Gold From Electronic, Telecommunication & Computer Scrap, Part 1

Gold from Electronic, Telecommunication & Computer Scrap Part 1: To find the "gold" keep your eyes and ears open

06/29/2009
Right Place at the Right time:
To find the "gold" keep your eyes and ears open.
RecyclingSecrets.com
by Michael Meuser

This is the first in an ongoing series of articles about my experience in the electronic salvage, recycling and gold recovery business. At first, I was going to write this up as an ebook and sell it, but I decided - given the tough economic times we all face - to give it away in installments. This short first article is about the the importance of not only being in the right place at the right time, but also keeping your eyes and ears open. New installments, resources, how-to articles and news can be found at www.RecyclingSecrets.com.

In the early 1980s I happened upon a little booklet entitled, Surplus & Salvage - the 20 to 30 pages I read changed my life forever. I went to work right away doing building deconstruction, rural salvage of all sorts, metals recycling and the like. Soon I was presented with the opportunity to enter the electronic surplus recycling and gold recovery fields. This is how I entered into this business.

During my workdays I frequented a nearby rural coffee shop in California's Mother Lode region. A lot of the guys in there were getting coffee before they were going off to work for a major telecommunications company. This was the time of their breakup during the 1980s. I got to know these guys and one fellow, in particular, told me that they were converting all of the long distant microwave repeater stations radios from tube type to solid state.

He said that there were tons and tons of scrap aluminum, copper, gold plated items, batteries, racks ... on and on and on ... at each station and that there were 18 stations that needed this scrap hauled away.

Up to this point of this major changeover from tubes to solid state, the smaller amounts of scrap ended up in local landfills, but this was way too much to dispose of in this manner.

The short of it is that starting with a broken down dodge van, I was able to bootstrap myself into a position where I owned my own large flatbed truck and fork lift, was able to hire semi trucks to haul the scrap to a yard in California that I leased, got top dollar for my mixed scrap, had a warehouse and crew to process the more valuable non-ferrous metals, sold batteries and all sorts of equipment for reuse in alternative energy projects and learned how to recover many dozens of ounces of gold from plated items with a low toxic, environmentally friendly process that I developed with my uncle who was a chemist. I did all of this with no startup money and no debt - 100% bootstrap.

I'll tell the entire story over this series of articles. This turned out to be the "goldmine" of my life, bringing me gold (in several forms) and riches in all sorts of ways. My hope that my story will encourage you to find your "goldmine" as well.

Some of the highlights will include:

• Tips for obtaining scrap recyclable and reusable material.
• Salvage for alternative energy systems.
• Scrap metal - ferrous and non-ferrous.
• Electronic, communication, computer scrap and gold recovery.
• How to deal with scrap and recycling dealers and brokers.
• How to arrange transportation, interim storage, cheap yard space without dealing with high cost commercial operators.
• How to be paid for your work before you ever start.
• How to get the equipment and tools you need without going into debt.
• How to stay solvent and operate on a cash basis.

More to come. New articles will be listed at www.RecyclingSecrets.com (news, tools, and resources are also available here) and also at www.recyclingsecrets.blogspot.com.