Gold is like so in right now. And not even just for jewellery! I mean, it’s over $US1900 — that’s big money making opportunity. So it’s not that bat-shit crazy to melt your electronic circuit boards and tear apart your phone to create a gold nugget, right?
That’s exactly what Jem Stansfield did. He cut apart his old computer circuit boards and ripped his old phone apart (there’s gold in the SIM card port and numberpad) and then poured concentrated nitric acid (which dissolves a ton o’ stuff) all over it. It didn’t get rid of everything so he went bold: he used a concoction of acid to make all the gold disappear. A sorta reverse methodology. Once it turned to this disgusting black milky liquid, he added A LOT of super scientific powder to get gold and then blasted it with intense heat to make it shine once again. All that work and he made this:
I’m not about to suggest you take all your old computers and do the same but WE SHOULD ALL DO THE SAME THING. It’s the modern day gold mining, people. Don’t be left behind when I’m rolling the dough of multi-thousand dollar bills. Sure, you might melt your hand off with all that acid but gold! Gold! GOLD! Watch the entire video of what Jems Stanfield did here.[BBC]
david
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 12:10 PMHow much could you really get though?
If a sim card can be bought wholesale for $0.50c how much gold is on it?
Steve
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 8:27 PMA CROWN FOR A KING!
Sam Timmins
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 2:46 AM+1 for the GOT reference.
Todd
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 12:17 PMNitric Acid – $30
Original cost of motherboard – $120
Price for gold once extracted – >$1.00
?????
Profit!!!
*none of these prices are factual :D
Monoclonal
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 12:38 PM…and a life of health problems / early death from all the carcinogens sucked in during extraction for a couple of bucks…priceless.
Mike
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 12:49 PMYeah thing about gold is it stretches extremely well. So to coat a large area, you only need a tiny bit of gold. Not worth it unless you’ve got an extremely cheap method of removing the gold from the PCB
TSH
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 1:02 PMAgreed with the above. “mining” technology waste dumps for gold is more effective ton-for-ton than mining the Earth, but only on a large scale.
Keropy
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 1:35 PMPretty sure ton for ton you get more gold from mobile phones then mining ore.
http://netspaze.com/2010/07/07/used-mobile-phones-vs-gold-ore/
WTF
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 4:36 PMI read an article years ago about the US and it’s overwhelming PC dumping problems. There are problems associated with throwing eletronic devices into landfill and they were illegally shipping them by the truckload down to Mexico, who deliberately failed to stop them as they were welcoming the eletronics for this exact purpose of gold mining. The US got all moral though, as it turns out, there had been numerous deaths from heavy metal poisoning among the labourers.
All sorts of nasty shit in those things.