There's gold in them thar hills.

[stecle]

I took an old damaged mesh dish to the scrapyard the other day, and had an interesting conversation with the clerk. He asked me if I had any old LNA's. First of all I was surprised he knew what an LNA was. Apparently some of the older LNA's have some gold in them. He advised me to pull one apart and take the gold to a dealer.

Does anyone have any info on this? I hope its not true given the amount of LNA's that I have thrown in the trash over the years. :

 

[FaT Air]

I knew of a company, just down the street from a place I worked at years ago, that all it did was bid on military facilities demilitarized electronic equipment. Either from a facility closing, or equipment that was being replaced. They'd recycle (scrap) what the could but the main goal was to melt the electronic components down for the precious metals.They are now long out of business as most recycling in this, I believe, is done overseas. I remember seeing a doc(shock)umentary not too long ago, about a poor Asian area, where they were removing IC's from electronic boards, to be ground and melted for precious metals. No factory, or even a roof, just along the side of the road. Paid by the kilo. Seem to also remember that there was some question of the legality in exporting, from the US and other countries, certain types of recyclables. (??)

 

[T4Runner]

and the fact most are still usng children and they end up with severe reactions to those chemicals. Saw a 60 minutes years ago close to that about huge ocean going ships being stripped as you say...

 

[oldsatdude]

LNA units of the old day had a gold plated pick-up in the wave guide and are not anything like the LNB used today. Some older electronics used gold plating on the circuit traces. That is probably what the metal guy was talking about.

 

[Dishman Dan]

and the fact most are still usng children and they end up with severe reactions to those chemicals. Saw a 60 minutes years ago close to that about huge ocean going ships being stripped as you say...

I remember seeing a 60 Minutes type of show about kids stripping down

electronics in some other poor country.

They were getting sick from burning insulation off of wires and melting

some plastic off of some components.

The strange thing about the whole thing was the source of the dumping

was the US and the computers were all from US government agencies!!!...

...Including military!!!... And hard drives still intact!!!...

Talk about a gold mine!!!...