That is $40 for a lot of work. This needs to be upscaled dramatically if it is to be economically viable.
he probably made 10 grand plus off the posting of this video. His $40 paid off big on youtube ;-)
It cannot be made economically viable just by upscaling it! The content of the "scrap gold" in the materials he bought was already way below the amount of gold needed to just break even! So adding MORE loss into the process will not EVER make it into a profitable venture. EVER!! Are you a Democrat, by chance? They always like to think that if they are losing money on a small scale operation, that they can make up for it by increasing the volume!
Being a gearheaded technoid, I did however find the process very interesting! But I wouldn't have wasted the step of putting the gold into solution, just melt down the flakes after separation. That would have saved both time and money to get the sought after outcome, which was metallic gold.
I already know of a few places where Mother Nature does the work of concentrating gold for me, but it's not economically viable for me to get there for the small amount of gold I get each time that I visit. Unless I space out my visits to several years apart to let the gold build up, and hit all of the places in the same day. My welding skills and car repairs are MUCH more profitable for me!
Randy
@@AnotherWisenedOne theres a couple guys in Nebraska that have a large scale operation and they make money, instead of taking your old computer to a land fill they have hundreds of land fills send the computers to them. they don't even take the cards out they crush the computers by running them over with a loader and filling big vats. last summer they where averaging over 1 oz a day
@@mitchkolar5368 OK, I didn't say that a profit cannot be turned by doing this, only that paying more for the PC board pieces than there was gold value content in them like this guy did, is NOT a good business practice! Say these guys in Nebraska do reclaim an ounce of gold per day, on average, what is their cost of doing this business, per day, on average? The loader didn't come to them for free, did it? How about the fuel to power it and repairs when it breaks down? How about the electricity bills, rent, chemicals and wages, etc on a daily average? What is the cost, on a daily average, for getting rid of all of the OTHER parts of the computers after the gold has been reclaimed? Or do they just disappear into the ether on their own?
Randy
HH REY where did he make 10 grand you must not know how UA-cam works I didn’t see one ad in his whole video
very good video I learned a lot. at 67 yr old and Gen contractor i have always wondered how to do this
I think as of writing this 1 gram of gold is about $62. You'd have to subtract the cost of all the chemicals and time. However, the UA-cam video might have made him a decent return. So combined the two for final value.
I was impressed with your origami skills more than anything else lol
LMAO
Willa Herrera cracked me up bro
😂😂😂😂
To do that one must know his chemistry and practice safety
Very informative and nicely put together. I really learned a lot Sreetips, thanks for taking the time to put this together.
This was the easiest step by step instruction video to understand i'v ever watched
Allot of steps to process all of that just to get the gold. Very interesting video. Thank you for sharing.
probably not profitable for the hobbyist but at an industrial scale it would be $$$
Never saw this before. Very interesting video. Cool to see it done.
Hey, thanks for that informative video. I think many watching missed the point.
AH, NOW I UNDERSTAND THOSE NOTICES STATING THAT WE WILL TAKE AWAY YOUR OLD ELECTRONIC DEVICES FOR FREE AND JUST IMAGINE THE YIELDS OF GOLD TO BE HAD FROM A LARGE SCALE PROCESSING PLANT. THANK YOU FOR THE VIDEO WHICH WAS VERY INFORMATIVE AND NEVER BORING.
Very informing and honest. Thanks!
1gr of gold is worth about $40 dollars, I doubt that anyone can get rich by extracting gold from computer parts. Yet, it is a very interesting video to watch.
Look@it another way, everyday we dump electronic devices in the garbage. It all adds up. You do this enough you can make some serious extra $
Joking aside that's just about my thoughts on it....as Malano above
maybe..... Last time I went to the local "transfer station" (a.k.a. landfill/dump) in a town with a population of 7,000 there was about 90% of a large metal shipping container filled with hundreds of old computers. I have no idea how much gold could be extracted from a few hundred old cpus and I'm sure it would take a ton of labor and know how to strip 'em but I'm pretty sure you could talk the people running some of these places into getting free scraps, especially if you could offer them money from anything you recovered
.
@@prestochango1433 , another added cost. Another reason it's almost impossible to make money at this. Cost of materials and outside labor would have to be figured in. None of the release agents, nor agitations come free.
you can buy a 1 gram 9999 gold Canadian coin for $72.00.... but I guess that would ruin all the fun science stuff! hehehe
the price of gold is $43.00 a gram US right now.
So hilarious how long I just spent adding up the total loss:D I suppose if the dollar crashes, you have millions of these fingers laying around, and electricity still...
this adds up to my loss of time spent watching this waste of money and time
I know... I just watched this video a couple of weeks ago. But if I set a goal to watch all of your videos then I'm going to watch ALL your videos!!
Have a GREAT Day!!!