Finding gold is a dream a lot of people have. Owning gold in the form of gold bars, coins, or eve flakes has a lot of interesting things involved in it: the bright, smooth, maleable metal ties you to so many interesting and important parts of world history, national history, tales of gold rushes, arts and crafts fabricated in the world’s ancient kingdoms with gold; it’s also valuable in real terms, and the value of gold can go up (some people chose to buy gold for this reason, and other invest in gold stocks, which generally go up along with gold, but don’t involve having to find a place to put your physical gold or to insure it), and gold is considered a good investment in uncertain times. When the value of the dollar currency is uncertain, and goes down, like in times of dramatic inflation, gold is seen as a safety currency, and there are gold investors who invest in gold and gold stocks for just this reason. Some people now say bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are other alternatives and possible safeties, but we haven’t seen this fully tested yet against events.
Let’s just say, though, that a lot of people like to own gold. It’s hard to find it in nature, because the mineral is extremely limited, and it’s thought all the big gold mines have already been found and mined, leaving ones with less and less gold to harvest. But some gold that has already been used is available to be ‘mined’ in a sense, and that is gold used in electronic parts. Some electronics, though, have more gold in them than others.
What Electronics Have the Most Gold in Them?
Typically, computers and tv sets have the most gold inside them. Other electronic devices that have gold are cameras, radios, and media players. The circuit boards of older models generally used more gold in them than the newer ones.
Other things include phones, tablets, and consoles, and these include trace amounts of gold.
Now for some details, if you harvest the gold from 2000 pc circuit boards, which is what you would find in 200 complete laptops, you would find around 5 troy ounces of gold. If you’re looking for computers, older desktop models from the 90s and earlier, and supercomputers if you can find them, have the most gold.
With TVs both old tube tv and new flatscreens contain gold in the circuit boards, and that includes plasma flat screens also. With cameras, a similar picture, with both film and digital still camera’s having gold, as well as old VHS camcorders and smaller ones too.
Another thing that might come to mind for you is gaming consoles, and yes, like other electronics, they contain gold.
For more on the process of extracting gold from old phones and electronics, click here.