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if i cut the ends from usb cords printers etc. i can sell here for .50c per pound what if i remove all pins from ends? will you buy the pins at a different ?higher price? it justseems like shipping wouldnt pan out unless i had a few thousand pounds of ends

Yes pins are purchased separately
Sort them by source
They're xrf scanned on reception and paid by actual gold content at that point
Pins range from $1-$10+/lb

when you say sort them by source.. what categories do you suggest to sort them in to? like usb pins separate from dvi pins and a seperate from pins from a motherboard connection? of just seperate piles for each different type of connector and have a bunch of different piles. Thank you for any input. i have a 55 gal trash bin full of gold plated connector pin ends from various and assorted items

55 gallons of pins? Oh my.
My initial comment by source was by what they came from. USB dvi vga etc dvi is usually higher value than USB for instance. Ide/ata and at/xt connectors are worth more yet. LFF memory pins and CPU pins are higher still.

But at 55 gal were more into, if you're gonna sort them now at all, into pulling wedge pins and pegs (much thicker diameter) from the standard pins.
The last thing I'd do in this situation is grab a big hard drive magnet and sort super stick from sorta stick from no stick. This is probably your best option at this point.
Make SURE if you ship them you get them insured! I'd hate to hear about your gold pins being all over the road if a plane or small planet fell out of the sky and nailed your delivery truck. ;)

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Yeah, i work for a large company that goes through a lot of electronic waste. There kind enough to let me take it off there hands instead of just throwing it all away like they did in the past. The drum full is the culmination of the past 3 years of pulling pins out of everything. I swore i was always going to use them for gold recovery myself.

Going forward ill def sort the pins as i pull them like you said. and yeah for now ill probably go with the hard drive magnet option to start, that seems like the best option at this point. id drive them to the facility myself but thats a bit more of a drive then i wanna make lol. I'm Def getting them insured when i ship them, id hate to make it a "gold" christmas for someone else.

Thanks for all your help! ill be sure to upload a pic when i send them. not to often you get a chance to see that many pins all piled up.

Use a hard drive magnet. Either neodymium or colbalt they are the strongest non electric magnets.
Anything that sticks will be on steel or nickel. There's a fair bit of difference in the base metal value but at this point it's not what you're looking for. Both types are very common and you're facing a major task sorting these two apart.

Slightly sticks.
These will be gold plated stainless, or chromium nickel. The base value spread is less than ten cents. So in this class not worth sorting at all between the base metals. Stainless 300s is 70-90 cents and chromium is 80-1.10 per lb.

Finally no stick. These are your key to find here.
These you should try to bend. You're unlikely to have many. If it bends easily it's on copper, silver, or is an alloy, most likely 8/10/12 kt
If they don't bend at all they're plated manganese and the base is about 40-55 cents per lb.

If they bend with some effort it's brass or cast copper underneath. Base is $1.20-$2.10 per lb.

_________________
-- my grades are my own and do not represent an offer from boardsort, nor are they guaranteed. Please keep that in mind.