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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2020 1:57 am 

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2020 1:02 am
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I am getting ready to put together my first shipment to boardsort and I dont know the e-scrap market, its my first time looking at it. Is now a good time to sell? I know the prices flucates and its like playing the stock market. But in general, how do the prices today compare with a year ago or even right before the Covid pandemic?

If you would speculate, would it be worth to hold on and wait for the virus panic to blow over?


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2020 3:17 am 
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Now, being 12:44 mountain dst on 28 Ap 2020, is a great time to move very low (below peripheral) and very high (cell, har drive, 8086 cpus) value items.

Nickel, tin, and copper, all drive the board market.
Silver, nickel, tin, and gold drive the cpu market. Nickel is at one of the highest points in the last quarter century. Tin is massively up do to people buying canned foods but not actually using and recycling the cans.

Gold, as always, does what the F it wants to.
I’ve very recently covered gold and silver extensively.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=19097

With 30+ years I say the same as I usually do! Hoarding is useless. Anyone who’s used boardsort for over a year knows the prices jump with no explanation. Up, down. wtf?!!!
Those of us more on the inside of the industry, who pay for charts and guides and non-consumer info... escrap is the second hardest industry to predict. Following plastic.
I can tell you with fair certainty where a SPECIFIC metal will go over the next 14 days. As can Chris, probably quite a few users here. If that were all there was too it life would be simpler. I can not place eScrap in general.

If you want my honest, personal, opinion? Boards over all will drop as recycling and distribution opens up again. I think boards have Topped out.
CPUs, and specialities like cell phone boards, will continue to climb for a number of months. It’s going to be another 4-6 months before major shipments of sorted materials begin to move regularly again. At that point I suspect 8080:8086 CPUs (and the related included rectangular gold cap DIP processors) will drop to the $95-$105 range before eventually climbing back to more reasonable $110-$115 rates.
Expect 486 to drop to the $85-$95 range.
I did this a few times; where will the markets go, over the years.
I’ve been mostly correct.

Answer: Sell what’s under gold cap board rate now while you can. Hold CPUs till June or maybe July before you dump them. Boards are already dropping. Copper has been stable. Silver has barely moved. Lead is falling.
Plastics are falling in value and that’s a nic chunk of board recycling material. Rescue wood topped out in March and has been falling to the pre 2020 rates since. Paper is back to the original 11/2019 rates that have been within 10c per lb for years up till then.
This is as high as most things will go right now: end of the world aside. It would take something really major and catastrophic to change these things.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:34 pm 

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2020 1:02 am
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los, I see point, well articulated.

I will probably just go for it now then


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:55 pm 
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Btw to put major catastrophe in context I consider the current pandemic to be the industry’s equivalent of a broken finger. Yank hard. Grab some tape and a popsicle stick, and go back to work.
Compared to WWII where dozens of materials simply disappeared from the market for 6 years world wide!
Or a short while back when China dumped millions and millions of Old physical US copper pennies into the Scrap market and tanked copper rates. Or the California Gold rush which destabilised monetary values around a world that was dependent on copper and gold having known value.

Holding tight in times of turmoil rarely works out. Do I think cpu prices will climb a bit more still; an educated guess. But the prices will drop. The question is how bad do you $160 or $165 for those processors? Enough to risk the market spring-back that will bring them to sub-$100 rates before flattening out again?
Those are questions a can not help you with.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2020 8:47 pm 

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2020 1:02 am
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Thanks for the historical context. When put into to perspective, your right, it ain't to bad. What people dont seem to understand is that historically the second wave of a pandemic is always worse, but we got to keep pushing on, I guess, to accomplish anything worth while.

The argument you make to sell now is very strong, I couldn't agree more.

What is clutch is that while sorting through my boards I found a factory sealed large box Quak II orignal, worth about $150 to collectors. Don't know where it came from but it sure is the iceing on the cake.


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 29, 2020 9:21 am 

Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2015 10:53 pm
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I completely agree with los on what he said about boards. However I disagree with him on the stuff that is driven more with gold scrap. Gold is going to go up, up, then up some more. Silver will follow. I can’t say when that is but it will be soon. Every currency in the world is fiat. It has no value other than what a guberment decrees it. Right now every guberment in the world is printing, printing, and then printing more. Inflation is here and the guberments don’t care. Gold is setting records in most of the world currencies the last year or so. And those records are still being broke. The US dollar is the cleanest shirt in the hamper right now. I’m hanging on to my high gold stuff for now. Guberments are going to have to do a monetary reset and gold and hopefully silver will play a part in it to build confidence with the people. It has happened over and over in history. But please don’t take my word on it. Do some more research please.


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PostPosted: Wed Apr 29, 2020 12:56 pm 
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I don’t totally disagree. But with something like CPUs were not talking about gold. Per se.
We’re talking about commodities with generally know numbers that happen to have gold in them.
As of a few minutes ago gold has a value of $1339-$1341. Up a few percent again from the weeks before.
I’m not discounting gold, here or in the other thread. What I am trying to do is separate the idea of a cpu being cash, from something like 18kt gold earrings.

If you’re looking to shelve gold scrap for gold, your best places to look are edge connectors (gold fingers), and gold pins. Two very easy things to turn into GOLD gold.

I also agree on the stupidity of printing inflation.
Over simplified
If the government had 100 1 dollar bills and that was all in circulation...
And an Apple cost $1... apples are worth $1 each.
Then the government prints 100 brand new $1 bills but doesn’t remove the old one.
On paper an apple is not at a cost of $2. Because the dollar is half it’s original value.
In reality, in macroeconomics, the Apple will take a number of years (of stability) to reach a cost of $2.50.
In unstable times a product is worth what someone will pay for it without intervention.

For now I’m attempting to stay out of government, inflation, and other such political issues. And look at solely the scrap market here.

Again, today is the historical equivalent of a broken finger. The Great Depression was the equivalent av breaking both legs.
When you look at the multi-century picture the gold rush was a plague that topped governments across Europe and Africa.

This is just over covered FUD in the news today.
Unlike WWII where the supply chain dried up there is no source or supply problem today.
It’s a distribution problem.
Somebody pops up on the local or national news and says omg toilet paper. A week later all in house toilet paper is gone from stores. It’s not gone from the earth. It’s in homes. It’s in trailers in shipping yards. It’s on pallets in distribution centres.
And there more than enough in paper mills to not run out for many many many years.
Now people are worried about meat. Guess what. News says omg and the country buys every bit of meat they can find.
There aren’t less cows because of the pandemic. There’s a delay I’d dealing with them.
Normally when a store is out of your steak or ground beef you return in a day or two.
Now people see an empty spot and buy every last bit of meat the store has. Then goes to 5 more stores and does the same thing.
It doesn’t help you. You aren’t going to eat 20 lbs of ground beef tonight.
It doesn’t help me. I wanted burgers but they’re stuck in your freezer for no reason.
But back to gold. Gold has been generally rising since it was unlocked (I’m not sure I agree with jumping off the gold standard but that’s a different discussion). There isn’t some overnight jump by hundreds or thousands of percent. It’s the same relatively stable climb it’s always done. Panic bumps in ANY commodity will always self correct.
Toilet paper is not worth $15 for a four pack even if your willing to pay that. 6 months from now you will have over paid for $5 worth of toilet paper.
If you need to wipe your bum right now, it makes sense. If you have 12 rolls and run out and pay $15 for four more: it does not.

Giving away my age (one of the fire things I tend to guard)... I’ve live through the mini-depression, the housing bubble, the dot com bubble, and the tech bubble. The sars panic. The west Nile panic. The killer bees panic. The swine glue panic. The mad cow panic. The Ebola panic. And the AIDS/HIV panic.

Seriously, I just bow my head in shame as the world melts down every few years over something.
I spent a number of years in a location That had two annual emergency seasons. Spring super floods and summer/autumn tornadoes.
As such I quickly learned to do what the majority of people do in times of emergency. Need food in the flood? Hop in the boat and paddle to the store. And use the convenient boat mounts for parking.
Distribution was tailored for canned food surplus in the Fall. And we all bought what we’d need to last a week+. But we rotated FIFO for the season.
And such places. Low land Mississippi valley areas, tornado alley, hurricane centreal, ... are the very places generally doing quite well at the moment supply wise (outside of major city populations).
Just because New York, LA, Chicago, etc can’t figure out how to deal with life because they always said not me doesn’t spell the destruction of the country.
And the government is far from lacking value. They could always sell Yellowstone to a power company for geo-thermal energy. As a wild example.

This is a minor hiccup. We will come out on the other side. A bit bruised (mostly in ego) but intact. None of the world banking governments are even close to being destabilised catastrophically. The world is not ending.
Stupid people in charge of large populations in small Land areas have made stupid decisions and the public panicked.

To return to WWII and borrow from the Brits:
Keep calm and carry on!
Or as Master Yoda says: fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

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PostPosted: Thu May 07, 2020 8:04 pm 

Joined: Thu Feb 13, 2020 7:37 am
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What's your recommendation on unloading RAM right now? I have a nice little pile of various RAM sticks.

I'm getting a big pile of boards ready to send in, as well as pins, hard drive platters... what else...?

I have CPUs I'll hold onto per your recommendation above--what price point are you looking for to recommend unloading them, or do you go there?


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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 1:17 am 
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All of this is opinion.
None of us know for sure. I didn’t personally expect to see processed gold reach $1800!
The base price just passed $1301 today.
I still doubt it will get to $2000 and there are already signs of slip already in international trading.
So for Gold ram I’m sending mine in.
I’m still holding tin materials. And the majority of all “silver” ram is nickel or tin. Both still rising.

As I insinuated it’s palladium I’m personally watching though. And with that ceramic ICs in general. Its jump past platinum was long coming (palladium being rarer and harder to mine) but it doesn’t look to be slowing. There’s actually a market growing for ceramic monolithic capacitors with the rise. (Last year that was a fool’s errand).
Small scale CMC processing is actually past the break even point now. In not suggesting we all start crushing CMCs (yet) but I’m still holding ceramics in general for the moment. I only have a few pounds so it’s not bank for me. If I miss the rise so be it.

Ultimately I’ve stated many dozens of times across the site: hoarding is for gamblers and fools.
Gambling is occasionally worth it.

But you’re not going to trade a CPU for a car. Or even a tire; not any time in the near future.

I personally don’t see much more room for gold as the Asian markets, including mid-east, are pulling back on base rates. The US exchanges show a rise but we’ve hit the current peak in my view.
Dump gold ram. Pins (notice no movement in that class). Etc. Prices are at the high.
I’m holding tin and nickel ram as it’s the jump in other materials, not gold, driving ram up. If tin hits the $2 point silver ram is going to quickly rise as are all board classes. Nickel is now past $4 again. Transitions are all going up since most come from China and the East Asian mountain area. Which is currently OOC and MIA due to the outbreak.

The two most influential materials for ceramic chips is palladium and silicon.
Gold is a helper.
I’m personally holding them a bit longer.
Gold is an abundant element. If the market catches on to how scientifically rare palladium is... gold could look like last century’s news. Rhodium finally started to match value to quantity. Palladium isn’t far behind.
Add to that the amount of tin, chrome, copper, and nickel in the average component board. Everything should rise a bit longer even if gold tanked back down to $800 base trade ($1200/oz consumer 22kt).

personal opinion
Gold’s done. No major country collapsed. No banks (of note) went under.

Hold ceramics a bit longer. More important than gold fevure is supply and demand. IT needs what isn’t moving right now. That may change quickly in the coming weeks as countries pick up and realign distribution. And will, eventually, change very quickly when it does. But not yet.

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PostPosted: Fri May 08, 2020 11:46 am 

Joined: Thu Aug 13, 2015 10:53 pm
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Here is my opinion.

Gold has been and is money. It has been the most liquid asset in the entire world the entire time man has been on it. Every country in the world you can sell it or trade it. Right now gold is at all time highs in about 90% of all the worlds currencies and has been for some time now.

Gold spot price is determined by a paper market meaning that the gold itself is not traded, only receipts for gold are traded, same with silver. These markets create more receipts than there is the psychical metal available. Just imagine if the entities that trade these paper receipts want to take possession of their metal when there is not enough metal to cover these receipts.

The united states dept just surpassed 25 trillion. It is growing at a pace never seen before. It grows faster by the day. There will be a day in the near future that the rest of the world will lose confidence in the USD since the government is treating it like monopoly money. The more currency that there is, the less valuable it becomes. It does not matter if it is USD, yen, euro, or yuan.

No major bank or major country has gone belly up YET. Just think how on earth can these banks and guberments can keep it going. There is no one buying, there is no one lending. The only thing that is happening is that guberments all over the world are printing trying to get the balloon inflated again.

Bullion dealers all over the world are having a tough time getting metal to sell. they are buying and selling between 10% and 40% above spot price. See for your self, go on a few bullion dealers websites see what is in stock and what the prices are. Just look at the prices on ebay where they have the product ready to ship.

Here is a interesting fact. Apple can buy the entire silver paper market with the cash that they have on hand. imagine if they but just half to guarantee that they have the silver they need to produce their product or just to pump the price as a short term investment.

I'm not selling any scrap that has any pm's in it right now. It is going to really tough for the spot market price to go lower in my opinion.

Good luck in whatever you decide.


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