A small gold mine in the trash!

Really old and I mean early 60's IC and how many 60s ICs were there anyway, had a lot of gold in them. While browsing thru a telegraph exchange that was being bulldozed I came upon across some circuit boards with ancient ICs on board, the top of the ICs was a white clip-on cover and when removed you could see the gold wires to the pins each with a different coloured varnish. The main part of the IC was in a ceramic type encapsulation.
the pin numbering was also differentit went
top
1 2
3 4
5 6

really, really old I donated them to the Communications museum

Dean,
you bring up a good point and although I didn't mention it, I remove just the more common use ICs while leaving the boards in a box. Yes, ESD can be a problem and they are better left mounted to the board, also making it easier to quickly scan a board for a needed chip, versus rifling thru a parts drawer of them.

Someone Electro,
The reasoning behind having a quiet room is to better hear horiz. oscillators in a television to confirm they are working, as well as listening for other low level mechanical sounds in problem equipment. For the most part, a television or stereo is running off side for entertainment. And that can be a real distraction just like it was last night as hot solder dripped off the pencil onto my leg ... nice blister!!