We haven’t written about sputtering targets in some time. But it’s worth revisiting the topic because money can be made recycling them. Sputtering targets are a very specialized kind of platinum scrap – and in some cases, of gold and silver as well. 

Sometimes a customer will call us up and ask how we can recycle items that are relatively simple and straightforward to process. If you have a platinum engagement or wedding ring, for example, you can send it to us so we can test it and retrieve the precious metal it contains.

Many precious metal investors believe that they will make a lot of money if they look for “one big win” in their investing. They will find one batch of gold scrap, platinum scrap or even silver scrap, make a lot of money from it, and then they will be set for life.

Of course, that does happen. (We could tell you stories about times when it has.) But looking for one big high-paying batch of metal is not the most effective way to spend years investing and ending up with a large sum of money from investments.

Are you interested in making money in platinum scrap? There are plenty of reasons you should be. The biggest could be that the new tariffs on items imported from China seem poised to raise the cost of platinum-containing items.

We’ve written about sputtering targets in the past, but a few recent calls made us think that this would be a good time to remind our readers that most used sputtering targets still contain precious metals that are worth extracting.

When you send us old catalytic converters, sputtering targets, dental scrap or other items to be processed, we recover precious metals from them that were mined from the earth years ago. Those same metals will then be reused in new applications that can include jewelry making, medical technologies, electronics manufacturing, and many more. What could be more efficient?