LEDs??

[AugustMoose87]

LED's??

I swear I remember reading an article a few months back about a guy who made a living dumpster diving, and one of the things he kept an eye out for were lighted signs, as lots of them have LED's, and he could sell them for scrap/reuse. At the time I didn't think much of it, but I just came in to a stash of LED bulbs that are toast, but I can't find anywhere to sell them... Anybody out there sell LED's?

 

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[AugustMoose87]

Bueller? Bueller??

 

[SoCalDesertFox]

If the LEDs themselves are toast, they have almost zero scrap or resale value. The amount of gallium or indium per chip you could reclaim would be absolutely miniscule. The best bet would be the aluminum heat sinks for scrap. Repairing the electronics can sometimes be easily accomplished but that depends on if they're the cheap ones or not. If you can refurbish them you can resell them for cheap and make money.

 

[AugustMoose87]

That was what I thought, which was why that part of the article stuck in my mind. Right now I'm going through LED Christmas lights at work. The LED's them self are probably fine, but the fixture/colored cover bulbs are broken. Guess I won't worry about holding on to them anymore... Thanks Fox

 

[darksky1x]

One thing that no one has mentioned here and that is every LED has a gold bonding wire in it. Obviously it is not very big because the LED isn't very big in most cases but gold is gold. It might take a while but if you save enough of them you can either sell them to a refiner or work out a percentage deal where they recover/refine the gold and keep a certain percentage of the end totals as payment for their work.

here's something for you to think about:

FACT - There is more gold in 1 ton of computers than can be produced from 17 tons of gold bearing ore