Gold isn’t just used in jewelry, it’s used in electronic equiment too, because it conducts electricity so well, but does not react with other elements and corrode. As a result old computers, laptops and other electrical goods contain gold in them. Because the price of gold is so high, it’s worth retrieving scrap gold and recycling it.
The types of goods that have gold in them
1. printed circuit boards
2. micro-processors – CPUs – they are in computers as well as modern projection TVs
3. cellphone motherboards
4. dvd drives
5. very old televisions (old vacuum tubes had gold connection pins)
Most of the above items have platinum, silver and copper in them too, all of which are valuable too. You can see from the following video how the gold is extracted from an old computer:
Some people try to do it at home, but it’s a messy and dangerous task requiring gloves, fume masks etc, (not to mention the difficulty in getting items such as the nitric and hydrochoric acid). And there is the environmental hazard of disposing of the chemicals afterwards.
A better idea is to gather circuit-boards and micro-processors and then sell them onto a recycling plant or scrap-metal dealer for cash.