I'm just an old scrapper.
'Tis true, it is. And I've a few stories to tell like the abandoned brick factory with recording thermometers connected with... you tell me what connects thermometers in a brick factory? Yup, double 26 ga wires, one pure Pt, the other 90%PT / 10%Rh! This was back in the late 70's. Sold in December '80 right near a top. More than an ounce too....
As a kid I'd use a Bernzomatic torch to remove radiators from old wrecks dumped into ravines to stop erosion, a bit dangerous but for a 14 year older--I was fearless.
And a story of what not to do: Schimita's (sp?) Junkyard, N'ton MA, got in boxes of thousands of mercury switches and from what I heard had a guy break the glass ends to pour the beads of mercury into a large gallon sized mayo jar--which at a certain point exploded (ruptured) since no glass jar is designned to hold that quantity of mercury. (Note: The site has been cleaned by EPA as lots of other nasty stuff went into the ground too.
Now I've accumulated about 20lbs of video/sound cards, RAM and processors and have no clue as to who to sell the lot to and was hoping that someone here might tell me. I could attempt to refine the gold and have the expertise to do so but I suspect it's just not worth it especially with the cost of properly disposing of the after chemicals.
I've got a quarter inch bead of gold/mercury obtained from sluice panning the upper reaches of Indian Stream in Northern NH. Apparently a small commercial operation worked in that area (maybe in the late 1800's to early 1900's) and must have lost a lot of mercury into the river. Gold exists there so I imagine that there is some in it but I'm not a fool and will likely properly dispose of it as mercury waste as there is no practical way to remove the mercury safely that I know of, and please don't tell me to go out into the woods and do the old bake an iron wrapped potato!
Scrap on but beware of the strange stuff! (Like the gold seeds that were sent to Hoover & Strong back in the 60's (?)) Highly radioactive gold isotope, indistinguishable from 24k, since it's pure gold just radioactive. It was designed to implant into prostate to destroy tumors, how it ever got mainstream I don't know. That batch went into a group of school rings and several people lost fingers/arms and lives. Be careful of stuff from strange sources.
js
