Yes, if you can manage precious metal extraction without poisoning yourself(there were a couple of dufuses awhile back that got themselves in the news from killing themselves attempting pm extraction at home.)

"A computer tower is 100% recyclable. The motherboard, processor and ram being the most valuable. A refinery generally pays out for the gold, silver, palladium and copper. A motherboard contains about 20% copper by weight. 150 486 processors will yield about 1 ounce of gold. The heatsink is extrusion aluminum. Each power supply will generate about 1.6 pounds of material (copper and aluminum heatsinks) with the steel case removed. The case is # 2 steel. The frame of the hard drive is extrusion aluminum, about 3/4 pound. It also contains gold, silver and platinum and a small amount of copper. The higher capacity (in GB) the more platinum and cobalt on the hard drive platter. The floppy drive frame is also extrusion aluminum and contains a small amount of gold. The CD drive is the least valuable as it contains mostly steel and a small amount of gold. The finger boards(Boards that fit into the motherboard) are just as valuable by weight and are normally shipped with the motherboards. Each tower on average will contain about 2.25 pounds of boards. When gold was $750.00 per ounce you would expect to generate about 6-9 dollars per pound at a refinery after refining charges. I will make another post concerning monitors."

Gold is currently at ~$992/oz.

so it's worth more as scrap than vintage pc parts? Not all CRTs are bad some are worth keeping.

It's academic; they're worth more as a part only if you can sell it for more than the material worth.

I see i thought about building a classic rig.

On that basis, look to the program(s) you want to run; if the old hardware is sufficient enough to run those program(s,) then it still has value for those tasks.

If i can get 95 or 98 with older 2d games.