6 Oct
2013
6 Oct
'13
9:29 p.m.
I feel like there's a little ignorance on both
sides... lots of idiots thinking
they can recover $25 worth of gold from a PCB (not impossible, but unlikely),
and lots of folks thinking, "This board looks like it's got some gold on it, I
bet I can sell it!"
Yes, that is correct. With a little looking, you will find that many
of the boards and chips being sold for scrap on Ebay go unsold, over
and over again. If the asking prices were near the actual scrap
values, the things would be sold.
I find it appalling... in a lot of cases, it's a
lot like
grinding up a Ming vase just to get a few milligrams of, say, uranium or other
precious metals from the clay.
Yes, but the fact is that with the metal content of older machines,
there are a whole lot of those milligrams. The copper value also adds
up fast.
But, as you say, it is like grinding up a Ming vase. That guy selling
IBM 4331 (and 3505, 2501, 4245, etc.) parts on Ebay for the past few
months had a complete system - processor, peripherals and all - but he
choose to sell the parts for gold. I offered a *very* decent amount
for the system, but he insisted on scrapping it. I have been
monitoring his auctions, and I see that he has only made maybe 15
percent of my bid, and he is running out of material. Fool.
I'm told that's one of the reasons it's
hard to get hold of a VAX-11/780 these
days... there's enough gold in those (about 2 oz) that at today's prices, they
could yield about $2500 or so. Very sad.
That seems high to me - but something around $1000 is reasonable.
The other reasons it is hard to get a hold of a VAX-11/780 is that
they are almost all out of service, and those people with them are not
giving them up.
I am, however, still willing to give up my VAX-11/751 for the right price.
--
Will, in NY