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Diego: I'm way out in the California desert
because I found a plane that I hope has precious metals.
I heard it was available and the owner's told me I could come
check it out. Let's do it.
Avionics from this era were loaded with precious metals.
I guess pilots didn't have a big old fat ***.
Let's take a look here.
Holy BLEEP! This is it. Whoo!
NARRATOR: There's a new breed of treasure hunters.
And they're looking for precious metals.
And you won't believe where they find them.
Dave: I am a gold nut. I'm willing to risk everything.
Woo hoo hoo.
Rich: If this thing blows up in my face...
I'm out a thousand dollars.
A vault, I have got to get into this thing.
I can't stop myself.
If I know that there's a deal out there to be made
I'm going to take advantage of it.
Diego: I've been looking at those hoops in your ears.
This is the biggest risk I've ever taken.
Dave: We did good.
NARRATOR: Once they find the metal, they melt it.
Dave: Platinum meltdown baby.
NARRATOR: To make big big money.
Rich: Big paydays here.
Being in the music scene for pretty much my whole life,
it was only natural that I started checking out
some of the local music shops here in L.A.
A lot of high end flutes are made out of silver.
Or at least the mouthpieces are.
And if I can get my hands on some of the parts or pieces
of these flutes hopefully I can melt down the silver and make
a good payday out of it.
Joey: Hey, bud. How are you doing, man?
Rich: What's going on? Sorry, am I making too much noise
in your place?
Joey: Go ahead man, toys for noise.
Rich: Toys for noise. I like that.
Let me ask you a question.
I'm kind of interested in looking for some old,
high-end flutes.
Joey: I got a few.
I've got this really cool flute here.
Sterling silver. That's a really nice one.
Rich: Really? Joey: Oh yeah.
Rich: How much can I get something like this for?
Joey: Well, we're selling it for like $1,300,
but if you're paying cash you can get it for like $950.
That's a little bit of money.
Rich: The silver content in this thing might be worth
a couple hundred bucks.
There's no way I'm going to be able to buy this thing.
Joey: This guy walks in one day and wants to barter
me for lessons.
So he gives me this sterling silver flute for three months
of lessons which was a good deal for me.
Rich: What other things have you taken in on trade?
Joey: Oh just everything.
Just about every instrument you could think of.
But I've had a couple weird ones.
Another guy came in, wanted lessons really bad for his kid,
gave me a bunch of old cell phones.
Rich: Cell phones? Joey: Cell phones.
Rich: I've found paydays in crazier places.
Can I take a look at those? I'm willing to take a chance.
Right here? Joey: Yeah, right here, man.
Rich: There's a little bit of gold inside of the motherboards
on cell phones.
But unless you got a ton of them it's just a waste of time.
But I'm here, right?
Dave: Today I'm going to hook up with Deanne from Smooth
Transitions.
Deanne: Barbara, Kirk? Hello. Kirk: Hello.
Dave: She helps generate cash to help elderly people
that are moving out of their homes into assisted living.
Kirk: Hi, Dave. How are you?
Dave: Today the couple Kirk and Barbara needs $5,000.
Kirk: You could see what there is here.
Dave: I'm hoping there's something here that I can find
that's worth buying so I can melt it down and sell it.
Barbara: There's some fascinating stuff.
Dave: And they get what they need so that they can move out
and I can make a payday. This is a win-win.
Well, let's see what you got, I guess, really.
Kirk: Go right ahead.
Dave: Books.
Milk glass.
Marbles.
Just regular household stuff.
Rocks.
Yup.
Sterling.
Barbara: I think we have 12 place settings there.
Dave: Wow. Going through these silverware sets,
it looks like it maybe could be, maybe a thousand dollars worth
of silver.
Kirk: I don't think we would want to melt it down.
Barbara: These were pieces of a dresser set that my father
gave to my mother.
Dave: They're stunning.
Kirk: We'll probably keep those in the family.
Dave: Um...
When people are parting with stuff they've had for 60 years,
sometimes the cash is just not enough to let go
of the sentimental value.
Deanne: This is Kirk's baby cup.
Dave: It says sterling, and it's a famous company.
Kirk: Oh, I think we keep it.
Dave: Right now it's not looking good.
There's nothing that they've got here that they want to sell.
I'm ready to throw in the towel.
Joey: Well, we got some phones.
Rich: Holy moley, that's a lot of phones.
I've never seen this many cell phones in my life in one place.
How long have you had them up here?
Joey: It's been probably, well over a year.
Because I was hoping that someday,
someone would want to buy them.
Rich: Most cell phones have a little bit of gold
on the motherboard because of the high conductivity.
And at a thousand cell phones, there's a chance to make
some good money here.
If I was to take these off your hand,
what kind of number are you looking at?
Joey: Well, you know, you kind of figure a thousand phones,
I'd say at least $600 bucks.
I know you're going to sell for more than $2-3 dollars each,
that's for sure.
Rich: Um, I'm a little more comfortable with maybe about
$200 bucks.
Joey: I'll tell you what, man.
It was about $300 worth of lessons,
I'd like to at least get what I got into it.
Rich: I can do that. $300 bucks? Joey: Cool.
Rich: We got a deal? I was really excited to make the deal
Joey: I'll throw in a set of drumsticks with them.
Rich: But now I'm starting to realize,
a thousand phones and I got to take every single one
of these things apart?
Joey: You got it? Rich: Yep.
Joey: Careful, I'm an old man.
Rich: How the heck am I going to do that?
Diego: This place, it has an older,
vintage plane with avionics components that I hope are
loaded with precious metals.
There should be silver in some of these.
I have a long-time background in aviation.
I was a helicopter avionics mechanic in the military.
Oh, how is this little gizmo going to go?
Avionics are the components that operate a plane's systems.
It can be the landing system. The flight systems.
Stabilization.
This plane's wiring contains a lot of silver to conduct
electricity efficiently.
The components contain a lot of gold to resist corrosion.
You guys had an old plane that you're looking to part out?
Ben: Well we were thinking about scrapping it, maybe.
Because it's probably worth more in pieces than the whole.
Diego: I just kind of like to collect old pieces.
Pat: How much money you plan on spending?
Diego: I don't know.
Maybe $1,500 bucks or so.
Just for some access to some of those old avionics.
Whatever I can grab.
I just want to put them on my car to make it go real fast.
Pat: It will. Diego: Laughs.
Ben: It'll do it.
Diego: One way or another I want to make a deal.
Whatever I can yank off the plane, I keep.
You just charge me for one day's access.
Pat: Is $3,000 in your budget?
Diego: I could go to $2,500. Ben: You said $3,500?
Diego: $2,500. I don't have that much to give you.
I don't know, you got a thousand bucks on you?
Chris: I don't have a thousand bucks.
Diego: No, he's got nothing. So.
Pat: You can work till dark if you want to.
Diego: Okay.
Pat: And when you're gone, you're gone.
Diego: Sounds great. All right, guys. Thanks a lot.
I just spent $2,500 and I've got maybe 5 hours
of daylight but whatever I can yank off the plane, I keep.
I'm hoping to find a lot of precious metals.
BLEEP!
Man this stuff is really in here.
This is a lot harder than I thought.
Nothing's coming out easy.
God, damn it.
And I'm feeling incredibly frustrated.
Grunts... So hot in here.
If I can't get anything out of this plane I just spent
$2,500 bucks for nothing.
BLEEP.
Dave: Just regular household stuff.
I'm trying to help this couple sell off some items to help pay
for their move to assisted living. Books.
They can move out and I can make a payday.
This is a win-win.
Stunning.
Kirk: We'll probably keep those in the family.
Dave: But they don't want to give any of it up.
My strategy is to see if there's some mismatched stuff
that doesn't have the sentimental value to them.
This is all heavy, heavy gold plating on these.
Kirk: Oh yeah.
Dave: You got all kinds of them.
I have techniques where I can take the gold off,
and so I can pay you for the gold value on these things.
Barbara: That would be fine. Kirk: That sounds fine.
Dave: All right, cool. Jackpot. We found something.
But they need at least $5,000 so I got to find more.
How attached are you to that thing?
Kirk: Yeah, I'm going to sell that.
That, I've got to sell.
Dave: 1879.
These are definitely not 14 karat gold.
These are 90% gold.
Kirk: Oh. Barbara: Oh.
Dave: Thank god. Finally we have some items on the table.
With all of this added up it comes out to $4,878.
For the gold plated plates and jewelry.
You could get more money.
You could get more money for this by putting it online
individually.
Finding that one buyer that wants those plates.
Finding the buyer that wants this jewelry.
If you want to do that.
Barbara: Does that sound like something?
Kirk: I think that sounds good. Deanne: Yay.
Whoo!
Dave: Don't drop those. You'll be buying them.
Now I have to get these plates back to my house
so I can strip the gold off.
With this jewelry being mixed karat I won't know the true
value of these bracelets until I get back and test them properly.
Diego: ...*** it.
BLEEP!
I'm stuck.
I've only got three and a half hours to get as much avionics
out of this plane as I can.
If I don't do this right I'm out $2,500 bucks.
BLEEP!
I love that there's an ashtray in here.
That's fantastic.
I got to find another way to do this.
Trying to get at the components and wiring from inside
isn't happening.
So I'm going to have to find another way.
I think there's an access panel on the front that I saw.
Chris: It looks like it goes into the cockpit at some point.
Diego: This is looking better. Inside I see components, wires.
Starting to feel pretty hopeful.
Chris: Looks like there's gold connectors in there.
Get them out, it's hot. Come on.
Diego: No BLEEP! Laughs.
This is looking pretty good after all.
Chris: More pins.
Diego: This isn't bad at all.
If my guess is correct half of these wires are silver.
Never underestimate the power of a Latino looking for money.
Laughs.
Grunts... Jackpot.
Man.
I ended up getting five crates of components and wires
off this plane.
But I don't know how much gold is in any of these boxes.
This has been a tough day. Chris: Yep.
Rich: Now that I've got all these cell phones
I'm going to meet up with my buddy, Eddie, and he's agreed
to help me take all these things apart.
Yeah, you need a cell phone? Eddie: What do you got?
Rich: How many hundred do you need?
Eddie: Aw, man
Rich: At a thousand cell phones there's a chance to make
some good money here.
Well this is what I'm thinking.
We got to be careful because I don't want to bust
the circuit boards out.
Inside you'll see all these tiny little screws.
Take the screws off. Pop the back open.
Pull out the circuit board. Throw it in the third box.
The value in the cell phones is the gold in the circuit boards.
So I'm going to have to unscrew each and every one of them.
Open them up and take the circuit boards out of them.
Eddie: How many more phones we got?
Rich: How many idiots does it take to tear apart a thousand
cell phones? Eddie: Two?
Rich: Oh you heard this one before?
It's easy to take the battery apart.
But it's hell to just get one of those little screws
out of there.
Eddie: You wouldn't think these little phones would be so tough.
This is going to take forever.
Rich: Not only am I not being able to get the screws out of
these things, but every time I slip I put the screwdriver
right through my finger.
Eddie: How many times have you stabbed yourself?
Rich: At this rate I'm going to run out of blood
before I run out of cell phones.
Dave: I bought some jewelry and some old plates
from an elderly couple.
What I have to do now is I have to get the gold off the plates.
There's a three step process to getting the gold.
First, I have to dissolve it off the plates using acid.
I'm hoping out of all the plates that I got that there's
about 5 grams of gold.
This acid is so strong you can see the gold on the plate
one minute, and the next minute there's no gold there.
The next thing I do is I add a chemical to the acid so that
the gold comes out and settles on the bottom.
I then take the solid gold particlesatn at the bottom
and I melt them down and I create a gold button.
We have gold and it looks like a pretty good amount.
The gold jewelry and my little button from the plates I bought
cost me $4,878.
Now it's time to see if I made any profit.
There you go... Whoo!
I got one more thing to put in there, though.
I got this by stripping the gold off of some plates.
Gomer: Wow.
Dave: The size of the bar is great,
but I'm worried that the jewelry with all of the impurities like
the springs and the hinges and everything else,
it could lower my overall payout and I might lose money.
Gomer: Huh, 148.95 grams.
I'm going to let you know that there's some impurities in there
that I don't normally see. Like zinc.
Dave: That's not good.
Zinc should not be in there.
A lot of times if there's fake jewelry it's got zinc in it.
Gomer: So I've got my number.
What are you thinking, boss? Dave: 68%.
Gomer: I'm sorry to say that it's less than that.
It's 67.25.
Dave: Laughs...
Gomer: $4,245.09.
Dave: You know what, I paid $4,800.
I lost a little bit of money here,
but I helped out this couple. I'll make it up somewhere else.
Look at that all laid out nicely for me.
I'll see you hopefully next week.
Gomer: All right man, have a good one.
Eddie: 5 phones. 5 hours.
Rich: So here I am with Eddie, trying to unscrew all of these
cell phones.
Because the value in the cell phones is the gold
in the circuit boards.
Each one of them there's probably about 4-5 screws.
4-5 screws.
A thousand cell phones.
There has to be a faster way to get to these circuit boards.
There we go.
It took half the board out.
All of these connectors all of the way down the side?
All of that's gold.
There we go.
Eddie: Look at that mother board.
Rich: Now we're talking. What did you just call me?
Eddie: Laughs.
Rich: What's that? Rich: It's for you.
Eddie: Mom?
Rich: The next step is to take these circuit boards
to the refinery.
I need a refinery to chemically separate the gold
from everything else.
Then they send me back this powder called sponge.
And that's what I'm going to take to the meltdown.
Time to find out if a bunch of old cell phones are gonna
buy me a new drum set.
Fernando: How's it going, Rich? Rich: What's happening?
Fernando: Good to see you, buddy.
Rich: Three big, giant bins just packed to the gills
with cell phones. Comes down to this.
How could over a thousand cell phones equal out to just
this little vial of gold.
I hope I didn't overpay on this one.
Fernando: There you go.
See it move inside?
See, right there is the material coagulating.
Rich: Ooh, nice.
Fernando: There you go. That's your piece.
Rich: I mean, this is a thousand cell phones right here. Crazy.
So far I've invested $300, I'm hoping to at least double
my money today or I'm going to have to consider this a loss.
I got a magic bean for you.
Can you plant that for me and we'll have a....
Simon: A golden beanstalk.
Rich: Golden beanstalk, I'm hoping.
Simon: Let's see what we got.
Rich: Look at all the peaks. Just what I like to see.
Simon: Yeah, 99%.
Rich: That's what I'm talking about.
It's pretty much pure gold.
My hopes are really starting to jump now.
Let me rub the magic bean for good luck here.
Simon: Laughs.
Let's see if it grows anything. 99% pure.
Times the price of gold. Got $1,161 dollars.
Rich: Ha-ha!
Way more than what I was expecting.
That's a profit of over $800.
And that's not too bad for a just a day of busting up
a bunch of old cell phones.
I'm gonna go pay my phone bill with this, right?
Simon: There you go. There you go.
Diego: Yesterday I spent $2,500 bucks stripping wiring
and avionics out of an old plane.
Today I've got to take it to a refinery and see what kind
of precious metals I get.
The refinery uses nitric and hydrochloric acid to separate
the gold and silver from its base.
Then the refinery sends back a powder called sponge,
and that's what I can melt down. Hey, hot dog.
Fernando: Hey, what's up, Diego?
What goodies do you got today, man?
Diego: Today, I got silver. And gold.
Fernando: Oh nice.
So we'll start with the silver.
Diego: That's a lot of silver.
Nice.
Fernando: There you go. Diego: That looks pretty good.
Fernando: Looks really good, actually.
One down, let's get to the gold. That's where the money's at.
Looks good. Second one down.
Diego: Pretty decent hunk of gold there.
Fernando: Looking good, man.
Diego: All right, buddy. Time to get paid.
Simon: Diego, what's up, bud? You got two bars this time?
Diego: Silver and gold. Simon: Nice.
Let's do the silver first. Alright...
You got the peaks all the way to the top.
Diego: Sweet. Simon: Pure.
Diego: Nice. Simon: You got $253.
Diego: Now it's all riding on the purity of the gold.
Simon: Now let's see what your gold one does here.
This stuff looks pure too. Diego: Yeah.
Simon: That's like 99.3%. Diego: I'll take it.
Simon: Not bad. $5163.
Diego: Nice. Excellent. That feels great.
I got paid out $5,163 bucks.
I more than doubled my investment,
and that's what I always shoot to do. Thanks a lot.
Simon: Take care, man. Diego: See you next time.
NARRATOR: Rich cracked open 1,000 cell phones
for a payout of $1,161.
His costs were $300, leaving him a profit of $861 bucks.
Dave's gold plated plates and jewelry brought him
$4,245 at the melt. They cost him $4,878.
Leaving him with a loss of $633.
Diego stripped a plane's avionics for a grand total
of over $5,000.
The access time cost him $2,500.
Netting him a profit of over $2,500.
Rich: You got to have that look on your face when you're playing
bass.
Oh, makes me want to jam.