On January 20 2026, a southern Chinese man's video surfaced online, who reportedly managed to extract 191 grams of gold from discarded SIMs. This triggered a further surge in demand for used SIM cards. The Chinese man commonly referred to as “Qiao” from Huizhou, Guangdong province, specialising in refining previous scrap metal, was reportedly behind the process.
The extracted gold after filtering and heating reveals the worth, which is around 200,000 Yuan or approximately 27 lakhs. According to the South China Morning Post, this extraction may seem like a small DIY project, but it is far more complex than it seems in reality.
