Unusual Places where Platinum Scrap Could Be Hiding
We have written a lot on our blog about the most common places to find platinum scrap, including catalytic converters, lab equipment, and thermocouples.
Where Can You Find Scrap Platinum in Old Computers?
We have written on this blog before about retrieving gold scrap from old computers. It is actually pretty easy to do, since you can see the gold, which is mostly found on the little pins that are on the edges of motherboards, printed circuit boards, memory chips - in the little pins that are used to plug those devices into surrounding contact blocks.
What Does Science Fiction Tell Us about the Future Value of Platinum Scrap?
For today’s post, we’d like to put on our science fiction glasses and think about what the world could look like in year 2050. We admit that it is unlikely that all the following conditions will have arisen by then, but let’s consider them anyway . . .
Titanium Gains Popularity in the Jewelry Market
Over the years titanium has been used mostly in aerospace and industrial applications, and with good reason. Titanium is nearly as hard as steel, but it weighs much less. It is extremely resistant to corrosion and wear. It resists deformation - you are going to have to jump up and down pretty hard on a titanium ring or pipe to get it to flatten.
Desperate Times? Here’s How to Liquidate Your Precious Metals Fast, for Top Dollar
Back in his student days, our friend Joe was short of cash one month. So to pay his rent, he sold his high school ring to a jewelry shop on 47th Street in New York.
“I took it in, we struck a deal on price and before he even paid me, the guy behind the counter stuck my ring on a mandrel, grabbed a big hammer, and smashed the gem stone that was mounted in it. I left the store with some cash in my pocket, but I wasn’t feeling too great about the whole experience.”
How Scratch-Resistant are Platinum, Gold and Silver?
You can find the answer on the Mohs Scale
Is silver more resistant to scratching and wear than gold is? And how does platinum compare to them both?
What Would a Trade War Do to the Value of Precious Metals?
What will happen to precious metal prices if a trade war causes a number of countries, including the U.S., to charge heftier tariffs on imported goods?
How to Develop Your Precious Metals “Sixth Sense”
We recently spent a few hours in the company of an expert jeweler, looking through a batch of old jewelry scrap. It was amazing to watch him work. He seemed to have a kind of sixth sense about what he was looking at. He picked up a small chain and said, “This is solid gold.” Then he looked at an old watch and said, “The case is gold plated, not worth much.” Then he looked at a ring and said that although it looked like platinum, it was base metal that had a thin level of chrome or other bright-metal plating applied to it. Again, not worth more than a few cents.
Four Questions to Ask Before You Have Your Coins Made into Rings
Do you have a quarter, a silver dollar or another coin that you would like to have made into a ring?
If so, you can quickly find a company that will refashion your coin into a ring, just by searching online. It seems that lots of people are starting businesses that do it.
These Easy-to-Overlook Items Contain Platinum!
You know what to look for when you are hunting for platinum and platinum scrap, right? You’re looking for platinum engagement and wedding rings, right? Or you might focus on floor and bench sweepings from factories where platinum jewelry was manufactured.
Four Common Sources of Platinum Scrap
If you’re on the hunt for platinum scrap, you could sweep the floors at a jewelry factory, pull up old drain pipes and floorboards you find there, or tweezer out bits of old platinum screens and sponge from plating tanks and drains.
That’s hard work. There are much easier places to find platinum . . .
Where to Find Platinum Scrap
Platinum is used in jewelry, thermocouples, catalytic converters and many other places.
That should mean that it is easy to find bits and chunks of platinum scrap that we can recycle profitably for you, correct? Well yes, there is a lot of the metal out there waiting for you to discover. But you must know where to look.
What Makes for a Spectacular Engagement Ring? Hint - It’s Not about the Gold
We enjoyed “10 Most Famous Engagement Rings in History,” a post on the TheKnot.com blog. It offers entertaining descriptions of 10 of the most jaw-dropping engagement rings ever given. One was a Van Cleep & Arpels engagement ring that JFK gave to Jacqueline Bouvier. It boasted both a 2.84-carat emerald and a 2.88-carat diamond. Not too shabby. Other astonishing rings are mentioned in the blog post too, including immense rings given to Mia Farrow by Frank Sinatra, to Marilyn Monroe by Joe DiMaggio, to Elizabeth Taylor by Mike Todd, to Beyoncé by Jay Z, and even to Queen Elizabeth II by Prince Philip. We can hardly keep up.
How Can You Recognize White Gold?
White gold is an alloy of gold and at least one white metal – sometimes more than one. Those additional metals could be nickel, palladium, or zinc. Sometimes a little copper is added too, to make the alloy less brittle and easier to shape. But only a little copper can be added, because if you add too much of it to gold, the resulting alloy becomes pinkish in hue. (That’s where so-called pink gold comes from.)
These Recyclable Materials Contain Precious Metals
When we answered our phone a few weeks ago, a very nice gentleman told us that he had collected more than 1,000 used printer cartridges that he wanted to recycle. “How can I send them to you to be processed?” he asked. We had to give him the bad news that print cartridges do not contain precious metals. We explained that some of the ink they once contained might have contained tiny quantities of silver, and that some ink cartridges have circuit boards that contain extremely small quantities of gold - but that even in the best of circumstances, he didn’t have enough of any precious metal that we could profitably extract for him. We suggested that he take his cartridges to an office supply store that participates in manufacturers’ recycling programs.
Can You Still Make Money by Recycling Computers?
A customer called us recently and asked, “Can you still make money by recycling computers now that the age of desktops seems to be over? It’s not worth recycling laptops, is it?”
Precious Metals: Why Convenient Shipping Is Not Always the Safest Shipping
We love the convenient shipping that Amazon and other online retailers are offering these days. You place an order and before you know it - sometimes on the same day - a box lands at your door. It’s great, but is the convenience making us overlook the security issues?
Why There Is Money to Be Made Recycling Metal Pieces You Can’t Identify
We found it at the bottom of a small bin of metal scrap that a client had sent to us for analysis. It was a little piece of gold-toned metal, about half an inch long. It was shaped like a barrel, with ribs running along it from end to end. We thought it was a bead, but it didn’t have a hole running through its middle - the kind of hole that would enable it to be used as part of a necklace. Our best guess was that it was part of a larger piece of jewelry - something that had fallen off a brooch or maybe even a tiara. There were no karat markings or other identifiers, so we figured it was made of base metal that had been covered with a thin plating of gold. But what the heck, we tested it and discovered that it was, in fact, made of 12-karat gold.
What Are the Weirdest Objects Ever Made from Precious Metals?
We have already written on this blog about strange things that have been made from precious metals over the centuries. (See “Be On the Alert for Strange Objects Made from Precious Metals,” a blog post we published on November 16, 2016.) In that post, we wrote about sterling-silver prosthetic noses, gold-plated iPhone cases and other oddities.
Are Your Parents Going to a Nursing Home? Here Are the Best Strategies for Dealing with their Jewelry
If you have an elderly relative who is about to enter a nursing home or assisted living, chances are you are already working with a counselor who is helping you deal with their financial assets. Today’s post is not meant to serve as a substitute for the expert advice you can get from those counselors, who know the ins and outs of Medicare and other factors that can impact on financial planning for elders.