Bkl wrote:
…
If you find a blackberry (original style), a Samsung data master, a Motorola razr, you have real bank. The first two have massive thick heavy boards inside. And the ratios pay off for stripping them.
The last has more gold in it than any post-lcd phone I’ve ever seen. Pins, contacts, connectors, wire ends, gold/tin solder… internal wires are silver. Crack open the lens relay and grab the mirror. It’s rhodium glass… 3 grains of rhodium.
But the best… evvvveeeeerrrrr…?
Motorola 90s/era brick phones.
Scrapped they’re worth about $50 today (late 2024)
They sell for $30-$>100
But they are easily found in yard sales from old(er) people. Often for $1-$10. (They still count gold at $40-something per ounce facepalm)
If you regularly travel out of country they still are made and in use in South America and the South Pacific. To the same exact standards.
The U.S. government has never complained at my valuation (resale of the phone) of $10 per phone.
Head to Argentina, Malaysia, Vietnam, or Saudi Arabia… where private sector analogue still exists. Etc you get my point. Fifty phones, $1000. Duty on import, $50
Scrap price, $2500.
That’s said… they’re one of the worst things to take apart time wise. Even in practice times past: take me 30 minutes or more for each phone.