Gold recently hit a record high price of over $4,000 an ounce and shows no signs of a slowdown. And aside from obvious sources like coins and jewelry, gold is likely hidden in just about every American home– in your electronics.
Recycling of old electronics (or e-waste, as it’s commonly known) is big business. The market is expected to generate approximately $193.42 billion in revenue by 2032, a substantial increase from $56.98 billion in 2022. Electronics contain a lot of recoverable components– for instance, a typical PC, when disassembled, will contain: a plastic chassis with steel parts; a power supply with copper; a hard drive; and a heatsink to protect the unit from overheating, which is composed of aluminum and / or copper. But there are also more valuable components containing gold, including a motherboard, memory / ram, and a CPU or processing chip. And it’s all recyclable!
Not all recyclers are equipped to handle electronics waste, but at Research Alloys, we’re happy to buy in your old e-waste. With gold prices skyrocketing, we’re paying premium prices for circuit boards, ram, CPUs, and other gold-bearing e-waste components.
Below are some helpful tips to get the best price for your e-waste:
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Disassemble anything you can. We’ll happily buy whole PCs and servers, but you’ll get more money if you take the time to disassemble your e-waste and deliver the components.
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Separate your components. Group like and like together in individual containers, like buckets or bags. Put your gold memory / ram sticks together in one bag, and your heatsinks in a separate bucket. We pay more when we don’t have to sort your stuff!
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Remove heatsinks and batteries. When buying motherboards, we must ensure that lithium ion “button batteries” are removed from every single board before sending them for processing– these batteries can pose a serious threat of fire and injury if they hit the shredder. Use a flat-head screw driver to carefully remove the batteries and aluminum heatsinks before arriving for the best price. We’ll buy your heatsinks, but batteries should be responsibly recycled elsewhere– check out this guide from the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio for local resources in and around Columbus.
Stop by our convenient recycling center at 110 N. Sylvan Ave in Columbus, Ohio, to learn more about recycling your old electronics components, or drop a line to our in-house e-waste expert by emailing carly@researchalloys.com. Now’s a great time to cash in on the gold boom while keeping e-waste out of the landfill– a win-win!