When you’re poking around an antique mall one day, you see a display of jewelry – rings, pins and other small items. All the pins and rings and other items you see are bright and shiny, except one. It’s a small cross on a chain, and it looks dull, chalky gray and tarnished.

So what are your eyes telling you? They are telling you that that cross is made of silver, while the other items on display are not. You see, silver tarnishes, while gold, platinum, titanium and other metals that are commonly used to make jewelry do not.

Silver is currently trading for over $20 per Troy Ounce on the London Fix. That seems like a ridiculously low trading price when you consider the trading prices of Rhodium, palladium, gold, and platinum.

It is tempting to say, “What, 20 bucks an ounce? Why even consider investing in silver?”

But don’t cross silver off your list of potential precious metal investments. The fact is, there really is a simple strategy for making a good return trading in silver:

You have items lying around your house that contains valuable precious metals. Other people in your community have them too.

So, here’s a simple idea for a way to help your favorite cause – whether it’s a school, a religious institution, a hospital, or your favorite charity . . .

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

Silver is used more in industrial and manufacturing processes than any other precious metal. That means that silver is, and will remain, a great metal to invest in.

In today’s post, we will explore how silver is used in a variety of manufacturing processes. But before we do, we should state that silver is used in two different ways in manufacturing:

If you’ve been reading our blog, you know that you can reclaim gold from old cellphones and remotes. You also know that you can recycle the silver that is found in old knives, forks, and spoons.

But did you know that you can recycle gold and silver from the following sources too? They don’t contain much gold or silver but – as is always the case in recycling – if you can collect very large quantities of them and send them to us for testing and processing, they can be worth the time and trouble.

Ready? Here are some sources of gold and silver scrap you probably don’t know about.

You inherited a big box of silver tableware a few years ago. You stuck it on a shelf for the last two years and then, when you pulled it out last week and looked at it, you discovered it had tarnished.

Ouch! That beautiful, shiny old silver was gray and oxidized-looking – ugly! But at the same time you were looking at it and feeling disappointed, a number of questions began to race through your mind. Let’s consider what those questions might have been and answer them.

We don’t know whether you are a big fan of the television series Downton Abbey. But whether you love the show or not, we have noticed that it teaches some valuable lessons for those of us who profit from recycling precious metals. The creators of the show seem to have invested extra effort in historical accuracy, showing wealthy people as they really lived a century ago. Most of the lessons Downton Abbey teaches apply to recycling silver, with fewer applying to recycling gold.

Steel is an inexpensive metal. As you know, it isn’t classified as a precious metal.

So why are there antique items out there that contain both steel and silver? The answer to that question is this . . .

You’re bound to find old black and white photographs in nearly every junk or antique store you visit. You might find one nicely framed old photo hanging on a wall. Or you might find a cardboard box that’s chock full of prints on paper, gathering dust in a corner.

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.

If you bought an old house, you should search it carefully for bits of gold, silver and even platinum that could be hidden from sight. And if you are about to sell an old house – maybe one that was owned by a family member – you will obviously want to search it carefully to be sure you will not be leaving any precious metal items behind.

Silver can be found in many kinds of liquids, including printing inks, cosmetics, medicinal creams, chemicals used in a variety of industrial processes, and more. And as we have written on this blog before, Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners has the expertise and experience to separate silver scrap from the liquids where they are found. In many cases, that process is simple - we introduce a chemical which causes silver to precipitate out of the solution. That’s another way of saying that the silver falls to the bottom.

We think you will like – and profit from – the information we will give you in today’s post.

We will tell you about sources of gold and silver that many people overlook when they are looking for precious metals.

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 . . .

Because we are a very efficient, active and productive silver refinery, we can answer the following question for you . . .

Why is recycling silver different from recycling gold, platinum, palladium and the other precious metals?

As we write today’s post, we are in the midst of a near-epidemic of fear about the Coronavirus.

And this epidemic of fear is more troubling than earlier ones we remember, like the one that preceded the start of the year 2000. Why? Because unlike that false crisis, when conspiracy theorists were predicting that world currencies would crash, that airplanes would fall from the sky and that all the world’s computers would freeze, today’s crisis is based on bad things that are actually happening in the world.

For a couple in New Jersey, it was time to clean out the basement. A corrugated cardboard box they pulled off a shelf contained some interesting metal items they had inherited, but never really examined. They found a small silver-plated candle holder and a sterling silver lid that had probably once been paired with a candy dish or some other bowl.

If you’ve been around for more than a few years, chances are you have fielded phone calls from pushy companies that try to get you to buy silver coins and all kinds of other “investments.” The usual pitch centers on opportunity: some trend is about to make today a great time to buy some investment. And if you don’t, you are going to lose money or overlook an incredible investment opportunity.