DDR4 costs soar as manufacturers pull the plug — panic buying and stockpiling impact DDR4 spot pricing as supply dwindles

Dunno. The guy probably resold it, tbh.
One of those things where I had a pile of old ram I didn't need and was bored of storing. None of my friends wanted it, so found someone that would take it.
I couldn't be bothered selling it, cause I thought it had minimal value. And listing it, packaging it, shipping it... Meh.

I know the gold tabs on the card edge connector can be recycled. Cut off then dissolved in chemicals, and gold precipitated out.
Not sure if the memory chips can be processed for anything.

Maybe Samsung and Hynix as well, (if you include some parts of Asia) they're from South Korea and I think they have large semiconductor fabs there as well.

(And we have Micron Memory Japan, but they're owned by an US company these days.)