Thick plate, long tab30 × 12 mm

Thin flash, short tab30 × 7 mm

Tin edge — worthless30 × 10 mm

Drawn to true relative scale — the variants above are directly size-comparable.

Gold fingers (trimmed)

Depth of colour and tab length. Deep buttery yellow with long tabs (older cards, server, telecom, mil) means thick plating. Pale washed-out yellow, very short tabs, or visible wear-through means flash plating at half the yield. Dull grey or silvery "fingers" are tin — worthless.

Au 2.0–3.0 g/lbBase Cu

eBay typical$225–290per lb

Refiner pays$75per lb

Metal in it$326per lb at 4 Aug 2026 spot

Confidencehighof the yield figures

How to spot it

Row of parallel gold contact tabs along a card edge: hard gold over nickel over copper. RAM, ISA/PCI/AGP/PCIe cards, telecom line cards, backplane daughtercards. Bevelled, double-sided plating beats single-sided.

Metal content

Metal	Quantity	Notes
Gold	2.0–3.0 g/lb	measured 2.6 g/lb over a 10 lb run
Base metal	Cu, Ni underplate

At 4 Aug 2026 spot prices that works out to $326 per pound of contained metal — Gold 2.5 g = $326. A refiner paying $75 returns about 23% of that, which is normal: refining costs money and the buyer takes a margin.

Safe removal

Working temperature: Cold — shear

Shear, don't saw. Bench guillotine or heavy aviation snips, cutting 1–2 mm above the top of the plating. Every extra millimetre of fibreglass dilutes your yield and you get paid by submitted weight. If you must saw, use a carbide blade, wet-cut or shop-vac at the blade, P100 respirator, outdoors. Never grind or sand — you aerosolise the gold and the glass.

Hazards

🪚 Fibreglass and board dust

NEVER dry-cut boards indoors without extraction.

Before you scrap it

Read the three prices on this card carefully — they're all real and they disagree. Mail-in refiners post about $75/lb, eBay hobbyists ask $225–290/lb, and at today's gold price a pound of well-plated fingers actually contains around $300 of metal. Published refiner tables lag hard when gold moves this fast, and a lot of eBay lots are thinner than 2.5 g/lb. Get an assay-based quote from a real refiner before accepting a posted per-pound rate on any lot big enough to matter.

The common trap

Post-2006 ENIG and thin-flash fingers run 1.0–1.5 g/lb, not 2.5. Anything claimed above 5 g/lb is not credible. And don't throw the trimmed cards away — they still pay $3/lb.

Questions

How much gold is in gold fingers (trimmed)?

Gold: 2.0–3.0 g/lb. At current spot that is about $326 of contained metal per pound.

How do you identify gold fingers (trimmed)?

Depth of colour and tab length. Deep buttery yellow with long tabs (older cards, server, telecom, mil) means thick plating. Pale washed-out yellow, very short tabs, or visible wear-through means flash plating at half the yield. Dull grey or silvery "fingers" are tin — worthless.

How do you remove gold fingers (trimmed) safely?

Shear, don't saw. Bench guillotine or heavy aviation snips, cutting 1–2 mm above the top of the plating. Every extra millimetre of fibreglass dilutes your yield and you get paid by submitted weight. If you must saw, use a carbide blade, wet-cut or shop-vac at the blade, P100 respirator, outdoors. Never grind or sand — you aerosolise the gold and the glass.

Is gold fingers (trimmed) worth more working than as scrap?

Read the three prices on this card carefully — they're all real and they disagree. Mail-in refiners post about $75/lb, eBay hobbyists ask $225–290/lb, and at today's gold price a pound of well-plated fingers actually contains around $300 of metal. Published refiner tables lag hard when gold moves this fast, and a lot of eBay lots are thinner than 2.5 g/lb. Get an assay-based quote from a real refiner before accepting a posted per-pound rate on any lot big enough to matter.

Related in Connectors & pins

Gold-fingered RAM Connectors & pins · $55–76/lb Au 0.3–0.6 g/lbAg 0.5–2 g/lbPd 0.01–0.05 g/lb A Gold-plated connectors Connectors & pins · $113–136/lb Au 0.3–1.0 g/lb wholeBase brass A Gold-plated pins Connectors & pins · $180–280/lb Au 0.7–1.5 g/lb mixedBase brass A RF Coaxial Connectors (SMA/N/BNC/TNC) Connectors & pins · $15–35/lb Au 0.10–0.40 g/lb (SMA); 0.01–0.05 g/lb (N/BNC)Cu ~190 g/lbAg trace B Silver-Plated Copper Wire & Coax Connectors & pins · $8–25/lb Ag 2.8–6.8 g/lb as-received; 5.7–11.3 g/lb stripped conductorCu ~230 g/lbBase 40–55% PTFE/FEP B CPU socket (ZIF PGA / LGA) Connectors & pins · $15–35/lb Au 0.10–0.30 g/lb wholeBase phosphor bronze C

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