I have heard that the key board printed circuit are stamped in silver and sandwiched in between two plastic layers
Has anyone tested to find out ?

If you're talking about the thin film layers yes they are commonly silver or nickel. Some gaming and specialist boards will have gold Mylar.

If your talking about the plastic circle cups in in cell phones the same as above only the design is different, small pressed beads instead of printed wiring trace.

So yes in the vast majority of cases there is nickel silver or gold. But it's not worth home refining. Many scrap buyers will accept it as a laminate wire or mixed low grade wire.

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I have never seen gold traces on keyboard mylars, but I have also never torn apart any gaming keyboards either :p

I can tell you that they silver trace ones contain about 1/4 of a gram of silver (about 15cents worth of silver) per sheet... they are not particularly easy to refine for profit on a small scale.

Last time I checked, boardsort did not buy them, but that was 4+ years ago... has anyone checked with them recently?

Here's my totally random from nothing idea
98% of wire Mylar I've actually had tested that was grey was nickel.
1.9% was silver. And I've actually found a few silver palladium Mylars from razor and Logitech.
Both of those as well have had gold. But, most of their equipment is switched silver nickel cherry switches or not quite as good mtsb switches anyway so, ...

If you throw one or two in a giant pile of 5-10 lbs of wire nobody is going to complain, boardsort included. Reality is nobody is going to pay you silver content even if it is silver because it's expensive, selectively, to recover on these. There is only one way any major refinery uses to recover metal from flat wire, including LCD films, X-rays, and keyboard plastics. Hydro acidic distillation. That 15 cents MLS stated (today's base rate it's probably about 12) costs them about 10 cents to get to.
Nobody is going to flip out over one or two, and nobody is going to flip out over fake glass diamonds in a 995 palladium ring either. But your not going to get actual recovery for it.
If you strip insulated silver wire you'll get $15 per ounce for the 875 silver core. If you pull the silver out of laminate you'll get $15 per ounce for the 875 silver. If you hand someone an ounce of silver in a 2 lb block Of lucite your get $2 per lb. this flat laminate is the same thing.

There's a note up top here stickied that covers gold laminate. It's the same issue
Boardsort doesn't want 20 lbs of keyboard sheets. Nor do they want 20 lbs of gold laminate, nickel, silver. ...
Bottom line. If you have one and you're sending/bringing in, wire toss it in with the wire. No you're not getting paid anything (worthwhile) for it nor is anyone else going to pay you for it. It WILL however get properly recycled.

The inside scoop here. When I have lots (lbs) in a single batch I bring them in with my plastics to a local plastics company who buys my plastics (a long story posted elsewhere). I get 9 cents per lb. reason being they make custom displays with glossy sides (silveride aka Ag+Al) and they simply cut and melt and mold the bare silver plastic in (no idea how it works, they pay I smile). How many keyboards does it take to get one lb? Apx 250 80 key. 100-150 full size keyboards and over 500 base notebook laptops.

So that's as detailed as i can get on this overall.

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Thanks for the info Just what I wanted to find out

lostinlodos wrote-"Here's my totally random from nothing idea... But, most of ...Nobody is going to flip out over one or two, and
Bottom line. If you have one and you're sending/bringing in, wire toss it in with the wire. No you're not getting paid anything (worthwhile) for nor is anyone else going to pay you for it. It WILL however get properly recycled...

So that's as detailed as i can get on this overall."

As always no BS, sound, logical , thoughtful, and thorough advice and something I also wondered about myself a time or two. So here's my totally from nothing random idea,(that no one asked for, but you're getting anyway), I personally find the esthetics of computer components visually appealing and interesting. Especially some of the really old ones. Often when disassembling them find myself marveling over the craftmanship and the materials that went into creating them. Some of the old boards have really cool signatures and little pictures from the people who designed them. Even the circuitry is very artistically laid out. I don't know what it is about miniature items, but I really enjoy looking at really tiny objects. So, I have a tendency to stash the neatest looking little boards and wires (gold laminate cell phone wires) and intend on incorporating them into my artwork. I am curious if anyone else shares this tendency to just stand(or sit) and really examine the intricasy of these things.? So while noble metal recovery may be out of the question, don't underestimate the undeniable fact that some people may still see value in these things for other reasons that their original intended use. I don't see anything wrong with trying to find ways to make a few extra bucks (especially in the current economic landscape). I thought I'd share my perspective and invite anyone interested to think out of the box and do what you will with this information. If nothing else you can always feel good about making sure it gets recycled responsibly like lostinlodos said.

You hit one thing I’ve discussed elsewhere here in the past.
Board art: as in art in the board.
I remember one board from the hight of the 3D card wars that blew my mind and I’ve forever tried to track down that board again. It was either a 3dFX or an ATI card
They went overboard in the traces in gold: not for any real use but for art. There were two race cars on a race track. The manufacturer logo car had speed lines behind it (think triple approximate equal sign) where the competition car hit a wall that spelled memory.
Board art in that sense is extremely popular and rabid, but very limited in population. Asus and Gigabyte trading Alice in Wonderland symbology. Next with the most random wtf symbols on their stuff. Patriot Memory with their US war battle emblems. Nintendo with Mario-series icons. Sega’s arcade boards were craz for a short while, with maps of the solar system, and other galaxies. NEC is well known for their board icons. The CDFX board is a known popular WTF: with the head having the skull open and exposed brain on the drive controller board. (And the Plextor response with the three metal trace of a silver head, and gold lightning bolt striking the head).
For a short while in the early 2ks HP had their random Pixies on boards.

Check out Reddit or spaces or any other such ‘social’ service.
I know WhatsApp has a big international community (I’m a member).
Don’t be afraid of the lengths the WA group goes to (they look for art in items beyond circuitry) either, it’s the most welcoming community I’ve joined for board art.

The other you got is board art: art made from boards. That is a far more popular hobby. Have at it
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/c ... se_you_my/

In the late 80s and early 90s, when I was I building ram farms on 16- and 22- but machines, my Vortex farm had a bridge (originally by necessity to expand to a second table.

Then i started seeing others on CompuServe making all sorts of stuff, clocks, lamps, a family in Columbia that built a car body and frame from scrap computer parts and dropped a kit into it.

Buried in storage I have quite a few different clocks made from and OF computer parts.
AND! There’s a large crossover to other hobbies (micro gage trains, miniatures, cosplay, and even the future-retro design scene. (I love the glass coffee table made from old RAM SIMMs and glass from computer monitors, with antique wood inlay!).

Don’t get me going on future retro: a fav of mine that I’ll talk about forever. But for those unaware:
If you’re a Star Trek fan, think enterprise.
If you’re a car fan, think the PT cruiser or the SSR/HHR or thunderbird.
For old computing fans: think MAC fishbowls
Wink!

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