#money #gold #silver #guide #informational #urbanmining #yardmining #life

Here's a SNEAK PEEK at my upcoming book...

Backyard Urban Mining - A Practical Guide for Sourcing, Sorting & Selling eWaste

Chapter 1: Urban Mining & eWaste

“If you’re going to collect something, collect money”

If you were alive during the 90’s, you’ll remember the red-hot Beanie Baby phase that took over America. Entire secondary markets, trade shows, print publications and Web 1.0 sites popped up around the culture and craze of collecting these plush dolls. I admit it, I was sucked into it through a girl I was dating and learned some hard lessons about long term investments and emotional buying.

As a teenage, I spent hundreds of dollars (mine and my parents’ hard earned money) on the cutest, rarest, and most pristine TY Benie Babies. The end result was lost time and wages for what was essentially cloth and plastic pellets. Fast forward a few years, and they have become worthless - essentially garbage. The entire bubble popped right in front of my eyes and I vowed to myself never to make that mistake again.

As a lifelong collector, treasure hunter and deal maker, I knew hunting down hard to find items for a bargain and selling them for a profit was never going to leave my bloodstream. I was a born a hustler and there were very few feelings that could hold a flame to finding a diamond in the rough. To pull worth from worthless. To be in the right place at the right time with the right knowledge to recognize value. It’s right up there with sex, drugs and punk rock as far as I’m concerned.

That’s when I set some parameters to what I was going to spend my time, mental horsepower and calories pursuing. If I needed to collect something (and if you’re anything like me, then you do), then its got to be some form of money. Numismatic coins, junk silver, gold, silver rounds, sterling flatware, brassware, 14K gold jewelry… anything that has a market price to tether a value to. This way, all that passion and capital can inevitably payout if you stumble upon hard times or your interests wane. If you’ve decided to have children, it’s also a much better legacy to leave behind when you’re gone than the Princess Di Royal Purple plush bear in mint-condition with tag.

Yardmining is just another way to hunt, process and yield money to my will. Leave precious metals out of the equation entirely, and you still have a decent wage on the steel, aluminum, copper, brass and wire that comes in everyday with electronic waste. Even if gold wasn’t $1800+ per ounce, one could live off of what others throw away for free. And it’s only getting better because demand is skyrocketing, world supply chains are being interrupted and finite commodities are becoming less and less easier to recover.

Nobody can deny that the race is on for cheap access to highly sought-after materials for our current and future economic needs. The cheapest, easiest and most earth-friendly way to do this is through a method called Urban Mining. It’s estimated that urban mining can cover up to 40% of the market demand for precious metals. It’s a new form of mining that can happen anywhere there is electronic waste, even in your backyard. It can be as messy or as simple as you want it to be. And quite profitable too.

I’m not a huge fan of the term “urban mining”, because I do it in my backyard and I don’t live in a big urban area. In fact, most of the folks in the game live out in the country. Even so, there are a lot of young entrepreneurs in Atlanta, Vancouver, Melbourne and many more booming metropolises because that’s where the majority of the material is. Urban mining is the big picture (macro) where Yardmining is more personal and small scale (micro). Regardless of where you live, Yardmining can be done anywhere. There are advantages to having open space and distant neighbors, but whatever you call it, it's a central part of the growing circular economy.

One thing all yardminers have in common is that they are repulsed by waste. Waste discusts us because we understand that everything has a value and that resources are finite and getting harder to recover without destroying our environment. We tend to be resourceful, tenacious and can see the big picture. That, and we enjoy stacking precious metals recovered from that waste. Instead of collecting sports cards or vintage toys, we yardminers collect money in its purest, most stable forms- commodities.

In traditional mining, what's mined from the ground is far less concentrated than what can be dug-up at any yard sale in the subburbs. Take outdated cellphones for example. A metric ton of broken cellphones can produce over 300 grams of gold versus only 3 grams per metric ton of ground ore. That’s 100x what you can pull out of the ground using multi-million dollar equipment and a small army of unionized manpower. End-of-life cellphones are everywhere if you know where to look. Add that math to the 2 billion mobile phones sold per year and you've got yourself a profitable hobby. And that’s just cell-phones.

If you’re lucky enough to live in a developed country with a strong middle class, the cheapest place to find eWaste is right in your community. The unprecedented growth our global economy and technological advancements demand are immense. The unquenchable thirst for ‘noble, ‘precious and ‘base’ metals grows every year and we’re running out of friendly places to find it. When you think of backyard recycling, one usually starts with aluminum cans or plastic bottles. If you’re fortunate enough to live in one of the ten bottle buy-back U.S. states or in recycling-friendly countries like Canada, you can make a living wage from a small backyard operation.

The facts are that we're starting to run out of the raw materials. And lets face it, China is eating our lunch in the rare earth metal markets. These precious metals are a finite commodity in which we have very limited access. Everything that drives our economy relies on these elements. There is tantalum in nearly every computer manufactured and server active today. Look up the countries that have active tantalum mines around the world and you’ll quickly see how reliant we are to hostile players.

Because these elements are so finite and limited, the future will be built on reuse. It simply (and mathematically) has to be. This very stark reality isn’t easy for some people to read and accept, but it's a certainty you can rely on. The business world thrives on certainty and there’s not enough of it out there. But you’re here reading this book because you see it. You’re ready to claim your space and take the necessary steps to aid the cause and get in early.

Stay Tuned for more ;)
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