At Specialty Metals and Refiners, we can recover silver from a number of different liquids, including these:

• Paints

• Printing inks

• Chemicals that were used to process photographic and x-ray films

• Chemicals that were used in a number of industrial processes

• Used electrolytic chemicals that were used in electroplating processes

An article in The New York Times on September 28th (“There’s Gold in Them Thar Braes”) reports that a new gold rush is currently taking place in Scotland. That’s right, Scotland. Stephen Castle, who wrote the article, interviewed several prospectors who are currently panning for gold in Scotland. One of the men he interviewed reported that he is actually not hoping to strike it rich. He has a more modest plan for what he would like to accomplish by standing in a stream for hours panning for gold.

Over the last few months, gold has been occupying center stage for people who invest in precious metals. And with good reason! As we have noted on this blog over the last few weeks, the trading price of gold has broken all previous records.

But before you turn your back on other precious metals, we would like to point out something that is obvious, but easy to overlook . . .

As we have written before on this blog, old x-ray films contain silver that we can extract for you.

But how much silver do they contain? That’s what a number of our clients have wanted to know over the years. They have called to ask questions like this . . .

We’d like to start this post by reminding our readers that silver is a precious metal.

You knew that already, of course, but have you forgotten that you can make a lot of money by recycling silver? If you have, it’s probably because silver is trading at such low prices compared to gold, platinum, rhodium and silver’s other precious brothers and sisters. Silver is not very glamorous.

Only a decade ago, film photography seemed to be dying as more and more photographers turned in their old film cameras and went digital. Then about five years ago, people started to set aside their digital cameras as they took more and more of their snapshots on phones.

Urban legends are stories – usually untrue - that are so weird that people keep repeating them and sending them around via email. They tend to take on lives of their own – some people even think they really happened. There are even urban legends about precious metals. Here are three we have heard…

Please take a minute to consider this imaginary story… You buy an old retail building that was once home to several stores. One of them was a pharmacy. While you’re exploring there, you open a drawer and find several dozen boxes of old wound dressings that contain silver. You then send those wound dressing to a precious metals refinery like us, we process them, and send you a nice big check for several hundred dollars. It's a nice fantasy, isn’t it? But if you find any, they are not going to contain enough silver to be worth much. Sorry to deflate your dreams of wealth. But let’s look at some other places where silver and other precious metals can be found in the world of medicine. 

Even though film and other analog photo supplies are selling at a tiny fraction of what they were in the pre-digital age, those increases are significant. Since film photography is highly reliant on silver, does that increase mean that silver will be in greater demand, and trading prices will rise? It could be. Whenever demand increases for a commodity that is in a fixed supply, prices for that commodity rise. 

Recently one of the greatest conspiracy theories in history was laid to rest when Donald J. Trump announced that Barack Obama really was born in the United States. Why was Mr. Trump empowered to settle the that particular question? We don’t know, but we do know that, with that conspiracy theory behind us, we are now free to turn our attention to other weird theories about precious metals. Here are some unusual beliefs about precious metals, with at least partial answers about whether they could be true.

Over the last century, all kinds of media – for audio recording, video recording and the recording of still images – have consistently been replaced by new media that have been better in one way or another. And every time something new hit the marketplace, large quantities of the old “stuff” got tossed away, got sold at discount prices, or was snapped up by collectors. So, where can you find silver in obsolete media?

If you’ve visited an art gallery that specializes in antique photographs, you’ve noticed that some of the most beautiful on display are “Silver Gelatin Prints.” They tend to be large and show stunning black and white images that have remarkable shadings of dark and light. You also might have noticed that the most valuable were taken by famous historical photographers like Ansel Adams and Alfred Steiglitz. How can you make money investing in old prints like those? Here’s what you need to know

Gold, platinum, palladium, rhodium and the precious metals are trading for much higher prices per ounce than silver. But does that mean that you should write off silver as a profitable investment metal? Not at all. Here are some pretty compelling reasons why you could make more money in silver than you can with more glamorous precious metals.

It is always sad to see a business fail – someone’s hopes, dream and dollars are wrapped up in every enterprise. But a business that has closed can spell opportunity if you’re an alert investor who wants to buy precious metals for recycling.

If you have been waiting to recycle or sell silver until trading prices rise, we invite you to consider a Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners Pool Account.  Our Pool Account offers significant benefits, including the ability to sell your silver when prices rise in the future.

We have reached a tipping point where tremendous numbers of products that contain precious metals are being discarded or recycled. If you are an alert investor or speculator, you can buy quantities of them at rock-bottom prices, recycle them, and earn a big return on your investment. Some of these products include...