How Can a Research Lab Sell Its Used Platinum Labware?
Research labs accumulate platinum over the years. Crucibles that sat in furnaces for decades, spools of wire, electrodes, dishes, specialized instruments nobody's touched in years. When a facility upgrades equipment or a department shuts down, all that platinum ends up in storage somewhere. Most lab managers know it's valuable but have no idea what to do with it.
Selling used platinum labware is absolutely possible. You just need to handle a few things upfront.
Your Institution Has Rules About This
This is where people get stuck. Universities and research facilities have internal policies about disposing of valuable assets. There's almost always a surplus property office or someone in asset management who needs to sign off before materials leave the building. Some places require everything to go through their own surplus process first, which can drag on for months.
You also need Environmental Health and Safety involved early. Platinum labware from active research has been exposed to who knows what over the years. It needs proper decontamination before anyone will accept it for shipping. No refiner wants contaminated material showing up, and carriers won't touch packages with hazardous residues. Getting EHS clearance takes time but there's no way around it.
Know What You Actually Have
Make a list with weights in grams, type of item, condition. Some pieces will be pristine, others damaged or missing parts. Most lab-grade platinum is high purity, but sometimes there are rhodium or iridium alloys mixed in which actually changes the value. If you have documentation on what was originally purchased that helps, but a lot of labs don't keep those records going back decades.
How Can a Research Lab Sell Its Used Platinum Labware?
There are two ways this typically goes.
Some labs try reselling functional equipment to other research groups who need those specific items. Sometimes this works out better because the pieces retain their utility as tools, not just scrap value. The problem is finding buyers who need exactly what you have. Most lab managers don't want to spend months trying to match a used platinum crucible with someone across the country who happens to need that exact size.
The practical route is working with a precious metals refiner. Companies like Specialty Metals Smelters & Refiners process this type of material regularly. They evaluate the platinum content, extract the pure metal, and pay based on actual recovered amounts. You send the material in, they process it, you get paid. No marketplace listings, no trying to ship individual pieces to random buyers.
The catch is minimum quantities. If you've only got a couple small items, you'll need to accumulate more before it makes sense to process. Refiners need enough material to justify the assay and processing work.
Working With Someone Who Knows Lab Platinum
This is really the way most research facilities handle it. Specialty Metals Smelters & Refiners can evaluate materials based on detailed descriptions and photos in a lot of cases. You work out terms, ship everything with proper insurance (this stuff is valuable), and payment comes after processing shows what was actually recovered.
Good refiners provide detailed assay reports. You get documentation showing exactly what came out of your materials, which matters for institutional records and accountability. Some facilities need this for auditing purposes.
Get quotes from multiple companies if you can. The percentages paid on recovered metals vary quite a bit, and some refiners have way more experience with laboratory materials than others. That experience matters when you're dealing with specialized platinum alloys or unusual items.
Worth Doing
Letting platinum labware sit in storage indefinitely makes no sense when it has real value. The process takes some work upfront, especially getting through institutional procedures and proper decontamination. But labs that actually follow through are usually surprised by what they recover.
Platinum has been used in research for generations because of its unique properties. All that accumulated material still holds significant worth, even after years of use in furnaces and experiments. It just needs to get to someone who can properly process it.