Ebay Heartbreak (was: ebay shenanigans)

Very tough question, as it become very involved. Also, the markets can fluctuate so much - steel worth several cents a pound today was near worthless six months back. Tantalum also swings greatly. Gold is found all over the place. Obvious places are on gold chips (duh!), edge fingers, connectors, and switches. Hidden gold is found in the some circuit boards (under the ink and solder), inside crystals and diodes, older style metal transistors, and even in many rather boring looking chips. Palladium and Rhoduim are found in Relays and a lot of IBM things. Copper is everywhere - boards, coils, transformers, relays, motors, etc. Silver is actually not much of an issue. A lot of wire wrap wire is silver plated, but the scrappers really don't like this stuff - too little silver to deal with, and it contaminates the copper. Even silver plated cavities are a pain - the brass is worth more than the silver. Tantalum is found in capacitors and in some tubes. I always thought this was handy: http://www.mrsscrap.com/scrapvalue.html William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org