Year 2022 is shaping up to be the year when Covid-19 goes away, the year when America either rebuilds its infrastructure (or doesn’t), the year when you seriously consider buying an electric car – and lots of other big changes will happen in your life.

Another big change seems to be happening too, which is that everywhere you turn, people are talking about cryptocurrency. This seems to be the year when cryptocurrency – also known as bitcoin or bitcoins – is no longer something on the sidelines of people’s investing strategy. It has moved to center stage and people – even people who don’t know exactly what bitcoin is – are intensely interested.

“Over the last few years, my mother has spent about $500.00 to buy collectible coins she has seen advertised on television. They weren’t made by the U.S. Mint and seem to be base metal coins covered with an ultra-thin layer of gold or gold-toned metal. She is sure they are going to appreciate in value because they were advertised as rare. Should I tell her that she has made a bad investment or just wait for her to find out when she tries to sell them?”

- James, from Columbus, Ohio

Have you ever seen a stack of squashed, pancaked old cars piled in the corner of an automotive recycling yard, just waiting to be hauled away to a metal scrap yard?

It’s a sad sight. But even sadder is the fact that each of those squashed cars probably contains small quantities of gold that nobody bothered to pull out. And that problem is about to become even bigger because with every passing year, more and more electronics are getting shoehorned into modern cars. Within a few years, cars – especially electric and hybrids – are going to contain bigger and bigger quantities of gold. Remember, every printed circuit board that is found in a car contains small amounts of gold that can be extracted and recycled.

From Blackberry to iPhone and Beyond . . .

Scientists and lay people (otherwise known as “the men and women in the street”) love to predict the death of precious metals. They like to believe that gold, silver and platinum will lose value because they will be replaced by other materials and other chemicals in a lot of devices and applications.

“Isn’t the pandemic creating a lot of demand for precious metals,” a caller asked us recently. “Gold, silver and platinum and even cadmium are used in medical devices and medications, and isn’t the demand for those things increasing because of the pandemic?”

“The gold price dropped from $1,783.90 an ounce at the end of October to $1,763.90 on 3 November, as the US Federal Reserve indicated in a statement that it would `begin reducing the monthly pace of its net asset purchases by $10bn for Treasury securities and $5bn for agency mortgage-backed securities.”

“Gold Prices Forecast for 2022 and Beyond: A Buy, Hold or Sell?” by Nicole Willing, Capital.Com, December 9, 2021

With gold currently trading at $1,787.40 per troy ounce, this is a good time to look for and recycle even small amounts of gold.

Here are some easy-to-overlook places you can find small amounts of gold today – even in your own home.

“When I was looking at a small box full of metal pellets, I just knew they were made of platinum,” says a man who has spent years investing in precious metals. “There were only about 25 of them, but something about them convinced me they were platinum beads that had probably been used in plating operations. So I bought them up, had them tested and sure enough, I was right.”

Let’s say that you have just finished pulling the printed circuit boards out of 100 old laptops and you’ve packed the boards up and sent them to Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners to be processed. Or let’s say that you have pulled the circuit boards out of cellphones, old stereo components or even old televisions.

What is the most unusual thing about gold? If you think about that question for a minute, chances are your answer to it will be, “Gold is beautiful.”

Of course, that answer is right. Gold really is beautiful, which explains why it has been the most sought-after metal on earth for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians and Assyrians loved it, as did the Vikings, the Incas, the king and queens of Europe, and everyone else through the ages. Chances are your grandparents and parents had gold wedding rings and if you are married, chances are you and your spouse have them too. And if pure 24K gold weren’t beautiful enough on its own, it can be made into rose gold, white gold, and even green and pink gold by adding other metals.

A man in Delaware emailed us recently to ask, “Are there any scrap gold buyers near me?” He explained that there were plenty of companies in his area that would be happy to buy gold jewelry, bullion, and coins from him if he walked through their front doors. But nobody in his area was in the business of buying the kind of gold scrap he wanted to sell – a bunch of old circuit boards and used sputtering targets that contained gold.

When you invest in bullion or coins, you know almost exactly how much precious metal they contain – or come close to knowing.

Investing in scrap is another matter completely, as these examples show . . .

Over time, an investor bought about 200 discarded cellphones. He had paid about 50 cents for each of them, so his total investment was about $100.00. When they were recycled to extract the gold they contained, it turned out that each device contained about 0.001 Troy Ounces of gold. In sum, the gold in all those phones was worth about $350.00. So if you do the math, that shows that his investment was a very good one indeed. His $100,00 investment netted him more than a twofold return.

A man in Connecticut – we’ll call him Pete in this post because he asked us not to use his real name – has a story that might be familiar to you. Why? Because many people end up in situations like his.

Pete has a welding and metal fabricating business that handles all kinds of work. Last year, a university asked him to make a special chair that was needed for a medical research project. Often, people ask him to do small welding projects, like reattaching a trailer hitch that was coming loose from the back of a truck. Pete also does brazing and spot welding repairs on a lot of lawn mowers. Recently, a restaurant asked him if he could help design and fabricate an unusual service counter out of stainless steel – “something like you wouldn’t see anywhere else in the world,” Pete says. Pete employs two very skilled employees, but he shares the work with them.

This past week, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report entitled, “Climate change widespread, rapid and intensifying.”

If there are people who still believe that global warming is really not happening, we would urge them to spend a little time reading this report. It has a blunt message, which is that we need to act immediately and decisively if we wish to protect our planet, our future, and our children from further catastrophic effects of climate change.

Today, we would like to point out some steps that the smartest investors take to safeguard their investments – and to simply make more money.

Ready? Let’s get going.

Here at Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners, we are proud that we are helping to protect the environment with everything we do.

When we are processing precious metal scrap of any kind, we use the latest processes that virtually eliminate the release of noxious gases into the air. Although smelting and other reprocessing processes often involve high temperatures, we never release heated liquids or gases into the air or the water supply. We pride ourselves on having a very small carbon footprint. So when you send your gold, platinum or silver scrap to us for testing and processing, you can do so with a clean conscience.

If you follow gold trading prices, you know that gold prices have risen by more than 40% in the last few years. One reason experts cite is the current distrust between the U.S. and China. And chances are that distrust between our two nations will only rise as the U.S. builds scrutiny of why the Covid-19 virus might have arisen in Chinese laboratories.

Some people believe they need metal detectors to find precious metals. Other people use drones. And still others think they need precious metal testing kits.

Those people are right. But today, we would like to remind you of another very basic fact that can help you find more precious metals . . .

The question that we chose to be the title of today’s post – “What Is the Best Part of the Country for Gold Investors to Live?” – probably seems a little puzzling to you. After all, if you invest in gold scrap (or silver scrap or platinum scrap for that matter), what difference does it make where you live? You can call our precious metal recycling advisors from wherever you live, send us your scrap. And of course, we will send your payment wherever you live.

The period of Covid-19 has been a year of doom and gloom – and with good reason. But now that the end is in sight, opportunities are increasing for precious metal investors.

So let’s throw off the gloom and feel optimistic. We are certain that the coming years will offer great opportunities because the following trends are at work. All of them lead to the conclusion that increasing demand for gold, silver and platinum will drive prices upward in the coming years. And as prices rise, your investments in precious metals will pay you a bigger return.