> $7-10 to sort out and carefully handle (vs usual strip for gold recovery), > seems pretty reasonable to me. I'd expect the cost has more to do with > labor than gold being recovered.
Yes, probably half of the asking price is the metal, the rest is labor, shipping and handling, and just a plain old premium for the scrapper to do something different. Of the metal value, it is mostly gold, but also palladium, platinum, rhodium, silver, tantalum, and copper. When the boards are melted into the big ingots, they tend to be mostly copper - and that is certainly worth money. Also, just "being a board" has value. Scrappers sometimes need to make quotas or limits with the refineries in order to get good refining rates. I realize none of this will sink in. -- Will
